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My understanding of the core issue is people aren’t clicking through to read the article, but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline. Facebook get

My understanding of the core issue is people aren’t clicking through to read the article, but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline. Facebook gets ad views and user-generated content/comments, and the organization doing the reporting sees nothing of the economic value generated in this scenario. (Hacker News is specialized in audience and news orgs generally aren’t posting all their stories here) CBC tried to head this problem off by disabling comments on all their Facebook posts so people would comment on CBC.ca.

wvenable 3y ago
My issue with this, is this a problem that needs to be solved? Do we need to guarantee monetization of every human interaction? If my friend and I go a cafe, see a newspaper headline, and have a discussion about that headline without ever opening that newspaper should the cafe have to pay for that discussion? Why should any media adjacent interaction anywhere happen without payment? If the cafe is playing music, they're paying licence fees for that. Why not everything?
- doublebind 3y ago
  I believe the problem is that the situation you describe occurs on a much bigger scale. It’s no longer you and your friend in the cafe; it’s millions of people looking at the headline on the screen.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    The scale has always existed. Thousands of cafes filled with millions of people. Even on Facebook, if I comment on a headline it's still just me making that comment. I, singular, provide some value to Facebook by being there and no value to newspaper because I didn't click though. If Facebook didn't exist, the value I bring to the newspaper by not reading it is the same.
- arrosenberg 3y ago
  In your example the cafe isn't monetizing the fact that you view the headline and comment, which inherently increases the advertising value of the cafe (i.e. more people won't come to the cafe because of the headlines and their need to comment on it) and which captures significantly more value than everyone else involved. You just read the headline, a few people buy the paper and everyone is equitable and happy. If Meta wants to pay 100% tax on their ad revenues to fund journalism, all they have to do is say so.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    This theoretical cafe is monetizing the fact that people come and hang out and have discussions and order some coffee. The place is filled with games and magazines and newspapers that anyone can open a view the advertising within. But I never bother, I just read the headlines and discuss those without ever looking inside.
    - arrosenberg 3y ago
      > This theoretical cafe is monetizing the fact that people come and hang out and have discussions and order some coffee. Therein lies the difference. 1. People come and hang out - can't effectively do this on Meta sites, though their VR push seems aimed at trying to fulfill this need. I would also put "read the newspaper" under this category. 2. Have discussions - for varying definitions of "discussion", this is where Facebook is heavily monetized. 3. Order some coffee - again, can't effectively do that on any Meta sites. Given that parks exist without coffee shops, we can infer that 3 is what coffee shops are monetizing, while 1 and 2 act as an additional enticement. The newspapers suffer because, even though YOU may only comment on the headlines, there are plenty of people who go to the coffee shop and don't think twice about buying the paper to read or do the crossword puzzle. The newspaper is able to monetize 1 and 2 and the coffeeshop monetizes 3 - everyone is equitable and happy. On Facebook, Facebook monetizes 2 and claims (without much proof) that they are providing 1 as a service to customers. No coffee is ever served - everyone but Meta is unhappy.
      - wvenable 3y ago
- grf27 3y ago
  No, but if you're a government seeing your media industry shrinking because they can't make a profit to sustain themselves, meanwhile others are profiting off their work, then you want to try something, and I guess this is their attempt. One of the other solutions proposed was taxes on media aggregators. This is similar to the taxes on entertainment aggregators currently in place that pay into a fund that supports domestic entertainers. These approaches have lots of complications.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    The real threat to local news is national/international news. An organization selling a story to the entire anglosphere has an advantage over an organization trying to sell a story to just one town or country. Both stories cost about the same to write and distribute, but the story with [manufactured] international appeal has massively more earning potential. So newspapers with a focus on national news (NYTimes, WaPo) end up killing the local newspapers even in big cities like Chicago. And the same dynamic applies internationally; the organization which is best at manufacturing international interest for their stories will have an advantage over any organization that focuses on national news with national interest. If the intention is to get Canadians to focus more on local news, making Facebook pay to link to local news is completely backwards. Facebook will (and apparently has) simply transition to showing cheap international news. Instead, Canada should be making Facebook pay when linking to foreign news, or paying Facebook when linking to local news.
    - delfinom 3y ago
      I would argue many local papers could just be a monthly town newsletter. Lol.
  - wvenable 3y ago
    The real threat to local news is Craigslist and Facebook marketplace. Local newspapers were mostly funded by their classifieds section. The news is merely to bring eyeballs to those ads. When the market for classifieds disappeared, there was no longer any financial support for local news. You could even argue that newspapers were only viable businesses because they had a monopoly over the local distribution of information. It was never the news itself that was profitable but being the local gatekeeper of that news. The Internet destroyed that entirely.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  This is a perfect example of how people confuse causality and responsibility. They are not the same. Trying to monetize and compensate for every externality is absurd. If I make coffee at home that causes a coffee shop to lose out on Revenue. Surely I'm not responsible for paying the coffee shop for the Lost Revenue. If I do go to the coffee shop, should the coffee shop have to share their revenue with the car company because it gave me a reason to drive my car? In this case, social media makes money because people talk about news online instead of actually read it. This doesn't make social media companies responsible for the fact that no one wants to read a news article.
  - fireflash38 3y ago
    Your analogy is flawed. It's like someone consuming coffee but not wanting the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed it to be compensated.
    - telotortium 3y ago
      If the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed gave the beans away without asking for compensation because they hoped to obtain ad revenue, most people wouldn't go out of their way to pay the bean producers. Canadian news media (unlike the vast majority of US news media besides NPR and PBS) is very significantly government subsidized, so this bill is really a stealth tax on Meta and Google.
      - dopidopHN 3y ago
        At the end of the day, the question remains : do we want local news? Meta and Alphabet are not gonna run news room in Manitoba and Northern Ontario. If we don’t, fine. Local news can die and be replaced by influencer I guess ? Then if we do, who is paying for it. In your analogy, Meta & Alphabet are installing a patio in front of the coffee shops, and offer samples of the most popular latte of the day for free and you can get as many as you want.
        3y ago
- PhasmaFelis 3y ago
  > My issue with this, is this a problem that needs to be solved? Do we need to guarantee monetization of every human interaction? The failure of traditional news funding models, and their replacement with clickbait, has already caused devastating damage to...well, to society in general, honestly, but certainly to anyone trying to produce a balanced, informative news service. I can't blame publishers for trying to find something to keep them out of the Buzzfeed gutter. I don't think this idea actually helps at all. But I get why they're desperate.
throw0101c 3y ago
> […] but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline. People have been not-reading and commenting since the early days of Slashdot. See also Reddit and HN. :)
dmix 3y ago
Oh god, comment threads on news sites are some of the worst things on the internet. Never well designed, properly threaded, each requires a different login, etc. If that's the business they want to be in then they (and every other news site) completely sucks at it and there's a reason people want to talk on FB/Twitter instead beyond network effects.
mcpackieh 3y ago
> My understanding of the core issue is people aren’t clicking through to read the article, but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline. If this is the meat of the matter, then how does asking Facebook to pay for links/headlines address the problem? Whether or not facebook pays for linking to news stories, the discussion on facebook remains vapid and the public isn't properly informed. Unless the idea was to make Facebook remove the links/headlines and drive traffic back to the news websites, which is what happened.. so why are they complaining now that it has played out that way?
- brailsafe 3y ago
  What's concerning to me is literally every single MP except the conservatives voted for the bill, including my local NDP rep, and not only is it's premise absurd, but they made a huge bet on it working and risked our access to public news sources. Therefore, every non-conservative member of parliament was in-favour of an idiotic bill that compromised a fairly important seri s contemporary ways to access even their own publicly funded content. If people were to be single-issue-voters at all—usually with their issue only ever representing some hypothetical tenuous outcome—now might be a more appropriate time than ever.
tensor 3y ago
Correct. Essentially the root of the issue is that the news sites believe that the value is in their article, but in reality for the majority of users the value is in the headline, which the news sites give away for free along with the link so that they can be indexed. In my opinion, the answer here is for the news sites to not show any headlines for free, and require a login to access all content. Then, they are free to negotiate with google and meta and others if those companies want access to the content. It wouldn't require any new laws. They would need to solve users being able to post links, but a link shortener of sorts forcing the user to write their own headline in the post would probably do the trick. Most people would still want to see the actual headline, and then they'd be forced to login or at least view the page. I'm very strongly against bill c18.
mr_toad 3y ago
Asking for payment for citations seems like a direction we don’t want to head in.

wvenable 3y ago

My issue with this, is this a problem that needs to be solved? Do we need to guarantee monetization of every human interaction? If my friend and I go a cafe, see a newspaper headline, and have a discussion about that headline without ever opening that newspaper should the cafe have to pay for that discussion? Why should any media adjacent interaction anywhere happen without payment? If the cafe is playing music, they're paying licence fees for that. Why not everything?

doublebind 3y ago
I believe the problem is that the situation you describe occurs on a much bigger scale. It’s no longer you and your friend in the cafe; it’s millions of people looking at the headline on the screen.
- wvenable 3y ago
  The scale has always existed. Thousands of cafes filled with millions of people. Even on Facebook, if I comment on a headline it's still just me making that comment. I, singular, provide some value to Facebook by being there and no value to newspaper because I didn't click though. If Facebook didn't exist, the value I bring to the newspaper by not reading it is the same.
arrosenberg 3y ago
In your example the cafe isn't monetizing the fact that you view the headline and comment, which inherently increases the advertising value of the cafe (i.e. more people won't come to the cafe because of the headlines and their need to comment on it) and which captures significantly more value than everyone else involved. You just read the headline, a few people buy the paper and everyone is equitable and happy. If Meta wants to pay 100% tax on their ad revenues to fund journalism, all they have to do is say so.
- wvenable 3y ago
  This theoretical cafe is monetizing the fact that people come and hang out and have discussions and order some coffee. The place is filled with games and magazines and newspapers that anyone can open a view the advertising within. But I never bother, I just read the headlines and discuss those without ever looking inside.
  - arrosenberg 3y ago
    > This theoretical cafe is monetizing the fact that people come and hang out and have discussions and order some coffee. Therein lies the difference. 1. People come and hang out - can't effectively do this on Meta sites, though their VR push seems aimed at trying to fulfill this need. I would also put "read the newspaper" under this category. 2. Have discussions - for varying definitions of "discussion", this is where Facebook is heavily monetized. 3. Order some coffee - again, can't effectively do that on any Meta sites. Given that parks exist without coffee shops, we can infer that 3 is what coffee shops are monetizing, while 1 and 2 act as an additional enticement. The newspapers suffer because, even though YOU may only comment on the headlines, there are plenty of people who go to the coffee shop and don't think twice about buying the paper to read or do the crossword puzzle. The newspaper is able to monetize 1 and 2 and the coffeeshop monetizes 3 - everyone is equitable and happy. On Facebook, Facebook monetizes 2 and claims (without much proof) that they are providing 1 as a service to customers. No coffee is ever served - everyone but Meta is unhappy.
    - wvenable 3y ago
grf27 3y ago
No, but if you're a government seeing your media industry shrinking because they can't make a profit to sustain themselves, meanwhile others are profiting off their work, then you want to try something, and I guess this is their attempt. One of the other solutions proposed was taxes on media aggregators. This is similar to the taxes on entertainment aggregators currently in place that pay into a fund that supports domestic entertainers. These approaches have lots of complications.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  The real threat to local news is national/international news. An organization selling a story to the entire anglosphere has an advantage over an organization trying to sell a story to just one town or country. Both stories cost about the same to write and distribute, but the story with [manufactured] international appeal has massively more earning potential. So newspapers with a focus on national news (NYTimes, WaPo) end up killing the local newspapers even in big cities like Chicago. And the same dynamic applies internationally; the organization which is best at manufacturing international interest for their stories will have an advantage over any organization that focuses on national news with national interest. If the intention is to get Canadians to focus more on local news, making Facebook pay to link to local news is completely backwards. Facebook will (and apparently has) simply transition to showing cheap international news. Instead, Canada should be making Facebook pay when linking to foreign news, or paying Facebook when linking to local news.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    I would argue many local papers could just be a monthly town newsletter. Lol.
- wvenable 3y ago
  The real threat to local news is Craigslist and Facebook marketplace. Local newspapers were mostly funded by their classifieds section. The news is merely to bring eyeballs to those ads. When the market for classifieds disappeared, there was no longer any financial support for local news. You could even argue that newspapers were only viable businesses because they had a monopoly over the local distribution of information. It was never the news itself that was profitable but being the local gatekeeper of that news. The Internet destroyed that entirely.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
This is a perfect example of how people confuse causality and responsibility. They are not the same. Trying to monetize and compensate for every externality is absurd. If I make coffee at home that causes a coffee shop to lose out on Revenue. Surely I'm not responsible for paying the coffee shop for the Lost Revenue. If I do go to the coffee shop, should the coffee shop have to share their revenue with the car company because it gave me a reason to drive my car? In this case, social media makes money because people talk about news online instead of actually read it. This doesn't make social media companies responsible for the fact that no one wants to read a news article.
- fireflash38 3y ago
  Your analogy is flawed. It's like someone consuming coffee but not wanting the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed it to be compensated.
  - telotortium 3y ago
    If the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed gave the beans away without asking for compensation because they hoped to obtain ad revenue, most people wouldn't go out of their way to pay the bean producers. Canadian news media (unlike the vast majority of US news media besides NPR and PBS) is very significantly government subsidized, so this bill is really a stealth tax on Meta and Google.
    - dopidopHN 3y ago
      At the end of the day, the question remains : do we want local news? Meta and Alphabet are not gonna run news room in Manitoba and Northern Ontario. If we don’t, fine. Local news can die and be replaced by influencer I guess ? Then if we do, who is paying for it. In your analogy, Meta & Alphabet are installing a patio in front of the coffee shops, and offer samples of the most popular latte of the day for free and you can get as many as you want.
      - 3y ago
PhasmaFelis 3y ago
> My issue with this, is this a problem that needs to be solved? Do we need to guarantee monetization of every human interaction? The failure of traditional news funding models, and their replacement with clickbait, has already caused devastating damage to...well, to society in general, honestly, but certainly to anyone trying to produce a balanced, informative news service. I can't blame publishers for trying to find something to keep them out of the Buzzfeed gutter. I don't think this idea actually helps at all. But I get why they're desperate.

throw0101c 3y ago

> […] but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline. People have been not-reading and commenting since the early days of Slashdot. See also Reddit and HN. :)

dmix 3y ago

Oh god, comment threads on news sites are some of the worst things on the internet. Never well designed, properly threaded, each requires a different login, etc. If that's the business they want to be in then they (and every other news site) completely sucks at it and there's a reason people want to talk on FB/Twitter instead beyond network effects.

mcpackieh 3y ago

> My understanding of the core issue is people aren’t clicking through to read the article, but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline. If this is the meat of the matter, then how does asking Facebook to pay for links/headlines address the problem? Whether or not facebook pays for linking to news stories, the discussion on facebook remains vapid and the public isn't properly informed. Unless the idea was to make Facebook remove the links/headlines and drive traffic back to the news websites, which is what happened.. so why are they complaining now that it has played out that way?

brailsafe 3y ago
What's concerning to me is literally every single MP except the conservatives voted for the bill, including my local NDP rep, and not only is it's premise absurd, but they made a huge bet on it working and risked our access to public news sources. Therefore, every non-conservative member of parliament was in-favour of an idiotic bill that compromised a fairly important seri s contemporary ways to access even their own publicly funded content. If people were to be single-issue-voters at all—usually with their issue only ever representing some hypothetical tenuous outcome—now might be a more appropriate time than ever.

tensor 3y ago

Correct. Essentially the root of the issue is that the news sites believe that the value is in their article, but in reality for the majority of users the value is in the headline, which the news sites give away for free along with the link so that they can be indexed. In my opinion, the answer here is for the news sites to not show any headlines for free, and require a login to access all content. Then, they are free to negotiate with google and meta and others if those companies want access to the content. It wouldn't require any new laws. They would need to solve users being able to post links, but a link shortener of sorts forcing the user to write their own headline in the post would probably do the trick. Most people would still want to see the actual headline, and then they'd be forced to login or at least view the page. I'm very strongly against bill c18.

mr_toad 3y ago

Asking for payment for citations seems like a direction we don’t want to head in.