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Don’t be misled. This is not government trying to protect Canadian journalism. This is a few rich, mostly billionaire-owned telecom/media companies working as h

by ttul 3y ago

Don’t be misled. This is not government trying to protect Canadian journalism. This is a few rich, mostly billionaire-owned telecom/media companies working as hard as they can to keep out competition. It’s not Google’s fault that Canadian media oligopolists have no interest in paying for good journalism. Their only interest is in continuing to profit from lackluster offerings while holding down the pay of journalists by ensuring they have very few employment options in the country.

autoexec 3y ago
I'm pretty sure a link tax is a terrible idea anyway, but how does charging google a tax for linking to news articles prevent journalists from working for other news companies or starting their own?
- HeyImAlex 3y ago
  Maybe discoverability? If you can’t google “major event” to find news, you’ll wind up just going to big-news-site.com and searching there.
  - paxys 3y ago
    Or just not bother at all.
    - esquivalience 3y ago
      I hope this short comment gets the up votes it deserves. Access to news information is a boon. Restricting it is a step backwards. If lack of access dissuades people from finding information, the people as a whole will be more likely to see an unbalanced picture and be less well informed overall.
      - paxys 3y ago
        Which, as it turns out, is exactly what the government and large business syndicates that fund it (Rogers & Bell & co in this scenario) want. An open internet is a very dangerous thing to people in power worldwide.
  - hakfoo 3y ago
    That seemed to be the message I was getting; spent last week in Toronto and one of the major private broadcasters was running a lot of ads saying "Nasty American platforms won't allow you to see news, so download our apps to see it instead." Meanwhile, I was pleasantly surprised to see the CBC app festooned with links to low-bandwidth versions of content for regions under wildfire advisories. I appreciate that they understood that emergency situations call for something a bit different than "we have 23 extra pixels, can we cram another banner ad in?"
- Alupis 3y ago
  Any time you come across the tired "billionaires are evil" line, you are likely dealing with some sort of political rhetoric instead of an actual argument/position. As-if there's any practical difference between a billionaire-owned publication and a millionaire-owned publication within this context. > This is a few rich, mostly billionaire-owned telecom/media companies working as hard as they can to keep out competition. There's many holes in this particular argument, such as non-billionaire owned publications - are they incapable of astroturfing and gatekeeping? Absolutely not, of course. I agree, the link tax idea is bad already - we do not need to add cliché talking points into the mix. As an aside, I personally find it interesting how this mantra started off as "millionaires and billionaires" being evil, until the movement's leader became an overnight millionaire himself. Now, apparently, it's just billionaires that are evil.
  - tomComb 3y ago
    I think the point is that this is being sold by the government as them against big evil (billionaire) tech companies. When in fact it's genesis is the lobbying of local billionaires. So let's discard the billionaire card, and discard the government's equally clique angle: we are against Facebook so we are right and don't look any closer.
    - Alupis 3y ago
      Is it not sufficient to be against bad policy, regardless of who may or may not benefit from it?
  - InitialLastName 3y ago
    > As an aside, I personally find it interesting how this mantra started off as "millionaires and billionaires" being evil, until the movement's leader became an overnight millionaire himself. Now, apparently, it's just billionaires that are evil. Not sure who you're referring to, but I think it's more likely that, thanks to inflation and other "growth", a far larger portion of the population have reasonable expectations to be "millionaires" on paper in their lifetimes. Even by now the word covers much of the upper middle class by the end of their career (the median US net worth at end-of-career age is ~$250k [0]). All else held equal the median peak wealth could reasonably cross $1M in the next 40 years, and of course half of the population will be above that. Maybe the more apt word is "oligarch", but the West prefers to deny having those. [10] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Don’t be misled. This is not government trying to protect Canadian journalism. This is a few rich, mostly billionaire-owned telecom/media companies working as hard as they can to keep out competition. IIRC, a few big Canadian youtubers like Linus and Mutahar, who went into details on this, threatening to leave Canada. Yeah it's definelty bs that reeks of corporate protectionism.
rapind 3y ago
> It’s not Google’s fault that Canadian media oligopolists have no interest in paying for good journalism. Crap journalism is not a uniquely Canadian problem. I would argue that like in most things we lag a bit behind the states (US journalism leads the pack in volume of crap per unit of time). The internet and specifically advertising (and classifieds) is absolutely a big part of what caused a massive reduction of quality journalism. Google is also definitely part of this problem as most people's gateway to the internet and basically the largest advertising company in the world. Inevitable though for sure (if not Google, then someone else). I don't know about the rest of your post, but this statement at least is a bit distracting. I should add that I think the Canadian link tax idea is doomed before it even begins. It's also kind of funny that our (Canadian) answer to everything is to just tax it... sigh.

by ttul 3y ago

autoexec 3y ago

I'm pretty sure a link tax is a terrible idea anyway, but how does charging google a tax for linking to news articles prevent journalists from working for other news companies or starting their own?

HeyImAlex 3y ago
Maybe discoverability? If you can’t google “major event” to find news, you’ll wind up just going to big-news-site.com and searching there.
- paxys 3y ago
  Or just not bother at all.
  - esquivalience 3y ago
    I hope this short comment gets the up votes it deserves. Access to news information is a boon. Restricting it is a step backwards. If lack of access dissuades people from finding information, the people as a whole will be more likely to see an unbalanced picture and be less well informed overall.
    - paxys 3y ago
      Which, as it turns out, is exactly what the government and large business syndicates that fund it (Rogers & Bell & co in this scenario) want. An open internet is a very dangerous thing to people in power worldwide.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  That seemed to be the message I was getting; spent last week in Toronto and one of the major private broadcasters was running a lot of ads saying "Nasty American platforms won't allow you to see news, so download our apps to see it instead." Meanwhile, I was pleasantly surprised to see the CBC app festooned with links to low-bandwidth versions of content for regions under wildfire advisories. I appreciate that they understood that emergency situations call for something a bit different than "we have 23 extra pixels, can we cram another banner ad in?"
Alupis 3y ago
Any time you come across the tired "billionaires are evil" line, you are likely dealing with some sort of political rhetoric instead of an actual argument/position. As-if there's any practical difference between a billionaire-owned publication and a millionaire-owned publication within this context. > This is a few rich, mostly billionaire-owned telecom/media companies working as hard as they can to keep out competition. There's many holes in this particular argument, such as non-billionaire owned publications - are they incapable of astroturfing and gatekeeping? Absolutely not, of course. I agree, the link tax idea is bad already - we do not need to add cliché talking points into the mix. As an aside, I personally find it interesting how this mantra started off as "millionaires and billionaires" being evil, until the movement's leader became an overnight millionaire himself. Now, apparently, it's just billionaires that are evil.
- tomComb 3y ago
  I think the point is that this is being sold by the government as them against big evil (billionaire) tech companies. When in fact it's genesis is the lobbying of local billionaires. So let's discard the billionaire card, and discard the government's equally clique angle: we are against Facebook so we are right and don't look any closer.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    Is it not sufficient to be against bad policy, regardless of who may or may not benefit from it?
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  > As an aside, I personally find it interesting how this mantra started off as "millionaires and billionaires" being evil, until the movement's leader became an overnight millionaire himself. Now, apparently, it's just billionaires that are evil. Not sure who you're referring to, but I think it's more likely that, thanks to inflation and other "growth", a far larger portion of the population have reasonable expectations to be "millionaires" on paper in their lifetimes. Even by now the word covers much of the upper middle class by the end of their career (the median US net worth at end-of-career age is ~$250k [0]). All else held equal the median peak wealth could reasonably cross $1M in the next 40 years, and of course half of the population will be above that. Maybe the more apt word is "oligarch", but the West prefers to deny having those. [10] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scfindex.htm

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>Don’t be misled. This is not government trying to protect Canadian journalism. This is a few rich, mostly billionaire-owned telecom/media companies working as hard as they can to keep out competition. IIRC, a few big Canadian youtubers like Linus and Mutahar, who went into details on this, threatening to leave Canada. Yeah it's definelty bs that reeks of corporate protectionism.

rapind 3y ago

> It’s not Google’s fault that Canadian media oligopolists have no interest in paying for good journalism. Crap journalism is not a uniquely Canadian problem. I would argue that like in most things we lag a bit behind the states (US journalism leads the pack in volume of crap per unit of time). The internet and specifically advertising (and classifieds) is absolutely a big part of what caused a massive reduction of quality journalism. Google is also definitely part of this problem as most people's gateway to the internet and basically the largest advertising company in the world. Inevitable though for sure (if not Google, then someone else). I don't know about the rest of your post, but this statement at least is a bit distracting. I should add that I think the Canadian link tax idea is doomed before it even begins. It's also kind of funny that our (Canadian) answer to everything is to just tax it... sigh.