Facebook has until now been able to publish content from news organizations worldwide and escape any obligation to pay for that content by claiming that it is only providing a platform, and should incur no payment obligation when its users elect to share links to news articles. Australia disagreed. Its government concluded that, like the spymaster Polonius in Hamlet, Facebook earns its keep by monitoring its users’ viewing activities, including their news consumption, and selling that information on to advertisers.
Here’s Polonius/Zuckerberg directing Facebook employee/spy Reynaldo to surveil (sorry, monitor the activities of) Danish Facebook user Laertes while Laertes is in Paris. Laertes is actually Polonius’ own son, but no one should be beyond the reach of Facebook:
Polonius: “You shall do marvell’s wisely, good Reynaldo,
Before You visit him, to make inquire of his behaviour.”
Reynaldo: “My lord, I did intend it.”
Polonius: “Marry, well said, very well said. Look you, sir,
Enquire me first what Danskers are in Paris;
And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,
What company, at what expense; and finding
By this encompassment and drift of question
That they do know my son, come you more nearer
Than your particular demands will touch it.
Take you, as ’twere, some distant knowledge of him;
As thus, ‘I know his father and his friends,
And in part him.’ Do you mark this, Reynaldo?”
Reynaldo: “Ay, very well, my lord.”
That is, collect every bit of ancillary information about this Facebook user in order to match it to a massive database in order to create a profile for use in deciding what information to show, or to withhold, from this user, particularly during election season. Zuckerberg, I mean Polonius, goes on:
Polonius. “And in part him, but,’ you may say, ‘not well.
But if’t be he I mean, he’s very wild
Addicted so and so’; and there put on him
What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank
As may dishonour him- take heed of that;
But, sir, such wanton, wild, and usual slips
As are companions noted and most known
To youth and liberty.”
Reynaldo: “As gaming, my lord.”
Polonius: “Ay, or drinking, fencing, swearing, quarrelling,
Drabbing. You may go so far.”
Reynaldo: “My lord, that would dishonour him.”
What’s that? Facebook slandering and dishonoring its own users? Why, yes, whether by placing a “Misinformation” label on a news article written in good faith, or by banning the article altogether, or just by shadow-banning a user’s output, among other methods. That does indeed dishonor writers and news outlets. Reynaldo has a question:
Reynaldo: “But, my good lord”
Polonius: “Wherefore should you do this?”
Reynaldo. Ay, my lord, I would know that.”
For the money, of course. Australia was not the first country to figure this out, nor the first to recognize the harm Facebook has ben causing to users and to local news organizations, but Australia was the first nation to require Facebook to reach a bargain with news providers before hosting their content.
Polonius can’t be happy with this. It’s a little like his final scene, where the spymaster is caught in the act, hiding behind an arras in Queen Gertrude bedroom, where Zuckerberg was of course spying, this time on the entire nation of Australia; that is, on Hamlet. But Hamlet isn’t the kind of easy mark that Laertes is (glass means mirror):
Hamlet: “Come, come, and sit you down. You shall not budge;
You go not till I set you up a glass2
Where you may see the inmost part of you.”
Gertrude: “What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murther me?
Help, help, ho!”
Polonius: [behind] “What, ho! help, help, help!”
Hamlet: [draws] “How now? a rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!”
[Makes a pass through the arras and] kills Polonius.
Polonius: [behind] “O, I am slain!”
Well, let’s hope that your business model is.
