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New It caught a lot. A lot...
The goal of the block was for Aussies to stop seeing and sharing news. That means all news sites worldwide blocked from Aussie feeds and Aussie news sites had all their posts blocked from being published anywhere.

Identifying what Pages were Aussie news sites obviously caught way more than people expected. Facebook clearly said they started with the broad and vague definition in the proposed legislation. And services like health alerts and weather reports are traditionally considered "news" so that would explain why they got caught. It also caught a lot of other unexpected collateral. Local community news groups got swept up. Foreign entertainment news sites got blocked. It was pretty massive.

I watch only one free-to-air TV news service (happens to be the left-most one, natch) and they've always been upfront about their website. The other one I used to watch I still listen to a bit of radio and follow their Twitter accounts and they've also always encouraged people to go directly to their websites.

There have been conflicting reports that the otherwise mainstream news websites - such as the Murdoch owned ones - have had somewhere between 16% and 96% drop on traffic. Look, 6% is noticeable, so they must have noticed, but I think it's a lot closer to 16% than 96% because otherwise they'd be screaming bloody murder and I haven't seen that.

Responses on FB and Twitter that I have seen have mostly been "this government is being told what to do by Murdoch - such idiots" but there were a few people objecting. Fortunately, it was quite easy to squash their wrong theories.

Wade.
New What the hell am I missing here?
The goal of the block was for Aussies to stop seeing and sharing news. That means all news sites worldwide blocked from Aussie feeds and Aussie news sites had all their posts blocked from being published anywhere.

I guess I'm just thick. I do not see how FB was able to block "all news sites worldwide" nor enforce a policy whereby "all their posts [be] blocked from being published anywhere." You couldn't post here, for instance, during the FB blockage? All news sites worldwide are only accessible through FB?

FB could go offline entirely forever today (please, please, please make it so) and my Internet experience would be affected not one jot. So I ask again, what am I missing here?
bcnu,
Mikem

It's mourning in America again.
New There's a whole generation who've grown up thinking Facebook *is* the internet
Just like the group before them thought Google was the internet. That's just where they go for everything. Google has been trying to make URLs less visible and less important for years now and just find everything via search. Facebook has never used URLs; you have to go to groups, or pages, or just wait for it to show up in your feed.

Imagine if someone deleted all the contacts from all your electronic devices tomorrow. How many people would you know phone numbers and email addresses for? How long would it take to rebuild your list? How many do you think you'd forget completely? That's what Facebook just did. They blocked the news sites from Facebook.
--

Drew
New And this goes beyond Facebook as well
Australia wants to force anybody who shares any news related link to trigger some type of payment to the news organization.

This breaks the internet. Forced payments for posting links? Insanity.

If Australia had its way the fact that this conversation started with a link to a news article would trigger admin to owe money.

Google went along with it. They don't care, it's just chump change to them. So they agreed to some payment. It's just chump change to the Zuckerberg too. But he ain't giving in.

He's right. He shouldn't.
New Context. All this was on Facebook.
If you don't use Facebook, then what I posted won't make a lot of sense. Everything they did was solely on their platform.

Wade.
     Facebook versus The Australian Government - (static) - (11)
         WTF? - (mmoffitt) - (9)
             They blocked themselves, too. -NT - (pwhysall) - (1)
                 Aussies should be ecstatic. -NT - (mmoffitt)
             I could easily see this happening - (crazy) - (1)
                 Yeah. That's what Murdoch hates. - (static)
             It caught a lot. A lot... - (static) - (4)
                 What the hell am I missing here? - (mmoffitt) - (3)
                     There's a whole generation who've grown up thinking Facebook *is* the internet - (drook) - (1)
                         And this goes beyond Facebook as well - (crazy)
                     Context. All this was on Facebook. - (static)
         Developments. - (static)

(to borrow Ashton's excellent phrase)
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