FB - Facebook

[Every Banana Counts]

Li Lu sold 27% of his Facebook position

It is so hard to know why someone is selling. For every one reason to buy a stock there are 100 reasons to sell. Do you have a good feeling for Li Lu’s investment style? Is selling in and out of companies a common behavior? Buffett recently said he doesn’t “trim” positions. I wonder if Li Lu would have a similar stance. My gut would say yes.

[michitche95]

Li Lu sold 27% of his Facebook position

It is so hard to know why someone is selling. For every one reason to buy a stock there are 100 reasons to sell. Do you have a good feeling for Li Lu’s investment style? Is selling in and out of companies a common behavior? Buffett recently said he doesn’t “trim” positions. I wonder if Li Lu would have a similar stance. My gut would say yes.

Buffett also sold a small portion of Apple...

[dwy000]

Ok, somebody please explain it to me because I'm confused.

Australia is insisting that FB (and Google) pay Australian news sites for including their news links in FB site posts.

FB shut down links to Australian news sites yesterday and reference traffic to those sites dropped by up to 30% (direct access went up).

Why on earth would the government and news sites insist on being paid for people to access their sites?  Seems they benefit from the increased viewership.  In fact you could argue they should be paying FB.

What am I missing?  Canada is now saying it might follow Australias lead.

[RichardGibbons]

I think it's political, but is based on three observations.

1. The FANGs are making lots of money, and a significant fraction of people think if a company is making loads of money, it is doing something bad, or at least exploitative.
2. Old media companies are suffering in the internet age; many are struggling for survival, but people want media to survive.
3. News Corp was started in Australia, and has good lobbying power.

If these three things are true, to a politician, it may look reasonable to take money from the FANGs and give it to media companies.

(If this crosses the political line for this board, let me know, and I'll be happy to delete the post. I just don't see an explanation for the question that doesn't involve politics.)

[dwy000]

I think it's political, but is based on three observations.

1. The FANGs are making lots of money, and a significant fraction of people think if a company is making loads of money, it is doing something bad, or at least exploitative.
2. Old media companies are suffering in the internet age; many are struggling for survival, but people want media to survive.
3. News Corp was started in Australia, and has good lobbying power.

If these three things are true, to a politician, it may look reasonable to take money from the FANGs and give it to media companies.

(If this crosses the political line for this board, let me know, and I'll be happy to delete the post. I just don't see an explanation for the question that doesn't involve politics.)

Completely agree it is political.  And naturally governments will go after Facebook and Google because that's where the money is.  But if you're the Australian media companies desperately trying to drive traffic and views to your site, how is this helping you if they decide to just shut off the links.  The government isn't making any money off of this, just the local media companies.  Baffling. 

[Liberty]

Ok, somebody please explain it to me because I'm confused.

Australia is insisting that FB (and Google) pay Australian news sites for including their news links in FB site posts.

FB shut down links to Australian news sites yesterday and reference traffic to those sites dropped by up to 30% (direct access went up).

Why on earth would the government and news sites insist on being paid for people to access their sites?  Seems they benefit from the increased viewership.  In fact you could argue they should be paying FB.

What am I missing?  Canada is now saying it might follow Australias lead.

Rupert Murdoch's lobbyists found a way to transfer money from a competitor's pocket to their own. Seems to basically be it.

If the government wanted to do a tax and then support some things with the money, that'd be one thing. But this isn't going to taxpayers, this is going into Murdoch's pockets directly (oh, and Murdoch happens to support the party in power and have near-monopoly in Australian media).

[Every Banana Counts]

Ok, somebody please explain it to me because I'm confused.

Australia is insisting that FB (and Google) pay Australian news sites for including their news links in FB site posts.

FB shut down links to Australian news sites yesterday and reference traffic to those sites dropped by up to 30% (direct access went up).

Why on earth would the government and news sites insist on being paid for people to access their sites?  Seems they benefit from the increased viewership.  In fact you could argue they should be paying FB.

What am I missing?  Canada is now saying it might follow Australias lead.

Rupert Murdoch's lobbyists found a way to transfer money from a competitor's pocket to their own. Seems to basically be it.

If the government wanted to do a tax and then support some things with the money, that'd be one thing. But this isn't going to taxpayers, this is going into Murdoch's pockets directly (oh, and Murdoch happens to support the party in power and have near-monopoly in Australian media).

https://www.ridehome.info/show/techmeme-ride-home/thu-0218-facebook-calls-australias-bluff-google-pays-off-murdoch/

[no_free_lunch]

Google signed an agreement with newscorp to pay for their content. It's workable.  Facebook just doesn't want to pay up.  It's advantageous to the news companies if they win, and with the government on their side they just might.   From Australia perspective you could argue it's transferring money from an international firm to domestic industry.  Just another form of protectionism as I see it.

[Jurgis]

Canada is planning to do Australia next.

So basically WWW is dead.

Cause hey, Sanjeev, when are you gonna pay Canadian and Australian media companies for all the links to their pages on CoBF?

And in case CoBF ever links to my website - lol that would be first - here is my BTC wallet: <censored> so you can start transferring BTC for every link from CoBF to my websites.

This is f*cking complete destruction of the WWW principles.

(If this is too political, please remove KK Thx OK)

Disclaimer: I have a large positions in FB and GOOGL. I am buying more. But it is possibly one of the biggest risks to both companies - and not just to them. F*ck media companies.

[dwy000]

I just see it as very shortsighted.  You just know these companies are going to prioritize the lowest cost news organizations and punish the high cost ones.  Getting Google to pay you to drive traffic to your site is an uneconomical argument that serves zero purpose.  It hurts FB and Google, it will ultimately cost the news orgns  traffic and gets the government zero.  I'm baffled as to who benefits in the long run.

Its not like FB or Google are competing with these news orgns.   They are a traffic driver not a news producer.