While the government tactfully resisted the urge to count coup on Facebook after the company's backdown on blocking news content there is no question as to who owns the victory.
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From now on, there will be a large asterix next to every statement Mr Zuckerberg and his associates make proclaiming to care deeply about democracy and the importance of a free and independent media.
Tuesday's face saving compromise was exactly that. None of the "concessions" granted by the Australian government are substantial in and of themselves. They certainly don't undermine the operation of the proposed news and digital media code in any material way.
Many, such as the decision to take existing agreements between news providers and social media platforms into account, the extended notice provisions, the additional time to reach agreements, and the prohibition on the invocation of non-differentiation provisions, will make the code more workable for all parties.
And, most importantly, there is no reason to believe Facebook would not have been granted these additional flexibilities, including the final offer arbitration variation amendment, if it had just asked nicely.
Nothing that has been gained is an adequate offset to the damage Facebook has done to itself, its credibility, and its global reputation, by going nuclear and shutting down newsfeeds and a whole lot else.
The ineptitude with which the process was carried out, and the snails pace at which news and service pages are coming back on line, inadvertently exposed the company's lack of control over its own site. Facebook neither floats like a butterfly nor stings like a bee.
The company's claims to value and care about independent journalism and democracy, which were being spouted again on Tuesday, have been exposed as hypocritical cant.
While we will probably never know why Facebook, which has reserved the right to turn off the tap again, flip-flopped even faster than Pauline Hanson can usually manage, it is possible to advance some plausible theories.
We have a free market in information. You can always switch channels.
Consider the fact that at a time when the eyes of the world were on the social media giant's attempt to bully a sovereign nation nobody outside of Facebook knows how many Australians have either suspended or closed their accounts in the past week, how badly advertising was affected, and by how much Australian site traffic went down.
Anecdotal evidence suggests however that a lot of people were angered by what they saw as high-handed arrogance. It is also a given the Australian government wouldn't have been the only advertiser to pull the plug.
It's a fair bet Facebook's assumption "they (the users and content providers) need us more than we need them" which seemed to drive the original decision has taken a battering. It was always a dangerous position for an entity dependent on individuals and other corporations to voluntarily post to its site.
The penny may well have dropped that even though Facebook considers its subscribers to be marketable commodities it can't exist without them or the corporate content providers.
Nobody is on Facebook because they like it, or they like Mark Zuckerberg. People are on Facebook because it is accessible, user-friendly, reliable, informative, and convenient.
When that changes, so do the users. We have a free market in information. You can always switch channels.
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