Australia stepped first into the ring in an attempt to show that governments have more power than social media giants like Facebook. A proposed AU law would force FB to pay news publishers for displaying their content and it promptly responded in what one minister described as arrogant petulance by imposing a news blackout, including helpful health and charity sites. In the US Sen. Mark Warner called the move “an unacceptable bullying tactic that only underscores concerns with their market dominance.” It could be damaging for Facebook as it faces increasing scrutiny from lawmakers over both antitrust allegations and how it handles user content.
For those wanting a helpful precis with a chuckle see Marina Hyde: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/19/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-news-australia-power
She writes: ‘The Facebook boss is —- the world’s most powerful oligarch, selling the lives of 2.7 billion monthly active users to advertisers, and modifying the behaviour of those users with a business model that deliberately amplifies incendiary, nasty, and frequently fake and dangerous things. —– Forget post-truth. Mark’s basically post-metaphor.’ She describes the AU spat as a ‘heart warming generational fight between billionaires” suggesting Rupert Murdoch “effectively instructed the Australian government to shake down the tech firms.” And more.
A fight between Zuck and Foxy Murdoch – shut the door and let them destroy each other. But they won’t.
For sure Zuckerburg and Australia don’t sit comfortably together – Z with Mars, Moon, Saturn and Pluto in Scorpio and a Taurus Sun Venus in contrast with Au’s four Sagittarius planets and rigidly traditional Sun Saturn in Capricorn. Mind you PM Scott Morrison doesn’t fit AU either with his Taurus Sun Venus opposition Neptune in Scorpio square Jupiter in Leo.
Zuckerburg is being rattled this year with the tr Uranus square tr Saturn hitting on his 2nd house (verified birth time being accurate) financial Saturn, and worse in 2022 since his Moon Mars and Venus will be shaken up. Even his unbudgeable Fixed planets will have to shift ground.
But there’s nothing to suggest FB is sagging, far from it. The IPO chart has Sun Jupiter in Taurus getting a success and money uplift from tr Pluto until 2024.
Add On: Zuckerburg’s hero and model is evidently the Roman Emperor Augustus.
Augustus, born 23 September 63 BC JC, laid the foundations of a regime that lasted for nearly fifteen hundred years and many consider him to be Rome’s greatest emperor. But the historian Tacitus wrote that Augustus had cunningly subverted Republican Rome into a position of slavery. He was ruthless, cruel, and ambitious for himself. While fighting for dominance, he paid little attention to legality or to the normal civilities of political life. He was devious, untrustworthy, and bloodthirsty. But once he had established his authority, he governed justly, generally allowed freedom of speech, and promoted the rule of law.
Zuckerburg said in a New Yorker interview headlined “Can Mark Zuckerberg fix Facebook before it breaks democracy?”:
“Basically, through a really harsh approach, he established 200 years of world peace. What are the trade-offs in that? On the one hand, world peace is a long-term goal that people talk about today …” [On the other hand] “that didn’t come for free, and he had to do certain things”.
Augustus was a Sun Virgo, but had the harsh Fixed Mars Saturn conjunction of Z’s chart but in his case in Taurus rather than Scorpio which is much the same. A’s Mars Saturn is conjunct his natal North Node tying him into the zeitgeist and interestingly Z’s power-hungry Pluto is conjunct A’s South Node, hooking him into A’s baser motives. Z’s North Node is conjunct A’s Pluto in Gemini for another control-freak link up. Both charts have stratospheric dreams of achievement with wide Jupiter Neptune in Cardinal signs.
Kind of figures why Zuckerburg would be interested in Augustus though also scary given his outreach via FB at the moment.
Z’s dead eyes are something to do with that Scorpio Moon, Mars, Saturn opposition Venus -his mother was a psychiatrist before the kids arrived and he may have had a tricky birth or legacy from previous generations which won’t be known without an accurate birth time.
PS. I would have to confess a degree of perplexity since my belated excursion onto FB doesn’t extend to news or indeed to rancid head-twisting conspiracy junk. Why would anyone use FB as a news source? Any mention I make of news sources I tend to think of as free advertising for them.