Caught, as we are, between an old media dying and a new trying to be born, we should expect plenty more strange phenomena like yesterday’s announcement by Facebook that it was striking news from its platforms in Australian -- matched with a strutting “we won’t be responding to coercion” response from Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
Ignore the public pronouncements from all sides and the spluttering outrage about Australia being picked on. Yesterday’s call by Facebook will have thrown the growing push for regulation of the platforms into a holding pattern. No one can be certain about what happens next.
Moreover, it throws up in the lights the biggest of questions about the giant platforms: can they be regulated? Or, is the only solution to break them up?(Author and internet guru Cory Doctorow argues the latter in How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, released last week.)
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