6 ms·

Google, Meta executives push back against Canada online news bill

35 points by nickthegreek 4y ago

kennywinker 4y ago
Based on the FUD being pushed about bill C-11, i’d take anything the potential targets of this bill say about what it would do with a huge grain of salt.
- jsnell 4y ago
  That's such a vague and allegation that it can't be disproven, or even meaningfully discussed. If you had a specific example of a claim they're making that's incorrect, misleading, or you even think might be untrue I assume you'd have given it?
  - byteknight 4y ago
    It apparently makes the online streaming companies have to invest in candadian programming also.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Maybe explain what that FUD is? As it has been explained, it sounds like a big concern is that it requires them to boost Canadian/local content in their algorithms, and not just in a "here's a list of Canadian content", but right alongside other recommended videos.
  - 908B64B197 4y ago
    The most interesting thing is what's defined as "Canadian Content". Most of what Celine Dion produced in her career doesn't fit the government approved list of cultural content, so is considered foreign music. But some recordings from Elvis do count because he recorded them on Canadian soil during a tour.
    - hbn 4y ago
      The issue is "making it" in Canada means moving to the US where there's real opportunity. Anyone who's really good is just kneecapping themselves by staying in the country. So most of our creative output is mediocre, especially when the only stuff that gets funded through CBC and whatnot is based entirely on identity politics with no consideration of whether or not the people involved have proven they can make anything good.
      - red-iron-pine 4y ago
        > especially when the only stuff that gets funded through CBC and whatnot is based entirely on identity politics with no consideration of whether or not the people involved have proven they can make anything good this is basically the entirety of Canadian culture at this point. there isn't anything meaningfully different from the US, so they have to double down on 'the woke' to try to differentiate. the result is a few gems, a lot of dross, and non-stop virtue signaling.
        908B64B197 4y ago
        Friend of mine here in the bay area is French Canadian and his teenagers (both full Americans born here) both watch and follow French Canadians on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. He explained to me that under Canadian law, absolutely none of that is Canadian Content or Culture. No subsidies, no quotas. Even a Denis Villeneuve movie isn't either. He explained to me that to watch original content in French he has to VPN in Canada to be allowed to watch content that's only produced in Canada for French Canadians; they won't even make the smallest attempt at exporting it. Honestly the whole concept, to me, is bizarre.
        hbn 4y ago
        I hate to even say it cause the "x has gone woke" crowd is so loud and annoying these days, but it's just so obvious that basically everything that comes out of CBC, or even just our politicians getting on TV and supposedly doing a serious political statement, is so unserious and feels like it's made by aliens. We're so obsessed with not being "stupid Americans" that we have no identity. It's pathetic and embarrassing.
- chongli 4y ago
  No. Speaking as a Canadian, it’s a garbage protectionist bill. News in Canada is owned by the largest media companies (Rogers, Bell Canada, and the federal government). This bill would have Meta paying money to news sites for links the news sites themselves post on Facebook! It’s completely backwards! The news sites should be paying Facebook to advertise on their platform! Not that I’m a big fan of Facebook or anything. But it’s totally understandable to me that Facebook would ban all links to Canadian news sites if this bill passes. It represents unlimited liability for them!
  - thomasahle 4y ago
    I suppose both Facebook and the news sites benefit from the linking. The news site benefits from the traffic and Facebook for having interesting content to show their users. This law seems more about negotiating how much of the pie each part gets.
    - chongli 4y ago
      Facebook doesn't really have any shortage of content to show to users though. Users generate their own content and the feed algorithm scoops it up and displays it. If Facebook banned all news links tomorrow most users wouldn't notice but the news sites definitely would!
      - thomasahle 4y ago
        Facebook has been suffering from users leaving the platform for a while. And even if removing news leads to just a 1% drop in user time spent on the platform, it's a lot of money lost. Of course removing news could also make it a nicer place to be, so maybe it'll increase user engagement. Who knows.
        chongli 4y ago
        I'm biased. I'm the type of person who unfollows their friends for posting too much news/politics/outrage material. I've curated my Facebook feed to be mostly about things I'm interested in; hobbies and the like. I would actually celebrate if Facebook blocked all news. I also pretty thoroughly detest most of the news media in Canada. It's become far too politicized, and it strictly presents one side of the political spectrum but not in a good way. It tries to take some pretty radical ideas and normalize them, trying to pass them off as mainstream. It also happens to be pretty uncritical of the big media corporations in Canada, not wanting to bite the hand that feeds it. It doesn't seem like a coincidence that Canadians pay some of the highest rates in the world for wireless and internet access.
- evandale 4y ago
  I'm blown away that I'm reading opponents to C-11 are using FUD on hackernews of all places. The warnings about C-11 are not because of FUD.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
soderfoo 4y ago
> "All we're asking the tech giants like Facebook and Google to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work," Can anyone help me understand this statement? Not sure if it's post lunch lethargy or need for caffeine, but I'm not grasping this argument.
- ink_13 4y ago
  Agreed, this take is totally backwards. It is the news companies that benefit from having their material on Facebook/Google/etc. The news could disappear from those platforms and they'd be fine. The real problem seems to be that monetizing news content to the point that it can support large, effective organizations has become quite difficult: print ads are basically dead, inserting ads into online content doesn't seem to be working that well, and getting people to pay you directly (i.e., subscriptions) is more of a challenge than ever. Smaller boutique outlets like podcasts or email newsletters (chiefly Substack) have been effective in some cases, but that's not the kind of thing that can fund foreign bureaus or longform investigative journalism.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  Google, Meta, and others, used to (not sure if this is ongoing) fetch news from several outlets and post the headlines and summaries on their own websites, without paying for it. Essentially, they would treat them as creators, but would pay them nothing. Because people usually don't stop to read articles in full, this would also not drive any traffic to the original publishers' websites.
  - 908B64B197 4y ago
    > Because people usually don't stop to read articles in full, this would also not drive any traffic to the original publishers' websites. Maybe the fix isn't to go hustle some rent out of "evil foreign tech giants" but simply to... write articles people want to read!
    - manuelabeledo 4y ago
      There are several issues with that approach. First, it doesn't address the problem, because the problem is that people don't want to read articles. It happens everywhere, even in HN you could often see people commenting on headlines instead of articles. Second, news are supposed to be informative, not appealing. Writing just the things people want to see is how tabloids work. Third, you got it backwards. Google is feeding from the news publishers, not the other way around. Without these, Google would have no news contents. In contrast, other sites like YouTube or Instagram actually host and pay for content. In essence, Google is saying that they don't need to pay for news content they post in their website, but they will pay for it if it is posted as a video.
manuelabeledo 4y ago
I want to note that, independently of what this bill says, publishers have never complained about their treatment in other platforms owned by either of these two companies, such as YouTube. Reason being, they get paid for publishing content, and Google and Meta make money off it. Regardless of what most people believe about social networks and search engines "helping" these media outlets be known, reality is that they don't do it from the kindness of their hearts. Google and Meta profit from linking and publishing these contents. Large companies like to frame this kind of stuff as a slippery slope and an anti-consumer move, because it is a more sympathetic approach than just saying "we want to keep making money and not spending a dime". And I get it, news outlets also want money. But again, this is not an apocalyptic scenario where consumers get screwed over news corporations greed, it is just resistance from even larger corporations to pay a share of their profits to content creators.
- dmix 4y ago
  > it is just resistance from even larger corporations to pay a share of their profits to content creators. It's also largely about who has pull in government to reroute $$ from one corporation to another. CBC type outlets have plenty of backers in Canadian gov that pull this sort of thing off. Similar to the Canadian film industry being propped up by government. The costs to consumers isn't always just they have to pay more or not. It's about what content they won't get (legal) access to. Similar to the difference between chilling speech vs censorship. There's so many small products/services you don't get as Canadians, that are freely available in the US and other countries, often for tenuous long-forgotten reasons.
- duringmath 4y ago
  Unlike hosting content on third party platforms publishers get to make money off the traffic social media/search platforms send their way this bill is about having it both ways and bastardizing web linking while they're at it.
  - manuelabeledo 4y ago
    That's not how it works. Publishers' relevance on, say, Google, relies partly on sponsored contents. They pay Google for this. Publisher' income online is driven, by a very large margin, by advertisers. The largest online advertisement platforms are owned by both Facebook and Google. They essentially get a 68% cut from either of them. 32% goes to Facebook/Google. Publishers relying on Google for content search get 51% of the ad revenue generated by it. 49% goes to Google. One can see why Google and Facebook are in business with media publishers. Now, Google News (the app) has 142 million active users. Google does not generate any of the content, and since most users only read headlines and skip the contents [0], this means that Google is making a boatload of money off contents they don't own, for people who aren't interested in going to the source. That is the problem here. And if Google or Meta were honest about it, they would just remove all the news links and shut down their news sites. Instead, they make a fuss about how unjust is for users to not have access to news through their platforms, and how news outlets benefit from their augmented outreach, like neither Meta nor Google are making money off it. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/19/americans-read-headlines-and-not-much-else/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/19/am...
GeekyBear 4y ago
How about instead of scraping other people's headline and creating an automated summary of their content, you hire someone to write a headline and summary in their own words and then provide links to news outlets discussing that story? Man Bites Dog: NY Times, CBC, Toronto Star, National Post As long as you aren't borrowing their content, including their headline, I don't see that they have any basis for a complaint. My guess would be that Google and Meta simply don't want to pay a human being when an algorithm doesn't draw a salary.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  Sometimes is even worse. Meta literally have unpaid people posting news and articles: their users.

35 points by nickthegreek 4y ago

Based on the FUD being pushed about bill C-11, i’d take anything the potential targets of this bill say about what it would do with a huge grain of salt.

jsnell 4y ago
That's such a vague and allegation that it can't be disproven, or even meaningfully discussed. If you had a specific example of a claim they're making that's incorrect, misleading, or you even think might be untrue I assume you'd have given it?
- byteknight 4y ago
  It apparently makes the online streaming companies have to invest in candadian programming also.
judge2020 4y ago
Maybe explain what that FUD is? As it has been explained, it sounds like a big concern is that it requires them to boost Canadian/local content in their algorithms, and not just in a "here's a list of Canadian content", but right alongside other recommended videos.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  The most interesting thing is what's defined as "Canadian Content". Most of what Celine Dion produced in her career doesn't fit the government approved list of cultural content, so is considered foreign music. But some recordings from Elvis do count because he recorded them on Canadian soil during a tour.
  - hbn 4y ago
    The issue is "making it" in Canada means moving to the US where there's real opportunity. Anyone who's really good is just kneecapping themselves by staying in the country. So most of our creative output is mediocre, especially when the only stuff that gets funded through CBC and whatnot is based entirely on identity politics with no consideration of whether or not the people involved have proven they can make anything good.
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      > especially when the only stuff that gets funded through CBC and whatnot is based entirely on identity politics with no consideration of whether or not the people involved have proven they can make anything good this is basically the entirety of Canadian culture at this point. there isn't anything meaningfully different from the US, so they have to double down on 'the woke' to try to differentiate. the result is a few gems, a lot of dross, and non-stop virtue signaling.
      - 908B64B197 4y ago
        Friend of mine here in the bay area is French Canadian and his teenagers (both full Americans born here) both watch and follow French Canadians on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. He explained to me that under Canadian law, absolutely none of that is Canadian Content or Culture. No subsidies, no quotas. Even a Denis Villeneuve movie isn't either. He explained to me that to watch original content in French he has to VPN in Canada to be allowed to watch content that's only produced in Canada for French Canadians; they won't even make the smallest attempt at exporting it. Honestly the whole concept, to me, is bizarre.
      - hbn 4y ago
        I hate to even say it cause the "x has gone woke" crowd is so loud and annoying these days, but it's just so obvious that basically everything that comes out of CBC, or even just our politicians getting on TV and supposedly doing a serious political statement, is so unserious and feels like it's made by aliens. We're so obsessed with not being "stupid Americans" that we have no identity. It's pathetic and embarrassing.
chongli 4y ago
No. Speaking as a Canadian, it’s a garbage protectionist bill. News in Canada is owned by the largest media companies (Rogers, Bell Canada, and the federal government). This bill would have Meta paying money to news sites for links the news sites themselves post on Facebook! It’s completely backwards! The news sites should be paying Facebook to advertise on their platform! Not that I’m a big fan of Facebook or anything. But it’s totally understandable to me that Facebook would ban all links to Canadian news sites if this bill passes. It represents unlimited liability for them!
- thomasahle 4y ago
  I suppose both Facebook and the news sites benefit from the linking. The news site benefits from the traffic and Facebook for having interesting content to show their users. This law seems more about negotiating how much of the pie each part gets.
  - chongli 4y ago
    Facebook doesn't really have any shortage of content to show to users though. Users generate their own content and the feed algorithm scoops it up and displays it. If Facebook banned all news links tomorrow most users wouldn't notice but the news sites definitely would!
    - thomasahle 4y ago
      Facebook has been suffering from users leaving the platform for a while. And even if removing news leads to just a 1% drop in user time spent on the platform, it's a lot of money lost. Of course removing news could also make it a nicer place to be, so maybe it'll increase user engagement. Who knows.
      - chongli 4y ago
        I'm biased. I'm the type of person who unfollows their friends for posting too much news/politics/outrage material. I've curated my Facebook feed to be mostly about things I'm interested in; hobbies and the like. I would actually celebrate if Facebook blocked all news. I also pretty thoroughly detest most of the news media in Canada. It's become far too politicized, and it strictly presents one side of the political spectrum but not in a good way. It tries to take some pretty radical ideas and normalize them, trying to pass them off as mainstream. It also happens to be pretty uncritical of the big media corporations in Canada, not wanting to bite the hand that feeds it. It doesn't seem like a coincidence that Canadians pay some of the highest rates in the world for wireless and internet access.
evandale 4y ago
I'm blown away that I'm reading opponents to C-11 are using FUD on hackernews of all places. The warnings about C-11 are not because of FUD.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

soderfoo 4y ago

> "All we're asking the tech giants like Facebook and Google to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work," Can anyone help me understand this statement? Not sure if it's post lunch lethargy or need for caffeine, but I'm not grasping this argument.

ink_13 4y ago
Agreed, this take is totally backwards. It is the news companies that benefit from having their material on Facebook/Google/etc. The news could disappear from those platforms and they'd be fine. The real problem seems to be that monetizing news content to the point that it can support large, effective organizations has become quite difficult: print ads are basically dead, inserting ads into online content doesn't seem to be working that well, and getting people to pay you directly (i.e., subscriptions) is more of a challenge than ever. Smaller boutique outlets like podcasts or email newsletters (chiefly Substack) have been effective in some cases, but that's not the kind of thing that can fund foreign bureaus or longform investigative journalism.
manuelabeledo 4y ago
Google, Meta, and others, used to (not sure if this is ongoing) fetch news from several outlets and post the headlines and summaries on their own websites, without paying for it. Essentially, they would treat them as creators, but would pay them nothing. Because people usually don't stop to read articles in full, this would also not drive any traffic to the original publishers' websites.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  > Because people usually don't stop to read articles in full, this would also not drive any traffic to the original publishers' websites. Maybe the fix isn't to go hustle some rent out of "evil foreign tech giants" but simply to... write articles people want to read!
  - manuelabeledo 4y ago
    There are several issues with that approach. First, it doesn't address the problem, because the problem is that people don't want to read articles. It happens everywhere, even in HN you could often see people commenting on headlines instead of articles. Second, news are supposed to be informative, not appealing. Writing just the things people want to see is how tabloids work. Third, you got it backwards. Google is feeding from the news publishers, not the other way around. Without these, Google would have no news contents. In contrast, other sites like YouTube or Instagram actually host and pay for content. In essence, Google is saying that they don't need to pay for news content they post in their website, but they will pay for it if it is posted as a video.

manuelabeledo 4y ago

I want to note that, independently of what this bill says, publishers have never complained about their treatment in other platforms owned by either of these two companies, such as YouTube. Reason being, they get paid for publishing content, and Google and Meta make money off it. Regardless of what most people believe about social networks and search engines "helping" these media outlets be known, reality is that they don't do it from the kindness of their hearts. Google and Meta profit from linking and publishing these contents. Large companies like to frame this kind of stuff as a slippery slope and an anti-consumer move, because it is a more sympathetic approach than just saying "we want to keep making money and not spending a dime". And I get it, news outlets also want money. But again, this is not an apocalyptic scenario where consumers get screwed over news corporations greed, it is just resistance from even larger corporations to pay a share of their profits to content creators.

dmix 4y ago
> it is just resistance from even larger corporations to pay a share of their profits to content creators. It's also largely about who has pull in government to reroute $$ from one corporation to another. CBC type outlets have plenty of backers in Canadian gov that pull this sort of thing off. Similar to the Canadian film industry being propped up by government. The costs to consumers isn't always just they have to pay more or not. It's about what content they won't get (legal) access to. Similar to the difference between chilling speech vs censorship. There's so many small products/services you don't get as Canadians, that are freely available in the US and other countries, often for tenuous long-forgotten reasons.
duringmath 4y ago
Unlike hosting content on third party platforms publishers get to make money off the traffic social media/search platforms send their way this bill is about having it both ways and bastardizing web linking while they're at it.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  That's not how it works. Publishers' relevance on, say, Google, relies partly on sponsored contents. They pay Google for this. Publisher' income online is driven, by a very large margin, by advertisers. The largest online advertisement platforms are owned by both Facebook and Google. They essentially get a 68% cut from either of them. 32% goes to Facebook/Google. Publishers relying on Google for content search get 51% of the ad revenue generated by it. 49% goes to Google. One can see why Google and Facebook are in business with media publishers. Now, Google News (the app) has 142 million active users. Google does not generate any of the content, and since most users only read headlines and skip the contents [0], this means that Google is making a boatload of money off contents they don't own, for people who aren't interested in going to the source. That is the problem here. And if Google or Meta were honest about it, they would just remove all the news links and shut down their news sites. Instead, they make a fuss about how unjust is for users to not have access to news through their platforms, and how news outlets benefit from their augmented outreach, like neither Meta nor Google are making money off it. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/19/americans-read-headlines-and-not-much-else/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/19/am...

GeekyBear 4y ago

How about instead of scraping other people's headline and creating an automated summary of their content, you hire someone to write a headline and summary in their own words and then provide links to news outlets discussing that story? Man Bites Dog: NY Times, CBC, Toronto Star, National Post As long as you aren't borrowing their content, including their headline, I don't see that they have any basis for a complaint. My guess would be that Google and Meta simply don't want to pay a human being when an algorithm doesn't draw a salary.

manuelabeledo 4y ago
Sometimes is even worse. Meta literally have unpaid people posting news and articles: their users.