TechCrunch Newsletters - Week in Review - Australia v. Internet

Saturday, February 13, 2021 • By Lucas Matney

Hello friends and welcome to Week in Review.

Last week, I touched on Facebook’s competitive standing and how Zuckerberg seemed to be getting complacent. This week, I’m reflecting on the accuracy on that take after The New York Times reported this week that Facebook was building its own Clubhouse competitor… But I’m also looking at a bill in Australia that could shape the web in a very odd way.

If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny.

The big thing

The land down under is looking to undermine the modern web in hopes of building a more sustainable ecosystem for news.

The media industry versus Facebook and Google has been a long saga best summed up by taking a look charts chronicling declines in newspaper advertising revenue compared with Google and Facebook’s ever accruing ad revenues. The internet ad duopoly created more compelling products and they beat out media giants at their own game with a meaningfully evolved offering. The complaint has been that as platforms for sharing or discovering content, much of it professionally-produced content, the companies haven’t given back to publications and creators nearly as much as they have taken away.

This has all been tears falling on deaf ears by and large, but legislation popping up in Australia is aiming to take a shot at how massive web platforms have capitalized on legacy publications. Next week, Australia’s parliament will begin debating the news media bargaining code, an effort by the government to push web platforms to compensate publications for news content that is shared and linked.

It’s a radical proposition that Google and Facebook lobbyists have decried. A number of more neutral parties have also voiced misgivings around just how much such an effort could disrupt the way information flows across the web.

Where some see a chaotic shuffling of platform economics, others see opportunity. This week, Microsoft told Axios that it believes the United States should follow suit in pushing platforms to pay publishers for content. Microsoft is hardly a neutral party, a weakened Google Search would mean an in-road for Bing. They’re being fairly upfront about this though, noting that if Google pulls its services from Australia in response to the bill’s passage, that Bing will swoop in with a revised product in compliance with the law.

The weird thing about the global web right now is how much distinct international edicts affect the experience of users outside those jurisdictions. Legislation bleeds across national borders and each government has a role in how the global web functions. As with nearly any wide-reaching internet legislation created by politicians, there’s undoubtedly going to be some major nuance lost in the formation of any one bill and Australian parliament very well might move fast and break some things.

Sound familiar?

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Tesla makes massive bitcoin bet
The biggest story of the week in the tech world was probably Elon Musk pushing Tesla to make a $1.5 billion investment in bitcoin, a move that sent the cryptocurrency’s price surging. Bitcoin is currently trading up over 25% week-over-week with Tesla’s purchase one of the main catalysts behind the recent movement.

Twitter makes its Trump ban super permanent
Twitter’s ban of ex-President Trump’s account has been quite the moment for the service, they detailed this week that he was never going to get the account back, even if he ran for public office again. “The way our policies work, when you’re removed from the platform, you’re removed from the platform — whether you’re a commentator, you’re a CFO, or you are a former or current public official,” Twitter’s CFO said this week.

Twitter gets serious about getting ambitious
This has been a noteworthy year for Twitter when it comes to product, they’ve made some good acquisitions, have tried a little harder to innovate and investors have seemed to notice. The company’s stock price is pushing through past its post-IPO run, finally seeming to recapture that initial promise. On an earnings call this week, the company talked about how they were planning to finally start pushing subscription monetization on the platform.

Jack Dorsey and Jay Z invest in Bitcoin endowment
Twitter’s CEO and Roc Nation founder and rapper Jay Z are co-investing 500 bitcoin (about $24 million) into a new venture that’s aiming to “make bitcoin the internet’s currency.”

Facebook Oversight Board eyes expanded role
In the true spirit of Facebook, the company’s independent Oversight Board is already showing interest in expanding its reach. During a panel, one of the board’s co-chairs detailed that “other platforms and other tech companies are more than welcome to join,” signaling a future where the board of global experts holds even more sway over speech on the web’s platforms.

Epic shows off ‘MetaHuman’ creation software
In one of the more uncanny updates of the week, Fortnite/Unreal Engine developer Epic Games took the wraps off of a next-generation character creation tool which could make the future of in-game characters look a lot more realistic.

Image Credits: Epic

Extra things

Some of my favorite reads from our Extra Crunch subscription service this week:

2 years in, Extra Crunch is helping readers build and grow companies around the world
“Remote-first startups were still controversial in Silicon Valley when we launched Extra Crunch two years ago today. Back then, if you can recall, the rest of the world was not even sure how all those unicorns were going to do on the public markets. Today, Silicon Valley resides on the cloud and is publicly traded. We’ve covered the stunning changes, and as we help founders navigate the path from idea to first check to IPO, we also tripled the number of Extra Crunch members.” More

Best practices for Zoom board meetings at early-stage startups
“Are your meetings organized? Do people talk over one another? Do you usually run over time? Are you giving people time to digest information? As we move into 2021 and Q1 meetings are being put onto calendars, take some time to modernize how you conduct your board meetings.” More

Coupang files for Mega US IPO
“This afternoon, let’s dig into the company’s historical growth, its improving cash flow and its narrowing losses. Coupang’s debut will create a splash when it lands, so we owe it to ourselves to grok its numbers. And as there are other e-commerce brands with a delivery function waiting in the wings to go public — Instacart comes to mind — how Coupang fares in its IPO matters for a good number of domestic startups and unicorns.” More