7 ms·

Say they get their cartel, and negotiate a link tax of a penny per link or whatever. How does that play out? Will Google and Facebook drop news altogether? H

by _rpd 7y ago

Say they get their cartel, and negotiate a link tax of a penny per link or whatever. How does that play out? Will Google and Facebook drop news altogether? How much would that harm them? Do they just do a deal with Reuters and AP? Say they drop news altogether. Does that just boost the popularity of aggregators like reddit with less than a billion monthly active users? Does it really change anything for the newspapers?

oneplane 7y ago
It's probably more likely that at such a scale, setting up your own reporter network becomes much cheaper.
mises 7y ago
A fee for linking is a stupid idea. Sites pay for backlinks, not the other way around. Because they can then run their own ads and make money. Were I google, I would just blacklist these sites and they would die. Sites wouldn't have much recourse; good luck suing on antitrust grounds in such a situation.
- paxys 7y ago
  Forming a cartel and then crying antitrust would be amazingly ironic. Wouldn't put it past them though.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Sadly naked projection is /amazingly/ trendy and disturbingly successful.
Kalium 7y ago
> Say they get their cartel, and negotiate a link tax of a penny per link or whatever. How does that play out? We don't have to speculate! It happened in Spain. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9f7fmj/this_is_how_google_news_looks_like_from_spain/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/9f7fmj/this_is_how_... Google shut down their news product in Spain. Full stop.
- _rpd 7y ago
  Did Facebook do the same? Did they have to actively prohibit users posting links? It seems odious.