Facebook's vice president of global news partnerships Campbell Brown

Facebook snubs Australia This morning Facebook promised/threatened to stop Australian users from sharing news articles on the platform if the government passes a code of conduct forcing tech giants to pay news publishers. And, perhaps fittingly, Australia media outlets were the last to get the story.

Instead, The New York Times got the drop, while NBC got a sit-down interview with Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president of global news partnerships. Brown also spoke to Bloomberg.

Australia, on the other hand, got the news through a blog post. No local journalists seem to have been briefed, and Facebook has reportedly said it will not be doing any interviews with Australian outlets.

So while the shakedown may be targeted at the Australian government, their media strategy suggests they’re thinking a lot bigger.

Lifters and leaners Just weeks before JobKeeper payments are set to fall, Labor MP Andrew Leigh has hit out at big firms who are using the scheme while giving CEOs huge bonuses.

In a fiery speech in the House of Representatives, Leigh named and shamed some of the worst offenders.

Footwear retailer Accent Group got $13 million in JobKeeper subsidies and paid CEO Daniel Agostinelli a $1.2 million bonus. 

IDP Education boss Andrew Barkla, Australia’s highest paid CEO last year, got a $600,000 bonus while his firm raked in $4 million in JobKeeper.

Star Casino got a whopping $64 million, and duly gave CEO Matt Bekier an $800,000 equity bonus.

Clinton Feuerherdt of SeaLink got $500,000, as the company received $8 million.

Nick Scali furniture got $4 million, and will give out $2 million in dividends to the Scali family.

Shoppies knocked off their perch Tantex, one of McDonalds’ biggest franchisees, will be forced to pay compensation after threatening employees for taking bathroom breaks. But what’s interesting is Tantex’s case was taken up by the Retail and Fast Food Workers’ Union (RAFFWU), and not the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), who’ve traditionally represented workers in the sector.

The RAFFWU has only been around four years, and emerged out of dissatisfaction with the SDA, who critics said were too busy cosying up to employers like McDonalds and prosecuting conservative moral crusades than fighting for workers, who were being sold out by bad deals. And if the Tantex case is anything to go by, the RAFFWU is really picking up the slack.

Dear Leader Even by The Australian’s usually sycophantic standards, this is pretty cringe:

Cain tweets from beyond the grave On July 30, Herman Cain, a one-time Republican presidential candidate, died of COVID-related complications. Two weeks later, his ghost started tweeting.

Since then, the account, which now calls itself “The Cain Gang” (only marginally less spooky) has been tweeting out a storm of pro-Trump content. It’s also safe to say that Cain’s missives from the great beyond have taken on a dark kind of irony.