7 ms·

Even though the specifics are not clear, we will (and should) be having more and more of these kinds of discussions going forward to avoid the monopoly created

Even though the specifics are not clear, we will (and should) be having more and more of these kinds of discussions going forward to avoid the monopoly created by the distribution reach of tech giants. It is in the interest of the tech companies themselves to come up with something reasonable, because the governments won't be able to, and whatever they come up with will likely be too complicated, mired in politics and too specific to each country. It is better if the tech companies can nip this in the bud even before it becomes too politicized. Google, Facebook and Amazon owe their power to being great at content distribution. And I believe that if they take care to compensate content creators fairly, these sorts of upheavals will be greatly reduced. I think YouTube does a fair job of this. Not perfect, but a better balance, and I believe even that is enough.

mehrdada 6y ago
How you dragged Amazon in the mix at the end is perplexing to me.
- SanchoPanda 6y ago
  Amazon's ad network is growing incredibly quickly, and op may be referring to the content against which these ads are placed.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
The problem here is a different one than people think it is. Once upon a time if you wanted to advertise you had to go to somebody with a centralized distribution operation. They had to have a printing press or a radio station. Then they would charge you a large pile of money and put your ad in front of thousands of people. This revenue was used to pay for news reporting. Today there are cat videos with millions of views. Advertisers who want to reach people in a particular demographic don't have to pay a premium to advertise in a publication whose readership skews towards that demographic, they can just advertise to the subset of the cat video viewers who happen to be in that demographic. There are more than enough cat videos and hot girls eating bananas on the internet to drive the cost of putting your ad in front of a person way down from where it was when you had to pay a newspaper or a TV station to do it. Meanwhile Google makes a lot of money because the cat owner doesn't have an ad network, but if they put Google ads on their cat video channel they can make $72/month, and then Google gets a cut, times a billion people. The news media assume that because they used to make a lot of money and now Google makes a lot of money, the money Google makes is mostly attributable to the work they do, but it isn't. It's mostly attributable to all the people posting videos of their cats and home improvement projects and college track meets and movie parodies and whatever else. Their problem is that the value of an ad impression has fallen dramatically because there is so much more competition. But that wasn't caused by Google and they can't solve it. Even if you took all the money Google makes from ads related to news reporting and gave it to the companies doing news reporting, it wouldn't be as much as they used to make when they had a de facto monopoly on advertising. And if you really want more of the money to go to the content creators, the best thing you could do is break up the ad networks (and prohibit them from ever buying each other again), so they would have more competition and move more of the margins to creators. But it still wouldn't be as much as they used to get.
- raz32dust 6y ago
  This is true. The monopoly IS the root cause. Everything else is just governments and people trying to interpret it in ways that benefit them and trying to fight it off in whatever way they can. If the tech companies want to maintain their monopolies, they will have to pay a social tax in some way or another - one of the good ways I think is to compensate creators very well. That way, they are still helping a lot of local businesses and people and will continue to have a lot of support. If they don't come up with something to generate a lot of goodwill, then governments will force them to pay in other way, and what governments will come up with will be a lot more complex and inefficient.

mehrdada 6y ago

How you dragged Amazon in the mix at the end is perplexing to me.

SanchoPanda 6y ago
Amazon's ad network is growing incredibly quickly, and op may be referring to the content against which these ads are placed.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

The problem here is a different one than people think it is. Once upon a time if you wanted to advertise you had to go to somebody with a centralized distribution operation. They had to have a printing press or a radio station. Then they would charge you a large pile of money and put your ad in front of thousands of people. This revenue was used to pay for news reporting. Today there are cat videos with millions of views. Advertisers who want to reach people in a particular demographic don't have to pay a premium to advertise in a publication whose readership skews towards that demographic, they can just advertise to the subset of the cat video viewers who happen to be in that demographic. There are more than enough cat videos and hot girls eating bananas on the internet to drive the cost of putting your ad in front of a person way down from where it was when you had to pay a newspaper or a TV station to do it. Meanwhile Google makes a lot of money because the cat owner doesn't have an ad network, but if they put Google ads on their cat video channel they can make $72/month, and then Google gets a cut, times a billion people. The news media assume that because they used to make a lot of money and now Google makes a lot of money, the money Google makes is mostly attributable to the work they do, but it isn't. It's mostly attributable to all the people posting videos of their cats and home improvement projects and college track meets and movie parodies and whatever else. Their problem is that the value of an ad impression has fallen dramatically because there is so much more competition. But that wasn't caused by Google and they can't solve it. Even if you took all the money Google makes from ads related to news reporting and gave it to the companies doing news reporting, it wouldn't be as much as they used to make when they had a de facto monopoly on advertising. And if you really want more of the money to go to the content creators, the best thing you could do is break up the ad networks (and prohibit them from ever buying each other again), so they would have more competition and move more of the margins to creators. But it still wouldn't be as much as they used to get.

raz32dust 6y ago
This is true. The monopoly IS the root cause. Everything else is just governments and people trying to interpret it in ways that benefit them and trying to fight it off in whatever way they can. If the tech companies want to maintain their monopolies, they will have to pay a social tax in some way or another - one of the good ways I think is to compensate creators very well. That way, they are still helping a lot of local businesses and people and will continue to have a lot of support. If they don't come up with something to generate a lot of goodwill, then governments will force them to pay in other way, and what governments will come up with will be a lot more complex and inefficient.