2 ms·

Right but we're talking about news, where that isn't the case. I open Google news and I see a list of headlines. I click one one and go to the full article. I

Right but we're talking about news, where that isn't the case. I open Google news and I see a list of headlines. I click one one and go to the full article. I mean, if you're arguing that news provides zero value beyond a headline, that's certainly an indictment, but not of Google and facebook. Extending this, any aggregator would need to pay to link to things. Hackernews included. It's the link-tax all over again.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.) Is Google News ripping off the monetizeable property of every news site's homepage for zero cost? Yes. Sure, it may not present the full text of every article, but you've stolen the front page of every newspaper, at minimum. It is the link-tax "all over again"... because it's still what needs to happen. (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper site tax.) The problem is Google is so immense, and so powerful, it is able to obliterate any one nation's attempts to do this. We actually need a unified front of governments stating that Google and Facebook need to pay for the content they scrape, or go out of business. And it probably won't be successful until a large enough contingent of governments can do it at once. (This is why the EU as a whole has generally been successful whereas attempts at regulation from France or Spain independently have failed.)
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.) For me the answer is, either I get a headline that I don't care about, or I read at least some of the article. > (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper site tax.) It's absolutely a link tax and not a scraping tax. A scraping tax would apply to anyone scraping the site. But the link tax proposals don't apply to people scraping the site, they only apply to sites linking. Why? Because if I go and scrape CNN.com, they just block me. But if Google does it, they don't want to block the scraping, because the net value of the scraping is nonzero, but they want to be paid anyway. You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay me!" "Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep doing the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero sense. And "scraping" doesn't even apply at all to Facebook's case, where if I post a link to CNN on facebook, now Facebook owes CNN money. WHAT?!? It's literally a cost on links. It's antithetical to the internet. But you're right, it's not a link tax. It's more akin to link-licensing. Which should sound even scarier.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    > You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay me!" "Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep doing the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero sense. But that is the level of craziness we are under in the Google regime: Accept Google's terms or go out of business. That's the whole problem. Google has infinite negotiating power. The counter to that does indeed sound insane, because where we already are is insane. Yes, Australia is giving news companies a loaded gun, but it's because Google already has a boot to their neck, and they're barely still conscious. Where we are right now is really, really bad. Tech companies are bleeding journalism dry. And frankly, Google and Facebook can afford this. Tech companies have so much spare cash they don't know what to do with it, while everyone else is struggling to survive. Expect laws to feel one-sided against you for a long time. Let's call it a wealth redistribution. Imagine how much quality investigative journalism could've been funded with just the money Google spent developing messaging apps.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      You can dislike google and facebook, and feel that they need to be regulated, and still not support objectively bad laws. > Imagine how much quality investigative journalism could've been funded with just the money Google spent developing messaging apps. If you want to tax big tech companies because you feel the end result of doing so is good, then do that. Tax them. Don't create some hairbrained scheme to allow a media conglomerate to extort them. Especially when it won't actually help investigative journalism. The law is crafted to support an entrenched tabloid, not local and investigative journalism, which is what's suffering the most. This law funnels money from tech companies to rupert murdoch. That's not a win. The fox news guy doesn't need a bailout, he's doing okay on his own. > Accept Google's terms or go out of business. What are these "terms"? Aa far as I can tell they're "get traffic for free". What am I missing? Your counter seems to be that Google posts the headline so that, you know, you can pick what to click, and that somehow having the headline means that I won't click on the link. I don't get it.
      - ocdtrekkie 6y ago

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.) Is Google News ripping off the monetizeable property of every news site's homepage for zero cost? Yes. Sure, it may not present the full text of every article, but you've stolen the front page of every newspaper, at minimum. It is the link-tax "all over again"... because it's still what needs to happen. (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper site tax.) The problem is Google is so immense, and so powerful, it is able to obliterate any one nation's attempts to do this. We actually need a unified front of governments stating that Google and Facebook need to pay for the content they scrape, or go out of business. And it probably won't be successful until a large enough contingent of governments can do it at once. (This is why the EU as a whole has generally been successful whereas attempts at regulation from France or Spain independently have failed.)

joshuamorton 6y ago
> Realistically? What percentage of news do you read the in-depth article, versus the headline, picture, and two-sentence-blurb that tells you the main point? And the front page of a news site, say, cnn.com, is it monetized with ads? (It is. Even with all my blockers I see a LendingTree ad right now.) For me the answer is, either I get a headline that I don't care about, or I read at least some of the article. > (It's not really a link tax, but branding from lobbyists paid by Google's public policy team were very successful branding it as such. It's a scraper site tax.) It's absolutely a link tax and not a scraping tax. A scraping tax would apply to anyone scraping the site. But the link tax proposals don't apply to people scraping the site, they only apply to sites linking. Why? Because if I go and scrape CNN.com, they just block me. But if Google does it, they don't want to block the scraping, because the net value of the scraping is nonzero, but they want to be paid anyway. You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay me!" "Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep doing the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero sense. And "scraping" doesn't even apply at all to Facebook's case, where if I post a link to CNN on facebook, now Facebook owes CNN money. WHAT?!? It's literally a cost on links. It's antithetical to the internet. But you're right, it's not a link tax. It's more akin to link-licensing. Which should sound even scarier.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  > You can't have it both ways. "Pay me for this." "No." "I'll make you pay me!" "Ok then I'll stop." "No don't stop that's even worse. Pay me and keep doing the thing!" That's the conversation happening, and it makes zero sense. But that is the level of craziness we are under in the Google regime: Accept Google's terms or go out of business. That's the whole problem. Google has infinite negotiating power. The counter to that does indeed sound insane, because where we already are is insane. Yes, Australia is giving news companies a loaded gun, but it's because Google already has a boot to their neck, and they're barely still conscious. Where we are right now is really, really bad. Tech companies are bleeding journalism dry. And frankly, Google and Facebook can afford this. Tech companies have so much spare cash they don't know what to do with it, while everyone else is struggling to survive. Expect laws to feel one-sided against you for a long time. Let's call it a wealth redistribution. Imagine how much quality investigative journalism could've been funded with just the money Google spent developing messaging apps.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    You can dislike google and facebook, and feel that they need to be regulated, and still not support objectively bad laws. > Imagine how much quality investigative journalism could've been funded with just the money Google spent developing messaging apps. If you want to tax big tech companies because you feel the end result of doing so is good, then do that. Tax them. Don't create some hairbrained scheme to allow a media conglomerate to extort them. Especially when it won't actually help investigative journalism. The law is crafted to support an entrenched tabloid, not local and investigative journalism, which is what's suffering the most. This law funnels money from tech companies to rupert murdoch. That's not a win. The fox news guy doesn't need a bailout, he's doing okay on his own. > Accept Google's terms or go out of business. What are these "terms"? Aa far as I can tell they're "get traffic for free". What am I missing? Your counter seems to be that Google posts the headline so that, you know, you can pick what to click, and that somehow having the headline means that I won't click on the link. I don't get it.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago