Is social media at a tipping point?

Today we’re looking at the market environment for Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube etc… their costs are going to far outpace what their revenues will be. Are they on their way up, or on their way down?

• EU copyright laws affecting business models
• Proposal for online forums to be banned
• The difference between a ‘platform’ and a ‘publisher’ and how the law treats each of those definitions

Facebook is down 30% – and have advised that revenues would continue to slow down and its costs rise.

1. Market cap almost half of Australia’s GDP (1.2tr USD)
2. Loss equals the total GDP of Kuwait – some $120.3 billion in 2017 last year
3. Indeed, over the last three months alone insiders – including Zuckerberg – have sold off $3.8 billion worth of stock in the company.
4. Earnings per share (EPS) actually were a little ahead of forecast at $1.74 versus $1.72 that had been projected. And, revenues were only a tad shy at $13.23 billion compared to the $13.36 billion that had been expected.
5. Trend analysis – middle of a very wide and falling trend in the short term with a further fall within the trend is signalled.
   18. Stock is expected to fall -18.53% during the next 3 months and, with 90% probability hold a price between $120.68 and $156.81

Three risks for social platforms – FB, Twitter, YouTube (owned by Google)

EU Copyright changes – Article 11 (link tax) & 13 (meme ban)

1. Copyright directive – potential memes banned and platforms will need to pay publishers to link to their websites
2. The European Parliament has voted in favour of a controversial new copyright directive that could force tech giants to do much more to stop the spread of copyrighted material on their platforms.
   1. designed to update existing copyright laws for the internet age
3. Directive on Copyright places more responsibility on websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to make sure that copyrighted materially isn’t being shared on their platforms.
   1. Until now, the onus has mostly been on the copyright holders to notify the platforms
4. The article intends to get news aggregator sites, such as Google News, to pay publishers for using snippets of their articles on their platforms.
   1. Legislation: “may obtain fair and proportionate remuneration for the digital use of their press publications by information society service providers”

Nobody knows how these will work – The EU politicians voting on this haven’t even read it. They have their assistants read it and they tell them how to vote.

1. The Directive does contain an exemption for “legitimate private and non-commercial use of press publications by individual users,”
   1. this is open to interpretation – someone with a huge following on social media, who posts adverts to that audience, a “private and non-commercial” entity
2. Article 12a might stop anyone who isn’t the official organiser of a sports match from posting any videos or photos
   1. could put a stop to viral sports GIFs and might even stop people who attended matches from posting photos to social media
   2. all of this depends on how the directive is interpreted by member states when they make it into law

UK – Online Hate Bill

1. Want to ban private chats and forums on FB and other social media sites
   1. All that it will do is make hate filled groups go underground and punish those who are part of funny cat meme groups
2. Irony is that there is no public forum for their policies
   1. They are allowed to meet in private and make decisions that affect our lives

Platform vs Publisher

1. Platforms are not responsible for content uploaded
   1. As Facebook does control and edit content, they run the risk of losing platform status – and can be sued for content
2. Publishers are liable