Alternative voices in the public sphere silenced by fire

I regret the need to use incendiary terms to express myself but the topic warrants the deployment of the word “fire” especially since there is a precedent in the term “flame war”. The voices I’m talking about are supported by many but heard by few in the channels that matter most to them, which is the traditional media. It’s surprising how powerless people evidently feel when they think that their extreme expressions – surrounding ideas spawned by political debate – don’t matter and that, in fact, the more extreme the expressions that are used the more important must be the views of the speaker.

But when they cave into such impulses they limit the reach of their views because the mainstream media shuts them out. The term “sewer rat” which some journalists use to characterise the angels of Twitter, all those anonymous tragics who gravitate to the heat given off by #auspol like moths to a flame, gets adopted with pride in people’s Twitter handles. It becomes a badge of honour, like a tattoo. 

Graffiti tagging gets cleaned off walls by councils and homeowners in the same way that the aggressive comments of our guardian angels are wiped off the front pages by members of the press gallery. With the noise a lot of legitimate questions become invisible and the polis suffers as a result. The system is rendered less representative and people move further to the margins, so the machine of state itself gets attacked instead of the ideas belonging to other side of the political divide. 

Popularism and popularity become muddled in this grey zone that exists in the moment, but that can be mined for ammunition by the more committed among us. Trawling through old posts put out in the heat of the moment becomes like a raw academic debate: you said this, I said that. Tit for tat and beggar take the hindmost. 

Ring a-ring a-rosey, we all fall down. If only we could use this “work” to practical purpose, but it seems futile to wish for such a thing as people on all sides denigrate those who dare contradict them. In the old days, when I was at secondary school, we had debating societies. Personally, being more interested in art, I never saw the virtue of such things, but now I do. It’s a reminder of the benefit of the old in the face of the new, because perhaps by regularising all the effort, bringing it into some manageable form where different people who fulfill different roles can discuss the issues we all agree are important, we might find that there are solutions to pressing problems that remain to be solved. It should be easier to find common ground. 

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.

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.

The holy grail was always due recompense for use of News Corp content

It’s been 12 years – this 6 April – that the media giant’s Robert Thomson declared in an interview:

"Google encourages promiscuity -- and shamelessly so -- and therefore a significant proportion of their users don't necessarily associate that content with the creator.

"It's certainly true that readers have been socialised – wrongly I believe – that much content should be free."

It was a declaration of war for which the peace has just been announced.  

Under the new three-year agreement, Facebook will pay for news articles from publications such as The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun. Sky News Australia has also signed an agreement with Facebook.

Thomson’s negative animus with regard to Google had converted itself, over the years, into a motion by media outlets in Australia that turned into laws drafted and put to Parliament for debate. At the last minute, Google capitulated and began to sign agreements with media companies. Facebook refused, and historically blocked users from posting news articles to its website. Then the government changed some aspects of the laws and Facebook unblocked the news.

Now this.

The “free” bit is still true – most readers of news won’t pay for it. But this is changing. For some the alignment of the interests of the dreaded Murdoch media and IT giants such as Google and Facebook will seem disturbing. A new bogeyman to revile and slam in a thousand new acerbic tweets flung like refuse out of life’s virtual cage. But what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and smaller media companies will also benefit from the new regime.

But note the sunset clause. Such accord will be contingent upon both perceived return and on public opinion. In a way it’s still up to users what kind of dispensation exists in the public sphere, from an economic standpoint at least. If you think that IT behemoths should pay for the privilege of allowing you to share what you like on social media, then get vocal. And forget about your personal brand of politics. 

More is a stake than whether your favourite political party is elected to office. News Corp’s typically sustained activism over a large number of years – something that it specialised in as it works in various public spheres to get change made – has, in the present case, turned out to be a blessing for all news makers. Even a website as progressive as Crikey – which is run by a company named Private Media – can benefit measurably from Murdoch’s intransigence. No doubt its journalists would never have thought they’d see the day that they might be able to praise the feisty and conservative nonagenarian patriarch.

Tech boffins shouldn’t risk losing social licence to deal with Australia

When, on 18 February, Facebook stripped its Australian users – people who generate revenues for them, part of that breed of individual whose participation in the platform is the underpinning of all value inhering in it – of the ability to do something as natural and reasonable as sharing links to the news stories they rely on to survive, I was, along with many others, shocked. Here was a company that had called its primary vehicle for sharing – the “news feed” – banning news by blocking links to news websites.

I disabled the app on my iPhone and removed the browser tab from my PC’s start screen but on 23 February the company was back at the bargaining table ready to talk with Australian news producers – people who, in the final analysis, create so much of the value they rely on to keep consumers coming back. 

Juanita Philips does a cross on the ABC news, evening of 23 February.

I was doubly shocked seeing a range of different views in the public sphere – mainly on Twitter. Twitter came into its own for me over these dark days of privation as I’d previously there created a number of different accounts so could hold conversations with different people, but my views were not always echoed and I learned, to my shame, that many people blamed the media for the impasse. In most cases one name came up again and again. A bugbear for all occasions, someone so notorious as to be a byword for poor conduct. I won’t mention the name but I think that anyone who reads my article can imagine what it is. This bias was particularly evident among people on the left and, furthermore, from people living in the United States, where Fox News is, for many, a regretted participant in the public sphere.

But just to denigrate an entire business process on account of your personal revulsion due to one individual media player seemed to me to be counterproductive. There’s a meme on social media about the French philosopher who is said to have quipped something along the lines that holding certain views was regrettable but that the person speaking would defend to the death the right of anyone to have their views heard. The present case makes a mockery of such well-meaning and altruistic principles, and shows us up to be partial and narrow-minded. 

We need to defer to principles in the current debate which is – despite the misleading headlines of last Tuesday – not yet over. Not by a long shot. And we must ask ourselves what living without political speech would be like – for that is what Facebook’s ban means. A world where speech can only be legally conducted upon such subjects as birthdays, pets, and meals eaten in local restaurants. No talk of government policies, of laws that impact on our lives, of court cases, or of diplomatic visits by heads of state. A blanket of silence is discretely drawn across an entire ecosystem of ideas just because a few pampered nobodies in Silicon Valley won’t share. It reminds me of the CCP and their dogged unwillingness – to the point where they simply ban Facebook and Twitter and set up their own social media sites – to share power.

It’s this lack of generosity that is so striking in the case, a lack that says something revealing about ourselves. About the US media pundit who – generously placed on-screen by an eager national broadcaster – poo-poohs the government’s efforts. About the malicious troll who slanders a media baron because others will mindlessly reward their post with likes and shares. About the family member who echoes the same sentiments. About friends who grudgingly – grudgingly! – accept the need for regulation when pressed – when pressed! – but who revert to blaming the mainstream media for not having responded to the technological changes of the past generation with sufficient foresight. 

As if anyone could have done. We need the media more than ever before but it will never be perfect – and this is the tragedy. Because in one person’s eyes the media is flawed therefore the entire system must be overhauled. Because one person cannot stand listening to Sky News after dark a whole group of professionals must be starved of the means to make a living. Just because one person, moreover, likes to read stupid, badly-punctuated and barely literate hot takes by some random posting on an “indie” media site Channel Nine must be punished. 

Or 7 West Media. Or Network Ten. A thousand curses upon the heads of those who criticise the Morrison government for doing the right thing. A million thumbs down for Mark Zuckerberg and his faceless minions, penny-pinching like Scrooge and pretending that they are popular when it is the weird 55-year-old woman you met on Facebook who posts cracked-but-entertaining recaps of her youth who engages you. Or the old friend – over 80 years now but still full of ideas – who resorts to paraphrasing news stories the site has stopped him from sharing. Or the former colleague who puts up pictures of lizards he meets at the beach. Or the goofy right-winger, a friend of a friend, who celebrates Trump in the face of overwhelming pressure to capitulate. It is in these fragments, on the edges of debate, that the real action takes place.

The tech boffins shouldn’t risk losing their social license to deal with Australia. We are the world.

Working around Facebook’s ban

To begin with, here’s what people yesterday saw when they tried to post links taken from Australian news websites:

I saw this humorous take early this morning in my Twitter timeline:

Taking a lead from Chris’ approach – while the BBC home page early this morning (Sydney time) featured a story about the ban, the New York Times’ site did not – my post today contains an often light-hearted take on a first-world problem as the social media giant goes head-to-head with the Australian government. I take a term out of the playbook of one of my favourite TV shows – ‘Hard Quiz’ (Wednesday nights at 8pm on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s main channel) – keeping in mind Tom Gleeson’s Monty Python-esque suppressed grin – a self-conscious smirk – as he hams it up, poking fun at all those drama-filled moments we enjoy so much when we watch TV. “Will Diane win a weekend away at Noosa or will she go home with nothing?” 

The standard, gimcrack game-show spiel. 

We adore the dramatic moment – as long as nothing important’s at stake – but while the Facebook v. Morrison govt contest appears for most to rank low on the criticality stakes, it has affected others hard. 

But there could be an upside: we might start learning how to write. https://magnetformedia.blogspot.com/2021/02/facebook-news-ban-puts-australians-back.html So, to put theory into practice, today I cheekily put the following on Facebook:

Two articles abt Facebook’s ban today on the Sydney Morning Herald website. In one, the PM says he’ll take the issue to the G7 in June. Morrison has spoken abt the ban w Narendra Modi, the Indian president. In another article, Stephen Scheeler, a former chief executive of Facebook in Australia and New Zealand, says, “Lying at the heart of Facebook’s abrupt ban on all Australian news is a global strategic gamble that will have a huge bearing not just on Mark Zuckerberg’s behemoth, but on the dynamic between Big Tech and democracy.” He adds: “I suspect its bet is this: that by taking an aggressive hard line with a middle power, such as Australia, a tough message will be sent to the rest of the world to back off on regulation.”

To demonstrate just how irritated they were with the IT company, people were also doing other things. You can, for example, just copy and paste the news article’s entire text, as did this man:

Another person had the same idea, but only copying part of the target article:

Another way around the ban is to put up screen shots made from offending articles:

The same guy also used the “double-blind” method: screen shots of blog posts about news stories:

One more way around the ban is to use TinyURL:

This solution has the drawback that it crops out images and headlines and teasers, making it necessary to add some own text. Another approach – this time by a freelancer – is to direct people to an email subscription service that is run independent of Facebook. Stephanie Wood has done this, posting:

As I've discovered since taking a redundancy from Fairfax Media in 2017, life on the outside as a freelancer is incredibly tough. I'm not sure right now how I'm going to make a go of it. Facebook's action is a blow to freelancers like me who have tried to build communities and followings using the platform. (Never mind the blow it is to multiple other organisations and people who have used it to get important messages out into the world.)

You can go to her website at http://stephaniewood.com and subscribe:

Facebook’s decision to ban Oz news stories could turn out to be costly for the American company as – compelled by sovereign pride – any number of countries around the world may take a hard line, and move to rein in the behemoth. People who use the service might think, “This is just another case of the company meddling with my life.” Most don’t like to be thwarted. Having cornered part of the market for vanity and spite – the two sides of ego being shitposting and bragging – Facebook might find that it quickly loses all credibility as a trusted partner in the business of staying in touch with friends, acquaintances, and family. 

Complete strangers might well become friends – this has of course happened to me, as it has with pretty much everyone – but I like to feel as though I am in control of the process. Another thing that seems to be ubiquitous is that feeling that Facebook is listening to one’s conversations. This also detracts from the pleasure of the process. For example when you send an email to someone in which you mention a category of consumer product or service and then – all of a sudden – you see an ad for that same product or service on the social graph. As though Facebook had been listening to your chatter (as, indeed, it is).

Facebook knows what to do to counter such worries: it simply ignores them. But it doesn’t know what to do about the Australian government’s new media code – which is due to shortly pass through the Senate – so it is crushing opposition by blocking the posting of news articles. Such a heavy-handed response merely highlights the company’s frustration and dismay. Latika Bourke, the Sydney Morning Herald’s London correspondent, published a story this morning about how the UK government is viewing the Oz news ban: 

The chair of the British parliament’s committee for the media and tech says Facebook’s “irresponsible” decision to cut off news and official government feeds for Australian users constitutes “bullying” and will unite legislators from around the world into wanting to curb Big Tech’s abuse of its monopoly.

Facebook news ban puts Australians back in control of their messaging

Facebook has decided to do the unthinkable and stop Australians – and people overseas posting news from Down Under – sharing their favourite media stories. This move comes just a day after it was announced that Google and a few Australian news organisations had reached agreements on profit sharing.

This move by the tech giant pushes people over to Twitter, but it might have an unintended effect as people, driven by who they are – sharing embodies intrinsic parts of our personalities – start to write their own posts with perhaps the occasional quote from a news outlet. Or even with no quotes – Facebook might block such use of its interface – and, rather, paraphrased extracts of news stories.

We’ll have to see what happens. Twitter, meanwhile will take more territory from its competitor. The government hasn’t asked Twitter to share any profits from its use of news, so as far as things stand currently – the day this article you’re reading was posted – there’s no reason to fear that it’ll become completely impossible for people to engage with other around the news campfire.

Whatever happens, the Facebook shift will increase the importance of literacy. People now – eager to connect with friends and family, and denied a basic freedom by Facebook’s greed – will learn to craft sentences that have the same pith and rigour as your average news story. Short, sharp, to-the-point. 

News is where we live. We’re swimming in stories like fish in the sea. Without stories we die. Solitary confinement can be fatal as it changes the way our brains work, so being connected with others in a news environment is critical to the health of the polis. Without this outlet we feel frustration and will resort to other measures in order to release the pent-up emotions we harbour as a result of dealing with the fear and loathing of daily life. News liberates as it consoles. 

It can also terrify and anger. But whatever happens, with Facebook’s decision comes a moment when Australians – and, indeed, the world – must find other ways to message, to shine a light on the hill, to let fly the billows of signal smoke across the valleys of the oceans.