While big media companies can snap their fingers and get government intervention in their fight with tech platforms, workers and unions have to do it the hard way.
If one thing is clear from Australia’s mainstream media over the last five days, never get between them and a pot of money — in this case, money stolen from the big tech companies under the guise of “content theft”.
If the media was misleading audiences beforehand about the news bargaining code scam, Facebook’s calling of Australia’s bluff and removing all the content that media companies insisted was being “stolen” last week unleashed a holy war against the social media giant, led by sanctimonious journalists, froth-mouthed academics, raging media executives and furious government ministers.
Unusually, this was one culture war that united left and right, with progressive economists and commentators competing with Coalition apologists at News Corp to see who could denounce Mark Zuckerberg more strongly.
Keep reading to find out why there needs to be more outrage about the gig economy…
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