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> My position is that Google and meta have monopolised the audience. Meta have said that people don't come to them for news - [0]. Do you have numbers to count

> My position is that Google and meta have monopolised the audience. Meta have said that people don't come to them for news - [0]. Do you have numbers to counter? What prevents Canada's government to create a news portal, then promote it everywhere, including on Google and Meta, telling people to go to that website for news? People who are looking for news will surely be visiting that site now, since they spend less time on FB. Call it news.ca. Of course big businesses will benefit. The smaller ones will inevitably suffer. > Obviously - that’s exactly why they’re doing it. Seems to be the government's intention too. They've been very well aware of it. [0] - https://about.fb.com/news/2023/06/changes-to-news-availability-on-our-platforms-in-canada/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/06/changes-to-news-availabili...

ulrashida 3y ago
> Meta have said that people don't come to them for news - [0]. Do you have numbers to counter? I think the question is does Meta have any numbers to this effect? Their quote is literally: "In contrast, we know the people using our platforms don’t come to us for news." Meta seems to want it both ways as they state elsewhere: "Though news article links make up less than 3% of what Canadians see in Feed, we estimate that we sent Canada News Page Index-registered publishers more than 1.9 billion clicks in the last 12 months ending in April 2022." So it's both a tiny part for Meta, but also a big part of the Canadian news ecosystem.
doctor_eval 3y ago
The self-serving question "do users go to Facebook for news?" is asinine. Of course, most people don't. But if they get their news while they're using Facebook, then they have less incentive to seek out other news sources. The same is true for all types of content, but reliable journalism is a key pillar of democracy, and we are watching the many different ways that democracy gets ruined when we don't take it seriously.

ulrashida 3y ago

> Meta have said that people don't come to them for news - [0]. Do you have numbers to counter? I think the question is does Meta have any numbers to this effect? Their quote is literally: "In contrast, we know the people using our platforms don’t come to us for news." Meta seems to want it both ways as they state elsewhere: "Though news article links make up less than 3% of what Canadians see in Feed, we estimate that we sent Canada News Page Index-registered publishers more than 1.9 billion clicks in the last 12 months ending in April 2022." So it's both a tiny part for Meta, but also a big part of the Canadian news ecosystem.

doctor_eval 3y ago

The self-serving question "do users go to Facebook for news?" is asinine. Of course, most people don't. But if they get their news while they're using Facebook, then they have less incentive to seek out other news sources. The same is true for all types of content, but reliable journalism is a key pillar of democracy, and we are watching the many different ways that democracy gets ruined when we don't take it seriously.