technology

Bernard Keane is right on the money here: "Facebook’s refusal to submit to the shakedown — AKA the news media bargaining code — has elicited cries of outrage and demands for a declaration of regulatory war from News Corp, Nine and Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media, which continue to lie to their audiences that this is about tech giants paying for content they are stealing from news media.

What it’s really about is the way big tech has developed a new advertising model, one far more effective than its now rather quaint strategy of spraying advertising at as many people as possible in the hope of reaching the small minority interested in and capable of buying a particular goods or service. Moreover, traditional media companies have been the victims of a decoupling of news from whole asset classes of advertising, like property and cars, moved online, to sites owned by… erm… traditional media companies."