3 ms·

Thea's a lot of rhetoric, so let's get really specific about how these laws are supposed to work. You do a search. You get ten blue links. One of them is to a

Thea's a lot of rhetoric, so let's get really specific about how these laws are supposed to work. You do a search. You get ten blue links. One of them is to a newspaper website. Google has to pay that website - but not any of the other 9 websites. You see a cool web page. You post a link on Facebook for your friends and say 'hey, read this!" If it's a link to a newspaper, but not to any other kind of website, Facebook has to pay them. Google and Facebook not 'co-opting their content.' You need to be really clear about this - we are talking about links. In Meta's case it might be a link posted by the newspaper itself. Let's extend the principle here: someone posted a link to my website on Hackernews - so Hackernews has to pay me. Really? They post it on Reddit and Reddit has ads, so I get a percentage of the ad revenue. Really??

doctor_eval 3y ago
All of this is arguably true, but conveniently forgets Google News and FB’s algorithmic feed, among other products. There is so very much wrong with the way search works - its opacity, the enormous reach of Google advertising, the way Facebook manipulates sentiment to sell advertising. This law may be clumsy, but lazy rhetoric is still bullshit.
- benedictevans 3y ago
  Google News is tiny and irrelevant - that's not what the law is about. Again - do you really think that if you do a web search, and one of the results goes to a newspaper, then the newspaper should get paid? And none of the other links?
  - doctor_eval 3y ago
    > Google News is tiny and irrelevant - that's not what the law is about. According to SimilarWeb, Google News ranks #114 globally (all websites), and #7 in the News category. https://www.similarweb.com/website/news.google.com/#overview https://www.similarweb.com/website/news.google.com/#overview It is much larger than WAPO, and not far behind NYT. Which makes it significantly larger than any news provider anywhere else in the world. So maybe I'm weird but that hardly seems "tiny and irrelevant". > do you really think that if you do a web search, and one of the results goes to a newspaper, then the newspaper should get paid? And none of the other links? From the context, I doubt that you're arguing that everyone should get paid, so I'm not sure what your point is, because I don't see why they shouldn't. If you do a web search and one of the results goes to a newspaper, and you click the result, then the newspaper can monetise that. I don't have a problem with that. If you do a web search and it presents enough information that the user can answer their question without clicking, well, that's an interesting problem. The answer would not exist if not for the provider, yet the search engine makes money and the provider of the result does not. This is particularly true when the search engine pops up a news box as a result. So if a search result provides useful information to a user, and the search engine makes money from providing that answer despite it being sourced from elsewhere - why shouldn't the source of that information be compensated? As I said above, this law may be clumsy - it might not even be possible - but my objection is to the lazy rhetoric surrounding the issue, which is still bullshit.

doctor_eval 3y ago

All of this is arguably true, but conveniently forgets Google News and FB’s algorithmic feed, among other products. There is so very much wrong with the way search works - its opacity, the enormous reach of Google advertising, the way Facebook manipulates sentiment to sell advertising. This law may be clumsy, but lazy rhetoric is still bullshit.

benedictevans 3y ago
Google News is tiny and irrelevant - that's not what the law is about. Again - do you really think that if you do a web search, and one of the results goes to a newspaper, then the newspaper should get paid? And none of the other links?
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  > Google News is tiny and irrelevant - that's not what the law is about. According to SimilarWeb, Google News ranks #114 globally (all websites), and #7 in the News category. https://www.similarweb.com/website/news.google.com/#overview https://www.similarweb.com/website/news.google.com/#overview It is much larger than WAPO, and not far behind NYT. Which makes it significantly larger than any news provider anywhere else in the world. So maybe I'm weird but that hardly seems "tiny and irrelevant". > do you really think that if you do a web search, and one of the results goes to a newspaper, then the newspaper should get paid? And none of the other links? From the context, I doubt that you're arguing that everyone should get paid, so I'm not sure what your point is, because I don't see why they shouldn't. If you do a web search and one of the results goes to a newspaper, and you click the result, then the newspaper can monetise that. I don't have a problem with that. If you do a web search and it presents enough information that the user can answer their question without clicking, well, that's an interesting problem. The answer would not exist if not for the provider, yet the search engine makes money and the provider of the result does not. This is particularly true when the search engine pops up a news box as a result. So if a search result provides useful information to a user, and the search engine makes money from providing that answer despite it being sourced from elsewhere - why shouldn't the source of that information be compensated? As I said above, this law may be clumsy - it might not even be possible - but my objection is to the lazy rhetoric surrounding the issue, which is still bullshit.