 expert on it there's probably more subtleties here but Australia the Australian government thank you Adam that is that is really really generous the Australian government like most governments in the western world are very concerned about the power that Facebook and Google have and particularly in shaping the media message we all get their concern is also the fact that journalism is in trouble a lot of journalistic institutions a lot of newspapers a lot of media companies are shrinking and in particularly they are shrinking their pure journalists people are not interested in news people are interested in commentary and commentary of course doesn't require facts for most commentator the people who actually go out there into the field and get facts the journalists they're just few and few of them few and few of them and you know one of the one of the sad things about what's going on in the New York Times is that the New York Times is one of the few institutions that has journalists all over the world trying to put together data now the problem is we can't trust them anymore because they've lost a sense of objectivity but they're not a lot of organizations that have anybody out there just getting the news just getting information so it's sad that the few organizations that are out there are losing money the New York Times is making a lot of money these days it's quite profitable in spite of what Donald Trump kept saying about them they're actually quite profitable but they're so biased it's hard to take them seriously and and of course then no replacements media real media companies again not commentary not Tucker Carlson the people who produce the news that Tucker Carlson can comment on the few and few of those people and one of the problems that one of the observations that the governor of Australia has made and the European Union has made and some people in the United States have made is that we have these massive companies Google and Facebook for example that consume news if you will in other words they don't directly consume it but they well Google does and we'll talk about that but they make it possible to distribute the news that is the news their distribution networks they distribute it by people sharing and people liking and people people actually grabbing these news stories from the news websites and then sharing them but and and the news is being read on Facebook's platform not in the original you know page of the news organization and Facebook sells advertising on the page where the news is being read and the newspaper that produced the news is getting in Yiddish it's called bubkus in other words nothing right so that's the situation we live in and it's not a situation we should ignore it's a situation with consequences it's a situation that if you care about journalism if you want to see more journalism if you want to see the news media thrive not shrink and disappear it's an issue it's an issue that people need to figure out how to solve the question is who should solve it not whether it should be solved so what you have is Google and Facebook making a huge amount of money off of advertising on news stories that are produced by other people and the news media is not getting anything in return it's not getting anything in return now there's a lot of ways in which this could be solved free market ways news organizations could say you can't share this we won't give you access to share it unless you give us a cut of the advertising revenue the news organization could say we're putting all our news behind a firewall like the new york times does and people can share it but they can only share the headline they can't get the story unless they pay up uh so and and companies like Apple the way they solve the problem is at least a partial solution to it is that they go to news organizations and they say we will carry your news on our Apple news app and we will pay you for it or we will share the revenue from people who subscribe to the Apple news app right so Apple is providing news organizations with revenue though there's there's a lot of complaints that Apple being Apple is keeping most of it but that's the marketplace that's to be negotiated and indeed I think the new york times because it wasn't getting as much revenue as it would have liked from Apple has withdrawn from Apple news if you go to Apple news you're not going to get stories in New York Times as part of Apple news but these are all solutions that are that are emerging in different ways in the marketplace again the new york times is super profitable and it's put its entire newspaper basically behind a firewall I believe that the Wall Street Journal is profitable it too you can't read the Wall Street Journal unless you buy a subscription and if when you share like a a Wall Street Journal article you don't get the article you just get the headline sub stack is the same way if I share a sub stack story you're only going to get the top of the story you're not going to get the part that is only for subscribers so there is one of female says an unbalanced relationship there is an unbalanced relationship there is Google and Facebook have a lot more money and in a sense have a lot more power than other entities somebody says Facebook become monopoly no there is no such thing as a monopoly unless it's granted by the government what makes Facebook a monopoly it has 20% of the ad revenue I think in Australia Google has a lot more of that it offers you the customer a product for free what is it monopolizing what is it monopolizing um twitter is competition there's this new this new app called clubhouse which is competition it doesn't yet have a revenue model but it'll develop one in its competition right what is it about Facebook that makes it a monopoly nothing zero zilch it dominates the Facebook like social media okay but it created that space and if it did it without government help without government support without government subsidies without government protection why is it a monopoly it's a good competitor who beat the competition and dominated the field that should be celebrated Facebook didn't do anything to Paula I mean you could argue that uh Google and Apple did something to Paula but not in order to defend Facebook and Paula will come back once it figures out it's hosting and everything else there are other solutions in the marketplace that we have but it was all market driven and yes they might have been government influence in the background that's a whole other topic but then what you should be accusing what you should be blaming is the market influence not and the threat that Facebook faces for antitrust and the threat that Google faces for antitrust and the threat that all these companies face from government regulation the fact that governments are regulating that's what we should be complaining about and then yes when you have this threat when you point a gun at a company and then tell them ooh you better behave then they are going to behave but that's not because they were a monopoly that's because the government is pointing a gun at them Paula is back I tried to access Paula through my app and I couldn't but supposedly Paula is back it's hosted on a different cloud web service hopefully it will build a robust network that allow people to use it in spite of the fact that some people don't like it I don't know that uh you know that Paula is a cancel culture phenomenon I mean we can the whole Paula issue is I think a separate issue um let's see Paula is a competitor yes you're right Paula is a competitor for example to Facebook and there are others there's mines.com there's they used to be gab they're still around somewhere there are others they're just not as good it's just not as good but David says Paula is back on the web version Apple Google wanted a lot of the app back on their stores but I have the Paula app already why won't it work even though I can't download it why won't it work on my computer if I if I delete it then I can't get it back but if I have it all right where was I Australia so that's the problem that's the issue Facebook Google news media and the relationship and as I said there's been negotiation now countries are concerned about this so what countries what governments are trying to do is force and I emphasize force Google and Facebook to pay for the news that they use and that's what Australia is trying to do so Australia had a commission to look into the monopoly power that Facebook and Google have again I don't think they have monopoly power I don't I think that's a false definition of monopoly I think monopoly should only be used to refer to a government granted government granted monopoly the fact that Google has 90% of search I don't know how much they actually have but that's a 90% that does not make it a monopoly I don't think I don't think standard oil was a monopoly when it had 93% of the oil refining capacity of the United States those are not monopolies there's no such thing as a monopoly in a free market or even in a semi free market monopolies are government creatures the post office that's a monopoly market share does not denote monopoly government power the use of a gun the use of force that is what denotes a monopoly no you can say bullshit but that's not you know is as an economist I can tell you that's not what defines monopoly and indeed there is no definition of monopoly based on market share how much 50 70 90 what's the market how do you define the market is it the market for search is it the market for online advertising is the market media is the market social media BS no force is being used no force is being used no coercion is being used so no these things are not monopoly there is no objective definition of monopoly this was a big issue for INRAN INRAN considered the antitrust laws to be the most evil laws that were passed in the United States the beginning of the end the the well not the most evil laws passed by the United States but the beginning of the end of economic freedom in America and she has a whole essay on how non objective non objective antitrust law is anyway we'll go back backwards so this is the challenge Australian government it wants to rein in the power of these companies and it wants to save its media companies and they don't know how to do it so they have a law now that they're passing which is very complex and have multiple provisions that is trying to get facebook and google to negotiate with the publishers but if they don't succeed the law creates a commission and this commission will force force again google and facebook to pay for the news organizations now remember the news organizations voluntarily give the news to google and facebook to share freely now part of this part of what australia wants is that google if you search let's say you search i don't know australia facebook google and news articles come up in the search news articles come up in the search and they want google to pay every time those links are clicked on and now that's ridiculous the whole point google says is these are not sponsored links these are not paid for links this is just a service we provide people searching you can sponsor a link on the side you can't pay for certain search words and there's also something called google news so what google is doing is it has decided that preemptively before the law is passed it is going to negotiate with media companies in australia to pay them to include their news stories not in the search function but in special sections of the website including google news which is focused on news where you can we just get the the daily news come up come up and they signed they signed a big deal news corporation the corporation that owns fox but it also owns 50 of all the media in australia is owned by news corp uh this is uh murdoch's company uh but it also includes the wassey journal which is owned by murdoch and now they've got a deal where they will pay news corp for it and assigning deals with other media companies who are they not going to sign these deals with they won't sign them with very small media companies so what this will ultimately do if they're forced to do it is destroy small media and and give a huge priority and google news on on these news features to the larger media companies and now relegate the smaller media companies to a lower place and not because of this is a market phenomena but because this is what the regulation basically forces them to do now facebook has decided that it does not want to do that that it is that this new law that australia is thinking of passing is bad that they object that they want to protest this and what they've done preemptively is that they are now not allowing australians to share australian media on their facebook pages so in a sense they're restricting the ability of australians to use to share news completely within facebook's right i don't think australians are going to be happy about it i think they'll either put pressure on the government to drop this bill or they'll put pressure on facebook we'll see who breaks first it's not going to be consumer friendly but it's also not going to be government friendly and again we'll see who breaks first there's already so here's our fans solve this problem like because this is big in the european union germany had a bill had a law that tried to solve this problem forcing google and facebook and other social media platforms to do certain things that european courts ruled it unconstitutional they uh fans has done it this way what they're doing is they've got a special tax on social media they've got a tax on social media they take the revenue from their tax and their money goes to media companies as a subsidy now that's horrible multiple funds it makes media companies beholden to the government the government gets to decide who gets what the government gets to decide who's good media and who's bad media by subsidizing it it's an awful awful solution to it australia is trying to not tax the companies and redistribute the wealth they're trying to force the companies to negotiate and when they won't negotiate they'll have a committee that decides what the fee should be central planning regulation controls always backfire the result is always worse than what they're trying to fix they want that cake and eat it too they want social media they want the media and they want the kind of media and the kind of social media that they prefer not the ones that evolve through the marketplace microsoft is i microsoft is probably not exempt from this but microsoft is a small player in the space indeed one of the reasons i think google so in australia my understanding is google opposed the bill but succumbed and negotiated these deals with the media microsoft supported the bill they supported the bill because they figured it would hurt google more than it would hurt them and they might be able to get some get some architecture as a consequence this is the problem the problem is that when government starts doing this which government starts controlling these things when it starts intervening in this way you form pressure groups different groups form with different interests and they start fighting they start fighting so let the market work let these companies figure it out that's my view so i'm curious uh we've got a bunch of australians usually are listening i know kory was here of course troy is australian and he's been very supportive of the show i don't know if he's on live right now um but he's been on i'm curious to find out on the chat maybe um if my interpretation of what's going on australia is right and if my position on it makes sense uh so i'm curious to find out from the australians if we have australians here um if that is uh that is true what we need today what i called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason by the intellect not by feelings wishes women's or mystic revelations any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair cynicism and impedance and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broods all right before we go on reminder please like the show we've got 163 live listeners right now 30 likes that should be at least 100 i figure at least 100 of you actually like the show maybe they're like 60 of the matthews out there who hate it but but at least the people who like it you know i want to see i want to see a thumbs up there you go start liking it i want to see that go to 100 all it takes is a click of a click of a thing whether you're looking at this and and you know the likes matter it's not an issue of my ego it's an issue of the algorithm the more you like something the more the algorithm 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