I found this amusing … yet strangely/potentially relevant …
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The more frightening part is that newly minted billionaires are more often than not lacking any special insights or intellectual ability. They are where they are because of a tech opportunity they were able to take advantage of, and a billionaires voice speaks in the modern world regardless of what is behind the voice.
They are inward looking for their own benefits as are most wealthy people and if interested in the affects of their endeavours it is usually intellectually (somewhat of a prurient interest), not practically in how it would or does affect the greater populations.
Some rightly argue it is still better than hereditary monarchs running ‘the show’ without any checks or balances. Economics and humans interaction with ‘the markets’ seems to be more than likely to cause a negative impact to human civilisation over the next decades because greed and self interest at whatever expense makes the world go around and there is no evidence that will be challenged any time soon.
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Mr Baron Cohen seems not to understand how the world - and the US presidency with its empire to oversee - works. One person controlling water, electricity and information for 2.5 billion people? Sure - they’ve done it in Iraq, Iran, Egypt, a dozen different South and Central American nations, Vietnam, Korea, half of Africa…
The sensible thing would be to get off Facebook rather than simply criticising from the sidelines. And for anyone who retorts that the US president relies on advisers, staff, all those different TLA (three letter acronym) agencies - so does Mark Zuckerberg.
Is it? At least with the monarchs you could occasionally lop a few heads off to keep the rest in line. The trouble with these billionaires is that they are both lucky and greedy - and not in a position where a ‘popular rebellion’ might affect them. Yet.
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Based on his ‘art’ I’d have thought he understood it better than most 
Maybe not, but I took it as more of a swipe at Facebook and the SugarMountain than an in depth critical analysis of the worlds economic and political woes … like many snippets of alleged interest on the media these days. I’m not saying your point is without merit - FB is a very visible example but the other examples you list also hold value as examples and I’m sure there are many more and of course FB is the one we love to hate.
I must admit it did feel a little damned if you do damned if you don’t about his comments - replacing anything with government oversight? hehehe
I think we’re screwed no matter what - power and privilege in whatever form it takes seems to always win until enough people get upset and revolt and replace it with another same but different flavour of power and privilege … that’s my optimistic view anyway, my pessimistic view is less uplifting …
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I think the only time I have seen him perform is in Les Misérables. Wait: he was also in Sweeney Todd. And apparently a voice in Madagascar.
So I have seen him perform to others’ scripts and direction; I have managed so far to avoid his own version of ‘comedy’.
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CHOICE article on the OAIC’s upcoming court case against Facebook:
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Will Clearview AI be in Australian courts soon given that it appears Australian law enforcement bodies tried its services?
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I’m not aware of plans to do this, could be an issue to keep watching though.
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If you rely on Google for anything, then make sure you have backups of everything (kept well away from Google). A list of every contact or account that uses your gmail account in any way would also be wise.
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The Federal Government has ordered the ACCC to create a mandatory code of conduct regarding Google and Facebook having to pay for other media businesses content that they use.
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So at what point is the platform ‘using’ content? Is a bunch of links to news about, say, today’s stock market movements ‘using’ those news services, or directing traffic to them? When a Facebook member posts a link to an article, is that ‘using’ the media content?
Looking more widely, is CHOICE ‘using’ media content by allowing uses of this forum to link to news articles - especially when the first paragraph or so is subsequently displayed in the thread?
While I can imagine some media companies wanting ‘their cut’, this has the potential to stifle others that are quite happy about the traffic that is being directed to their sites - and the subsequent ad revenue. I suspect this decision may be quite controversial.
I very much agree with this decision. It’s a struggle for news producers because Google and Facebook take the headlines and key information then have it display on their own platform. Increasingly people are using Facebook or Google News and simply never clicking on articles. This disproportionally affects smaller/local news as they can’t encourage people to their own app/website.
I understand the argument from @postulative that lots of places do that (including your own link). I think the key difference is Google and Facebook use that content as a key part of their business. Having it makes them significant profit.
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Maybe I don’t turn to the right (or wrong) places for news. I certainly don’t want an international platform curating everything!
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I use Feedly for this reason, which runs on RSS feeds. Highly recommend it. Interestingly it avoids the above problem because providers can choose how much information displays before you have to click through to the website (and if they even offer an RSS feed at all!)
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I miss Google News 
. Wait, I mean…
Google News directed the reader to the relevant news outlet, based upon one’s specified sources/preferences. I don’t recall it showing all the news through a Google lens (although my recollection is somewhat cloudy)…
Do you mean that you do not look at Google News anymore?
It is certainly still operational and I look at the Science and Health articles daily as they often list items which I do not see elsewhere.
Facebook, at least, needs to be rigorously scrutinised.
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Another article regarding making Facebook and Google to pay for using other companies news articles.
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This would be those same publishers who can make or break governments? I wonder what will be done?! /s
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