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Facebook and Instagram owner Meta threatens to cut off news in California
- jruohonen 3y agoI wonder why their PR department hasn't yet figured out anything beyond blackmailing? The same story has been going on throughout the globe for about ten years.
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- justsomehnguy 3y agoa) they can't? b) it works And it's not like PR are on their own there, somebody dictates what they would pursue.
- jruohonen 3y agoProbably (a), but the point being that I would have expected them to come up with some more constructive lobbying strategy.
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- blitzar 3y agoGo on do it, I dare you
- yieldcrv 3y agonice, I had considered a chrome extension to do that
- yieldcrv 3y ago> we will be forced to remove news from Facebook and Instagram, rather than pay into a slush fund a little gaslighty, since it’s a choice and not an operational issue to comply with an onerous regulation, it’s just a tax
- iinnPP 3y agoCan you not use gaslight in place of dishonest? I know it's popular, but the behavior really needs it's own word. Also, nothing about a corp stretching the truth is hard to understand for people, I hope.
- yieldcrv 3y agoI'm cautious of diluting that word too. in this case I'm looking at it more as a future distortion of reality where they continue to say they were forced to do something that they were not forced to do. all gaslighting is a subset of dishonesty.
- ipaddr 3y agoGaslighting is: "a specific type of manipulation where the manipulator is trying to get someone else (or a group of people) to question their own reality, memory or perceptions. " Is that what you intended to say? Is someone manipulating your memories? Are you questioning your own reality after parent's comments?
- yieldcrv 3y ago"they were running a business but they were forced to change that business due to onerous laws" is how I imagine the perception would be, but that perception is false because they only said they were forced but instead just chose to try to hold the democracy for ransom
- ano88888 3y agowhy couldn't they learn from history? communisum will only bring misery. Let the market decide. If people don't want to pay for news , then let them die. Eventually,there will be new media companies who learn to be lean and make content that is profitable.
- uninformed 3y agoThese people seem like they would have taxed smartphone companies so they can keep payphones alive. What is wrong with government in California? I don't understand how they can come to these conclusions after a lot of deliberation. It almost seems to me like they are only trying to find ways to line their pockets and then leave.
- ipaddr 3y agoGood idea. Having public payphones allows the poor and homeless to make calls
- safety1st 3y agoGenuinely don't understand Meta's angle here. "We will make ourselves less relevant and reduce our own revenue if you do this." OK go for it. Why does anyone care? Reactions to news and politics on Meta's platforms are generally crappy anyway. Who's crying out in fear at the loss of clickbait political outrage posts on Facebook? I (and HN) may not have the average person's view on this, I mean I'd love to see less news on Facebook. So I'm biased here. But the average person probably just doesn't care whether there's news on Facebook. If they want news and it disappears from FB, they will get it somewhere else. There's no shortage of recycled news posts on the 'net.
- ssss11 3y agoMaybe they think they’re so big and important that their bluff can’t be called. That would make sense.
- throwaway14356 3y agothe design goal is to keep humans on the platform. If they can find an excuse to remove the exits they will go for it.
- jsnell 3y agoThe angle is presumably that links to news articles don't actually generate significant value (whether revenue or "relevance") for Meta; it just creates massive amounts of free traffic for the media companies. Paying for something that generates no value is a bad deal. Why is it surprising that they're not planning on doing that? I'm sure they've run A/B tests on this in other places, and have a good idea on just how unimportant news articles are to them. If it turns out that California is different, and users and advertisers start leaving in droves, it'll be easy enough for them to reverse course.
- safety1st 3y agoThat still sounds like an angle that no one outside of Criminal Meta would give a shit about, so why would they make it public
- jacknews 3y agofacebook "news", lol. This would actually benefit California IMHO.
- crazy_nauts 3y agoWatch and see local news outlets migrate to twitter and use the subscription functionality to generate income.
- disgruntledphd2 3y agoTwitter has like a tenth of FB's users, in case you weren't aware.
- bigbillheck 3y agoWhy would any organization migrate to twitter in 2023?
- andrewstuart 3y agoOT but the Meta company name change stands out like a sore thumb after the Metaverse project failure.
- defrost 3y ago> They aren't empty threats; Facebook briefly blocked news articles in Australia over a similar measure that required tech companies to pay publishers for news content. Google said it would pull its search engine from the country before a compromise was struck. . . . and then they caved and paid Australian publishers in the face of typically Australian "don't let the door hit you on the way out" response.
- agentgumshoe 3y agoNot quite, the government introduced laws to force them to pay, a perhaps even better call of their bluff, much as it was really a bit of a silly law.
- bastard_op 3y agoOh no, no more manipulative fake news? What will people do with themselves? Sadly these days people don't know real from fake, so they'll probably just go find a new source of bad information anyways, but anything that makes them stop using fakebook is good.
- noonething 3y agoDon't threaten me with a good time.
- LauraWife 3y ago[dead]