Melbourne protest rally might be turning point for civility in social media

In the middle of this month a protest rally on account of new laws the Labor government wanted to enact regarding Covid and the health response caused hundreds of people to flock to the streets. Visible among them was a cart with a gallows and three nooses. Missiles were hurled, resulting in injuries. The language on some of the placards was intemperate.

On social media prominent left-wing commentators themselves protested the rally but ignored how they, themselves, often use intemperate language in order to achieve their rhetorical goals. Flaming and ridicule are part of the arsenal of such individuals – who often hide behind anonymity online – and this had caused the prime minister to vociferate publicly against the tenor of debate. Earlier in the month he’d even voiced ideas about making the big tech companies more accountable for what was published on their platforms.

Australia had already moved in this direction, the High Court finding that media companies are responsible for the comments people leave on their Facebook pages. Morrison (the PM) was saying what many – people like me, who sit in the centre – think: that online conversations need to be more responsive to the real world and that the freewheeling tone of social media is becoming more and more toxic.

On TV, the leader of the Opposition criticised the PM for criticising state governments that had chosen to restrict people’s freedom. Morrison utterly condemned calls for violence, he said, but understood that many people are frustrated. Australians have done their bit and governments, he averred, needed to do the same.

This was seen by many as condoning extremism. The first journalist I heard voicing an opinion about Morrison’s words (it happened to be the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Andrew Probyn) expressed a degree of puzzlement. I think this is understandable. We’re puzzled, all of us, but we encourage the type of extreme expressions embodied in the gallows and the nooses. We’re part of the problem, and perhaps this current debate will serve as a turning point. Along with whatever measures the federal government attempts to introduce – though it’s arguable whether they’ll have time to do so before the next federal election – this conversation can be our saving grace.

Marketplace needs more flexibility in pricing tools

You see it all the time, people putting “$0” (which the application turns into “FREE”) for an item for which, the description shows by words, a price must be paid. I find this all the time, so it’s commonplace. The other day I put up a selection of literary fiction priced at $0 but that I wanted to sell for $5 each. I did the same thing for a group of history books as well.

I’d been getting rid of a lot of books. Initially I’d put up pictures of individual books, but found that the response for this method is very limited. Hardly anyone was asking a question. When I put up a number of history books (I think there were 13 in the set) for $50 I got a sudden influx of queries, so evidently I’d hit a nerve. A man came over to my place on two occasions and bought 50 books. Another man got me to mail seven books to his house out near Liverpool. A third man I met at Parramatta to which suburb I’d travelled on the ferry. 

The group photo was magical, so I tried to reproduce the effect by putting up a photo showing novels by Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon, and Tom Wolfe, among others. The price was $0 and the description had more details, including the fact that they were on sale (and not being given away) but the response this time was surprising in another way. “Is it free,” messaged Enes. “No $5 per book, as per description.” “Why don’t u put as $5 then.” Another person wrote to me, “Hi, is this free?” I mistakenly tapped the prompted button to say “Yes, it’s available” and Monica asked again: “But is it free..?” 

I changed the price attached to the photo to “$5” but I’d felt the pain these people experienced to learn that something they coveted, due to an inspiration rooted deep inside their being, had been denied them. Doubly painful because there might be a reason for their not being able to afford the minuscule $5 necessary to purchase one of my cheap books. 

When Josh came over to buy some of the novels the other day, dressed in hi-vis and wearing boots, he didn’t look like a reader of literary fiction. But I felt his passion when we were browsing. Or, at least, when he was browsing and I was standing by ready to let him know if a book was available or not. He hopefully picked a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez off a shelf and I hesitated before allowing him to take it. I suggested he should read Haruki Murakami and he took two of the Japanese author’s novels. He asked me what I was reading and I told him it was a Nancy Mitford novel and that this author’d been my father’s favourite.

This personal link to books means that the process for buying them should be better crafted by Facebook. It shouldn’t be enough to let people put “$0” as the price when this is not, in fact, the case. It’s not the seller’s fault that people are disappointed. It’s the intermediary’s fault that the online tools are not flexible enough to account for all situations. If the only way for me to get people interested in my books is to put up photos of groups of books, then the pricing tools should allow me to say “3 for $10 or $5 each” or something similar. Buyers would benefit from being able to do their shopping without the shock of disappointment, and sellers would be able to be honest at the same time as they achieve their sales goals.

Macron dummy spit has Australian media bewildered

I finally saw a news story – it took weeks of flailing about with the same old line – about the submarine bust-up (the federal Australian government cancelled a $90-billion deal for French-designed subs) with some wider relevance. It was by Chris Uhlmann. 

Uhlmann located the French president’s unhappiness in the context of geopolitical ambitions “to leverage his nation’s colonial footprint in New Caledonia and French Polynesia to deal France into the great game of the 21st century; the strategic struggle for the Indo-Pacific”. What some on social media have poo-poohed – Australia’s legacy commitment to French security embodied in WWI and WWII Antipodean military success – is closer to home but few have alluded to it, possibly on account of French sensibilities. 

We’re being very kind to Macron and his people, but if China ever got into a war with the United States it’s highly likely that Russia would join in on her side, so it’s in Macron’s interest to see a strong Australia. Napoleon’s much-repeated quip about English “shopkeepers” seems suddenly ironic.

Facebook should offer Marketplace booster vouchers to loyal users

I had a nice conversation with a guy named Ash I met yesterday who bought four black chairs I’d wanted to sell. We were talking as we carried the chairs out of the garage to his grey sedan. He said he wished Fb Mktplace’d been around when he was a student and I agreed that you can find amazing bargains. 

The chairs had come to me when I bought a table for the front room. The table and four chairs cost $50 and I sold the chairs for $30. The guy who sold them to me was moving to Melbourne and wanted to empty out his apartment so he also gave me four outdoor chairs for free, which I listed for $20. Ash said he’d think about buying these as well. The table is made of steel and glass and suits the entryway to my house – it’s on the tiles just inside the front door – offering a modern, contemporary aspect to visitors. It also gives me a place to put things.

Like books I’ve been selling that I want to show to buyers who come into the house. I listed books the other day in a way I’d not contemplated before. In the past I’d just put up one book at a time with a price and title. This time I shot a photo of just over a dozen history books on a shelf and offered them all for $50 (or $5 each). As a result I got over ten responses and in the same day sold 23 books to two different buyers (one left some behind and promised to come back later to pick them up). In the past this kind of reaction would have been even more remarkable. But community interest stopped after a couple of days.

With the chairs I’d had them up for about a week or ten days. But the slackening off in engagement for the books makes me think of another feature of the site, where they give you the opportunity to boost your listing by paying a fee. They also contact you for some listings after they’ve been up for a week or so, asking if you want to renew the listing. Normally I decline this offer but I think in future I’ll take them up on it. With this feature you only get a limited number of renewals (though I haven’t seen what happens when you reach the limit) and that’s why I normally don’t accept these messages that come through driven by an AI.

Facebook relies on artificial intelligence. I like Fb Mktplace because, unlike eBay, they don’t charge you for listing. But they probably might offer to boost listed items at no charge. If I put up a book to sell for $5 I don’t want to pay $2.50 to boost it. Facebook anyway has enough money and doesn’t really need my $2.50 to be profitable. 

So far I’ve sold hundreds of dollars’ worth of goods online using this interface and will continue to use it in future. I particularly want to get rid of books as I already have 13 bookcases and they’re mostly all full. If I want to buy more physical books – and this is more than likely, as I’m an inveterate reader – I’ll need free space to store them. In the past I’ve bought many books that’ve just sat unread for years waiting for inclination to strike so I take them off the shelf to spend time with, and recently I’ve been scooping up old books that catch my attention. Fb Mktplace helps me to rationalise my library but my loyalty – I’d used the platform since 2007 and spend a good deal of time on it each day – should be better rewarded. Maybe the company could use its algorithms to convert time spent on the site into booster vouchers that can be reclaimed when a seller wants to promote a listing.