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Meta blocking news links in Canada
- SMAAART 3y agoSomeone failed "Game theory 101".
- tekla 3y agoHell of a bluff to try and call, especially when a bad call causes you to punch yourself in the groin, hard.
- readthenotes1 3y agoCut off your nose to spite your face
- ehnto 3y agoIt does have precedence though. What Facebook would do when backed into this particular corner has played out in other countries.
- graeme 3y agoFalse. Australia is the example often cited, but Australia caved and elected not to apply the law to Google and Facebook. Instead, Facebook and Google made deals outside of the law. These deals were surely larger than their earlier deals, but small enough they could live with them. The terms were never published. Seeing how misperception of this led directly to the Canadian law, my suspicion is Meta is now done with the charade lest others copy it, and will keep news out unless the law is repealed. There are, to my knowledge, zero countries where Meta engaged in a forced negotiation framework such as the Canadian law. If you disagree, could you please name one?
- cpncrunch 3y agoThis article seems to explain the differences: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-canada-1.6925726 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-can...
- ehnto 3y agoSorry if I wasn't clear, I was suggesting that Facebook has yet to comply to these kinds of rules directly and as you noted for Australia, they made their own deal.
- j45 3y agoThere is likely engagement statistics available from other countries on how much engagement was/wasn't lost, and how it changed in other contries where this was started. With the erosion of local and hyper-local news in Canada and North America - the media that was largely being cut out is the national chains who are shutting down many of the local papers and leaving broader, more generalized coverage that is not regionally accurate in some cases. Hyper local media wouldn't have the $ to lobby like this. It's not entirely unclear how much they were consulted in a meaningful way. For example hearing something about the real estate industry in "Canada" often means Toronto, or Vancouver only, when there are plenty of interesting things happening in other areas contrary to this reporting, much like the US. Edit; Typos
- gumby 3y agoThis has happened in every other places such a plan has been tried like Spain or Australia. What did they expect? And really, what else could goog/fb etc do -- what other company or person for that matter would pay someone in order to provide them a service? Governments tax things they want less of (e.g. smoking) so this should be no surprise.
- hirundo 3y agoThe article says the opposite about Australia: Sylvain Poisson of Hebdos Quebec confidently said “they made those threats in Australia and elsewhere and every time they back down.” Chris Pedigo of the U.S.-based Digital Context Next assured the committee “it’s important to understand what happens when these bills become law. In Australia, they moved quickly to secure deals. And apparently we've yet to hear from Google on this regarding Canada. But what's different? It's hard to see how Google can have a principled objection to Canadian but not Australian danegeld.
- peanuty1 3y agoGoogle has also confirmed they will be removing links to Canadian news.
- cat_plus_plus 3y agoDetails matter? Australian law may have had details to make negotiations happen and result in deals that are still commercially viable for search engines.
- gumby 3y agoI believe the Australian deals were "tell you what: we won't pay you, but we'll continue to send you traffic" and the papers realised that that was better than the alternative: "we won't pay you and we won't send you traffic either."
- jsnell 3y agoThe dirty secret is that the Australian law doesn't actually apply to anyone. They passed the law, but left it to the government to define which companies are in scope. And the government never designated any companies to it. Basically it appears that the tech companies signing the same kinds of deals as elsewhere is being spun as a success of the legislation, even though the law does not apply to anyone, as a face saving measure.
- kredd 3y agoThis actually made our neighbourhood and local politics Facebook groups more tolerable (which is the only reason I still use it once a week). It was basically 24/7 ragebait articles being shared around anyways, since that’s the only way of gathering large-scale engagement.
- j45 3y agoEspecially the comment sections, felt like the first time people discovered trolling on internet forums.
- elemos 3y agoThe cool thing about humanity is it’s almost always someone’s first time.
- barbazoo 3y ago> local politics Facebook group I can't even imagine why someone would voluntarily participate in something like that. You must be among am exceptional group of people. :)
- whstl 3y agoI'm not Canadian (nor American), but I used a few back in the day when I had Facebook. It was actually not that bad when people used those groups for local politics only. When it becomes too partisan then it's unbearable, but moderators can squash that.
- jprete 3y agoI think that requires the moderators to be willing to do so, both in the sense that they are inclined to strongly moderate the group, and in the sense that they aren’t themselves getting an emotional high out of the ragebait.
- kredd 3y agoFastest way to get information regarding street closures, city events, infrastructure upgrades and etc. At least in my city 80% of the people in the group sound reasonable, so it’s fun Saturday morning reads. Most of the toxicity comes from larger political groups, and yeah, agreed they are absolutely trash.
- tomComb 3y agoIt’s weird to be cheering on Facebook, but good for them for standing up to this gross (and incompetent) political corruption. Our governments are constantly looking for new ways to shovel money to the big telecom companies (and to protect them from competition), and it needs to be meet more resistance. For those not aware, the PBO analysis showed that the primary beneficiaries of this bill were to be Bell, Rogers, Shaw, and some CBC. But even if that were not the case, this bill simply makes no sense, and could do a lot of harm.
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- j45 3y agoIn Canada it will mean news from other places, including the US will likely directly or indirectly influence those feeds. UGC (User Generated Content) could remain commentary about these news articles when shared in, but it would require consumers to become creators.
- loeg 3y agoThe article states explicitly that news sources from the US would also be blocked.
- j45 3y agoYes it does. But will Buzzfeed type commentary choosing to interpret an interpretation and present it as facts about the articles also be blocked? I remember a facebook before any articles was posted there. News articles were brought in explicitly to get the news crowd there, and keep them engaged. I wonder how federated news delivery could work - anyone use anything like this.
- ysavir 3y agoAre we cheering on Facebook? It feels like a situation where all the foul players--the platforms, the government, and the media--are all losing. The article author tries to say "Individual Canadians who use the platforms to find links to news are losers since news links will be blocked from the platform" but doesn't actually support that with a reason as to why that's a loss. Feels like a win to individual Canadians to me, even if some are upset at their inability to easily and immediately share clickbait and ragebait articles. I think those are the people we're really cheering on.
- barbazoo 3y agoI wonder why Meta seems to be so unwilling to participate in negotiations in good faith here. What's different here compared to Australia and Europe, the post doesn't explain that.
- x-complexity 3y agoThis is based on the idea of said negotiations being made in good faith in the first place, when in reality it's nothing more than the media conglomerates wanting to shake down tech companies.
- edmundsauto 3y agoI saw an estimate that it would have been something like a -6X ROI in this case. Would be a reasonable nonstarter to set a bad precedent (from Meta POV)
- notatoad 3y agoFrom the CBC: australia made a deal to keep news on facebook, why couldn't canada? https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-canada-1.6925726 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-can... tl;dr the government has not left any room to negotiate, and the law is signed.
- j45 3y agoMaybe the media lobbyists think people will flock to their news websites instead complete with paywalls. And Social thinks they will keep traffic, or the media sites will die.
- MostlyStable 3y agoThis article goes more into depth about the differences [0] As far as I can tell the basic point is "Australia changed the law to something these companies could accept before it passed, Canada didn't" [0]https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-canada-1.6925726 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-can...
- Eumenes 3y agoLess fake news, less engagement on platforms, less polarization. Why can't Canadians open their browsers and type in www.news-site.com if they want news? The Canadian government is obviously putting forward some really dumb policy, but the unintended consequences seem like a win-win to me. Hopefully neither side backs down and we'll get a juicy experiment to watch.
- barbazoo 3y ago> Why can't Canadians open their browsers and type in www.news-site.com if they want news? We can, I don't see what the problem is here either. I don't think it will lead to less fake news and less engagement though. People are addicted to this horrible cesspool, especially older folks, nothing you can do about that unfortunately. That ship has sailed.
- j45 3y agoThey can, and do, and used to. Social media attracted the news traffic in the beginning. Google news tried to get to know a visitors interests eagerly. Facebook wanted to find what you liked and keep you digging into that at the expense of having a broader vision. Maybe it's a good time for someone to roll out a media news aggregator that also presents it in the context of an interest like the media bias chart. https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/ https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
- LegitShady 3y agoThis only affects canadian news on those platforms. Canadian users can still see US news, disinformation, and polarizing things. All this does is block canadian news from reaching canadians. There are no positive benefits. This reduces the reach of canadian news, increases the reach of US news, and reduces income to canadian news sources from social media traffic. There's no win here at all. The legislation does the opposite of what it claims it wants to do.
- TekMol 3y agoWhat would happen if Meta and Google would say "As American companies, we are allowed to link to those news articles. If a Government thinks their citizens should not see those links, it is up to them to block their citizens from accessing our servers"?
- cududa 3y agoErrr that’s not really how it works. Meta sells ads and conducts business in Canada. They have Canadian entity which is required to conduct business in Canada, and must comply with local laws to be permitted to conduct business there
- TekMol 3y agoHow do you mean a Canadian entity is required to conduct business in Canada? Are Canadians not allowed to buy from foreign companies?
- taylortbb 3y agoMeta and Google both have Canadian offices full of Canadian employees, so it's not like they have a purely virtual presence in Canada.
- bluefirebrand 3y agoA Canadian citizen buying from a foreign company is not the same as the company conducting business in Canada. The citizen takes on the responsibility of making sure the legal process of doing business in Canada is upheld. EG, they cannot buy something that is illegal to own in Canada, and the relevant taxes and tariffs must be paid, all of those things. Should Canada be placing tariffs on Facebook? That would be interesting to see.
- gotoeleven 3y agoAre you commenting from a seastead?
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
- neom 3y agoI thought this was a pretty interesting article on the subject: Australia made a deal to keep news on Facebook. Why couldn't Canada? https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-canada-1.6925726 https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-can...
- j45 3y agoNegotiations don't happen in one step. Canada is a lot closer to home, too. May happen in the other Americas too. I'm sure much more experienced and insightful folks on this might be able to comment, with or without a throwaway account.
- neom 3y agoIt's been interesting seeing the reactions from my friends. It's a split down the middle between f the government and f the Americans. Seem like people are increasingly unable to be sensible re conversations like this these days, crazy how polarized things have become. These street interviews the cbc conducted gave me some hope however: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WltKtLi65fE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WltKtLi65fE
- j45 3y agoYeah, both are trying to get the people to do their bidding. And maybe that's when they'll realize that might not play out as anticipated. That's a great link, thanks for sharing. Big companies using the guise of safety, or fairness to extract advantage at the expense of an informed populace feels just swell. It's fun to look up how many of the "Canadian" major media groups are owned by the US, and to what degree, how much.
- brian-armstrong 3y agoIf they do make a deal, it should be pretty cheap now. The news sites will see their traffic drop off a cliff and probably feel pretty ready to start negotiating.
- andreygrehov 3y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoThis framework is such a stupid workaround to a tax on social media and separate media subsidy.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoBlatant tax shakedowns because the money exists are generally viewed poorly by the public, so most countries try to hide behind a Justice rationale.
- granzymes 3y agoI hope Google follows through, too. The government forcing two companies to pay for links to news is pretty disgusting rent seeking by media companies.
- whynotmaybe 3y agoAre "links" the issue or showing a summary of the article?
- flangola7 3y agoThat's an opinion to have but the Canadian people, through their elected representatives, have decided they disagree and have codified that requirement into law. The Canadian people have asked their government to pass these laws and Facebook doesn't want to follow them. No one is forcing Facebook to operate in Canada. They're welcome to leave at any time if they don't like it - we all know FB talks a big game and won't do that, but I know I'm not alone in secretly hoping it happens anyway. Zuck can go zuck himself.
- smoldesu 3y ago> and Facebook doesn't want to follow them. No one is forcing Facebook to operate in Canada. OP's article seems to indicate that Facebook is already following these rules without issue.
- granzymes 3y agoLet’s be honest, the Canadian government is acting on behalf of the politically influential and well-connected media companies. And Facebook is complying with the law by removing links. It’s just not the compliance the lobbyists were hoping for.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- mmastrac 3y agoThis is funny because I've never used Facebook for news. The only thing I ever found there was rage and clickbait.
- ddtaylor 3y agoGood. Cut them off and avoid supporting these terrible attempts by old and entrenched actors that have failed business models.
- some-human 3y agoTrying to get the billboard to pay for the ad it's displaying. How was that ever going to work?
- blindriver 3y agoStupid, stupid, stupid politicians and media companies. I'm glad to see tech companies show some backbone to the sheer hubris and greed that they were being subjected to. There is no other way that news companies will be shared except via social media. I hope within weeks they are on their knees, begging for the law to be repealed. Too bad you can't recall politicians in Canada the same way you can in the US.
- gdevenyi 3y agoMeanwhile, the Canadian Liberal Party is still paying Facebook for advertising.
- loloquwowndueo 3y agoYes but the government of Canada is not. Clear distinction between a sitting government and a political party.
- vkou 3y agoThere is no reason for why a government cannot both advertise in a form of media, and regulate it. There is also no reason for why a political party cannot both advertise in a form of media, and in their governing role, regulate it. Engaging in a financial transaction with someone does not permanently ensorcell you into a suicide pact with them.
- mannerheim 3y agoWhy make the fuss about taking government ads off of Facebook if you're not going to take your party ads off of it, too? The answer is obvious: Government awareness campaigns might be less effective, hiring and recruitment might be more difficult, but neither poses a risk to the government for staying in government. There's no principle here, just politics.
- Transpire7487 3y agoAs a Canadian, I’m glad that Meta is doing this. Google is going to be doing it soon as well from what I’ve heard. The irony is the government says their intent was to “protect Canadian media by getting big tech to pay their fair share” and it is backfiring spectacularly. Having the opposite effect where there is less traffic going to these media sites, and will have a big impact on their bottom line from their innability to run ads on their own domains and make revenue that way. Of course, this will just lead to another media bailout making them even more reliant on government subsidy - which the Liberal party will use as a wedge issue come election time because the opposition (which is leading and gaining in the polls right now) will want to defund them. Wether this would be successful as an election issue is yet to be seen, but there’s one thing that the Liberal party is good at is demonizing the opposition and if their gravy train is on the line I’m sure e media corps will gladly indulge him. And of course this completely neuters independent media which is much more likely to actually be critical of the establishment. Leaving only pro establishment agencies in place to do the bidding of the hand that feeds them. So the big players take a hit to revenue (and get bailed out), and every one else gets completely wiped out. It’s absolutely sinister what Justin Trudeau’s government is doing. I used to think they were just stupid but it’s scandal after corruption scandal after corruption scandal with him. At some point you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
- evandale 3y ago[flagged]
- paulddraper 3y ago> [2019] in the early 90s and early 2000s What's the statue of limitations on this stuff?
- Tao3300 3y agoIn the US he'd have been crucified, so I guess it's more forgiving in Canada.
- pmontra 3y ago> Canadian media is a loser, particularly the small and independent media outlets that are more reliant on social media to develop community and build their audience. So, regulatory capture by the largest media companies?
- ta8645 3y agoThis is likely the intended result, without caring at all if it generates revenue for the large media corporations. Consolidated media is easier to influence and manipulate.
- mig39 3y agoThe real problem is there's no competition in Canadian media. In Canada, "Monopoly" is often confused for a free market.
- dagaci 3y agoBad for the Canadian so called trolling bottom feeding viral "News" services, and I actually expect great for Canadians and their mental health and productivity - https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/11/strain-media-overload https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/11/strain-media-overload
- yacine_ 3y agoLooks like you need to be o(europe) sized to bully big tech companies
- zmmmmm 3y agoThe problem with all of these laws is the lack of integrity in the underlying logic. The laws are written because ad revenue is no longer supporting news. But the laws are written as if somehow this is connected to social media and search linking to news media content. It just isn't. You can take away all the news media content (as Facebook is) and you will still have no ad business left for news media. The ads are going where the eyeballs are and it's just a brutal fact that the eyeballs want much more than news media - they want a lot of other things that the news media aren't providing. So they go where they can get what they want. Trying to fix any complex problem without addressing the root cause is nearly always going to be futile. The root cause here is something important to society (news media) is intrinsically / structurally impossible to fund organically. The people who need it most either can't or won't pay for it (and many are in the "can't" bucket). Guess what, there are many things like that. We structurally can't fund hospitals, roads, defense either based on organic funding methods. When we want or need something that can't be funded like that, there is one party that is supposed to step up to the table - designed by intent for that purpose. Which is all to say that to me, a lot of what is happening here is theatrics because governments want to avoid doing the actual hard thing which is convincing taxpayers that this should be part of what we support through broad based support as societies.
- notatoad 3y ago> governments want to avoid doing the actual hard thing which is convincing taxpayers that this should be part of what we support through broad based support as societies. I think it’s a level beyond that, to the point that I’d just call it pure corruption. A government-mandated fee that a company has to pay isn’t any different than a tax. They’re taxing big tech, which is fine, and most people wouldn’t have a problem with that. But then instead of booking that as revenue and deciding what to do with the money as part of the normal budgetary process, they’re short-circuiting procedure to send that money to news companies. If the government wants to fund news companies, it should be done in the normal way that all the other government funding gets decided upon, not in a special allocation just for news companies that is excluded from the federal budget.
- philistine 3y ago
- codedokode 3y agoNote that the law intentionally has a backdoor that allows to exclude any digital platform from having to bargain with media outlets by decision of Governor [1]: > The Commission must make an exemption order in relation to a digital news intermediary if ... the following conditions are met: > ... > (b) any condition set out in regulations made by the Governor in Council. So instead of treating every digital platform equally and clearly writing the rules they have reserved an option to make arbitrary exemptions. I wonder, who will get an exemption? Canadian search engine? Or maybe a company managed by a friend of the Governor? The definition of "eligible news business" (who is supposed to receive money) is also written unclearly, for example in article 27: > 27 (1) At the request of a news business, the Commission must, by order, designate the business as eligible if it ... > ... > produces news content that is not primarily focused on a particular topic such as industry-specific news, sports, recreation, arts, lifestyle or entertainment, and This rule allows to exclude anyone, because you can always say that this newspaper is too focused on politics, that one is too focused on the war etc. [1] http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent#ID0E0OD0AA http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-as...
- newsclues 3y ago"Governor in Council" in the Canadian political system is the Cabinet. Who serve at the will of the PM, he recently just shuffled them around. Recently the government has concentrated and centralized power in remarkable ways that goes largely unnoticed.
- dmix 3y agoThis has been the largest trend in western countries since early 2000s (growth in executive/PM power). And Canada wasn't even close to the notorious executive over reach of the US until recently (if anything Canada has long been a better beacon for state-rights/federalism than even the US), but like all Canadian politicians they get jealous of the US system of power.
- nonethewiser 3y agoIm not sure that it goes unnoticed. People are literally asking for it. Not necessarily the particular event you mention but generally for the government to expand power with the expectation that they can do more good.
- gonzo41 3y agoYou're so lucky Canada.
- rossdavidh 3y agoAs an American, I am wondering if I could somehow convince Meta that I'm Canadian, so as to exclude all news from my FB feed as well? But then, I'm on it once a week or less for the last few years, so I suppose it doesn't really matter.
- mliker 3y agoThere are plenty of Google Chrome extensions available if you want to block them on your feed for the rare occasions you do use it.
- specialist 3y agoA good start. Meta must block all news (links) every where. And if they don't, we must compel them.
- rfrey 3y agoSeems like a best case scenario to me. - Less outrage farming in Canada - Meta/Facebook suffers a bit - Canadian media oligopolies suffer a lot - Government gets a black eye for doing Rogers' dirty work
- cdme 3y agoWe never should've privatized the public square and monetizing attention at scale in the fashion that allows social media to succeed has been nothing but bad for society writ large. That these companies also managed to exploit and then cripple journalism as a practice is just one of many negative externalities.
- ipcress_file 3y agoI'm Canadian and I'm not upset by this. If you can't find the local news websites, it's probably best that you don't get the news. Incompetence and (dis)information are a bad combination.
- Xelynega 3y agoI'm also Canadian and the only person I know personally who's angry about this owns a news site that primarily advertises through Facebook. I'm not seeing the downsides...
- midoridensha 3y agoWhat's he so angry about? He's getting just what the news site operators wanted: for Meta to stop linking to their sites without paying them. Problem solved! They won't be linked to any more!
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago"As disbelief has shifted to acceptance, Canadian media outlets are now rushing to promote direct access to their content via web, email or any other non-social media platform." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspapers_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspapers_in_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Canadian_news_websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Canadian_news_website...
- matteoraso 3y agoI wonder how this will affect radicalization.
- antoineMoPa 3y agoI think canadians have to spend less time reading news on social media and invest more in local news sources + support their local newspaper.
- worrycue 3y agoOther non-Canadian news sources are still available right? People will just waste time on those. Frankly, if Canadians are reading news about Canada mostly from foreign news sources, this might weaken the Canadian government’s control on political narrative - since they can’t pressure foreign news sources like Reuters, CNN, or Fox News, much if at all.
- peeters 3y agoCanada has a pretty independent press already (15th in the World Press Freedom Index). CNN and Fox News present narratives optimized for engagement by a U.S. audience. The only time they would present anything at all about Canada is when it would interest a U.S. viewer, and as U.S. audiences understand pretty much nothing about Canadian culture and politics, the coverage is rarely insightful or informative to a Canadian audience.
- post-it 3y agoOther news sources will be removed too. The legislation specifies news available to Canadians rather than Canadian news.
- beloch 3y agoIf you look at the past, it was when Facebook adjusted their algorithms to promote posts from "friends" over news that the platform really started radicalizing its users. Now, in Canada at least, it's nothing but "friend" posts with no actual news to provide a reality check. If they're in Canada, its time to get your parents off of Facebook. The Canadian government is really playing with fire here. They need to either get reality back on Facebook in Canada or they need to curb stomp Meta in Canada. They can't leave things as they currently are.
- fallat 3y agoRSS, rise up!
- johndhi 3y agoEvidence imo that the laws legislators pass mean things, matter, and shouldn't be done without a lot of thinking. It's also potentially an example of a company bigger and more powerful than small governments. Which could lead to problems, though this doesn't strike me as particularly the scariest one by a long shot.
- theadamp 3y agoThese media companies who want Meta to pay them for content sure seem to post an awful lot of content on Meta properties for free, seemingly on purpose.
- iamnotsure 3y agoCensorship.
- ezoe 3y agoI don't understand how could any Canadians thought Meta not removing the news link. They are for-profit company. If the cost exceeds the benefit, they'll sure to chose the cheapest solution. Disabling the link for finite list of news domains? That's not that hard. Meta isn't a pirate company believing all the information must be preserved. It has a history of complying the law by deleting posts. Be it copyright infringement, child porn, privacy information or national security, they deleted it.
- gxt 3y agoGood. If journalists had been doing their job for the last 15 years they would not need federal intervention to force other businesses to fund them, they would not need subsidies, and we would not have these incompetent politicians and these repeated failures on almost every level of government. Journalists need to do their job for subscribers and the public: * Keep an updated profile on every elected official, judge, journalists, high level clerk, private entities and their owners who work for government and who get money from government. * Keep track of the MONEY by providing analysis and correlations of potential misbehaving officials. * Who voted for what and how it conflicts with their promises for the term. * Every statement from elected official and how it conflicts with previous statements, corresponding retractions or post mortems. * Previous and future employment history of elected officials to root out ethicsless individuals. * There's a very long list of accountability measures journalists should be providing to make them worth their weight but they do only the above with extreme ideological selectiveness which nullifies it all. It needs to be done in full for them all of them to be objective and to get Canadians to subscribe to them.
- knallfrosch 3y agoSorry, but that's simply not true. The ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) released things like the Panama Papers and Football Leaks. Those were massive investigations, and yet the yielded little attention. Simply do opinion pieces about migration, climate or gender and you'll get a hundred times the attention (and ads.) Newspapers no longer have the news alone, they don't have a used-item market (ebay) or real estate ads. Those were cross-funding the real journalism. Look no further than Trump to see how much "the people" care about the truth.
- kevingadd 3y agoJournalists aren't the ones who make decisions about how a news site monetizes its content, and they aren't the ones responsible for the consolidation of the media. This whole dispute is 100% about monetization and has nothing to do with the idea that journalists somehow completely abandoned their responsibilities.
- gorgoiler 3y agoMixing geo stuff with the Internet is like mixing milk and beer. Apps/websites behaving differently based on your “country” always feels weird and not very Internetty. Sure, route my traffic to a local CDN cache, but don’t assume that’s my locale. Local newspaper websites make this mistake a lot assuming that being in the EU means I’m subject to GDPR and so cannot be shown the latest Bucks score on DeerLickTribune.com etc. Facebook gets this right — they basically ask you your nationality in order to serve you legal traffic. The existence of a correct technical implementation does not make it right though. I don’t want HTTP to include an Accept-Jurisdiction header.
- nnx 3y ago"make this mistake a lot assuming that being in the EU means I’m subject to GDPR" Being in the EU means you are subject to GDPR, regardless of your citizenship.
- stblack 3y agoCory Docotorow puts all this in proper light in all his recent articles and appearances about "enshitification". Michael Geist is well advised to consider those angles, and think again about who the losers are, here.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> For months, supporters of Bill C-18, the Online News Act, assured the government that Meta and Google were bluffing when they warned that a bill based on mandated payments for links was unworkable and they would comply with it by removing links to news from their platforms. So its already moved from “Facebook removing news is bad and not going to happen as a consequence of this law” (the quote) to “the Canadian government’s ban on news is good for Canada ( the comments here). The intention was never to ban news. It was to take a cut. If they wanted to ban news that would have been the law. Regardless of whether you think the effect is good or not, the laws purpose has failed. It was a blunder.
- mr_toad 3y agoIncreasing tax rates doesn’t always increase tax revenue. It’s like every year some government somewhere learns this the hard way.
- Sparkyte 3y agoThis won't end well.
- gmerc 3y agoAnd nothing of value was lost. We need a do over that aligns news with incentives for a working democracy. Now of course this isn’t it, but burning down Facebook news is a good step into the right direction.
- DeathArrow 3y agoWell, if news links are banned, how are people going to become angry and build outrage?
- 3LazTjBv-f 3y agoI am not sure I understand it correctly. It is not about Google News ripping article title and summaries but platform users sharing links? Publisher wanted to be paid for that?
- post-it 3y agoYes, the legislation calls out links and excerpts both.
- steebo 3y agoAs a Canadian, I applaud this. And I hope the government sticks to its guns. This is not just about "big Canadian media", it affects a lot of small outlets who draw from the journalism fund as well. It was stupid to allow media business models to depend on monopolistic search engines and social media platforms in the first place. This stuff is like hard drugs. For everybody. And getting off the smack is painful. The Canadians who care about this are going to find other ways to get their news. And the ones who don't weren't part of the real readership in the first place.
- donohoe 3y agoI’ve worked in news media for a long-time, and been watching this play out in Australia and now Canada. Publishers are hurting and facing many challenges to staying afloat. However, this idea that FB (or anyone) should pay for linking news content is idiotic. Publishers benefitted hugely and we actively worked on pushing out content to platforms like FB to generate traffic (and therefore ad-impressions). Like many, it feels weird to be supporting FB’s position but here we are. (Pardon typos, Mobile)
- jtode 3y agoThe Internet Interprets Censorship As Damage And Routes Around It. I am so enjoying this.
- timcavel 3y ago[dead]
- scosman 3y agoTitle should be: Meta not allowed to show news links in Canada without signing contracts with publishers. They are required to do this now. Blaming them and not lawmakers is strange to me.
- liminal 3y agoHard to decide between being against the Canadian media oligopoly or the big tech social media oligopoly.