4 ms·

The news stuff is more a cascade of interrelated failures between governments, news outlets, and tech companies. Governments do a bad job of funding news produ

by TX81Z 3y ago

The news stuff is more a cascade of interrelated failures between governments, news outlets, and tech companies. Governments do a bad job of funding news production, newspapers didn’t take the internet seriously and made a massive mess out of it, and the tech companies just sucked out the remaining value and killed news. The fact is the big tech companies make next to nothing on news. It’s rational to just stop doing it if the value goes negative. If government wants to levy a real tax and use that money to fund and support news, fine - but these laws are based on a mistaken premise that somebody is making buckets of money in news. Nobody is.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"The fact is the big tech companies make next to nothing on news." Perhaps these so-called "tech" companies need the traffic generated by people reading and sharing news stories. It makes no sense for "Google News" to exist if it makes next to nothing. It would be "irrational". Google and Facebook keep track of every user navigation to a news story. The links are not direct. Of course this is for purely non-commercial purposes. Data collected is not used for commercial purposes. Yeah right. https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Google-Benefit-from-News-Content.pdf https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06... If it isn't valuable to Google to intermediate peoples' access to online news, then why doesn't Google stop doing it. IMO, the issue is not that content producers such as news organsations are asking too much, it's that they are asking at all. The so-called "tech" company "business model" only works if the company does not have to pay anyone for content. If every producer whose content is being used by these companies to support and generate revenue from advertising services suddenly starts demanding payment, no matter how small, these "Big Tech" companies and their Golden Goose are cooked.

by TX81Z 3y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"The fact is the big tech companies make next to nothing on news." Perhaps these so-called "tech" companies need the traffic generated by people reading and sharing news stories. It makes no sense for "Google News" to exist if it makes next to nothing. It would be "irrational". Google and Facebook keep track of every user navigation to a news story. The links are not direct. Of course this is for purely non-commercial purposes. Data collected is not used for commercial purposes. Yeah right. https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Google-Benefit-from-News-Content.pdf https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06... If it isn't valuable to Google to intermediate peoples' access to online news, then why doesn't Google stop doing it. IMO, the issue is not that content producers such as news organsations are asking too much, it's that they are asking at all. The so-called "tech" company "business model" only works if the company does not have to pay anyone for content. If every producer whose content is being used by these companies to support and generate revenue from advertising services suddenly starts demanding payment, no matter how small, these "Big Tech" companies and their Golden Goose are cooked.