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News that affects the news industry always has a priority for news outlets, obviously. The fact that it's a tiny percentage of the staff is neither here nor the

News that affects the news industry always has a priority for news outlets, obviously. The fact that it's a tiny percentage of the staff is neither here nor there: if Apple laid off a few dozens from its core hardware design team, that'd be newsworthy too. There is a lot going on right now, with Google + Meta at the centre of possible regulation over news links; with the wars in Israel and Ukraine causing spikes in misinformation; with American trust in news at historic lows, and with X's disbanding of its Trust&Safety team leading to a rise in misinformation on the platform; any withdrawal from a service as prominent as Google's News is going to be noteworthy.

CydeWeys 3y ago
It does seem like, because of all the national laws requiring big tech companies to pay news organizations merely for linking them, that big tech companies are increasingly getting out of the news business. And I don't blame them.
- acdha 3y ago
  I do think it’s worth remembering that Google makes enormous amounts of money from the news companies’ content and knows that a fair fraction of readers only read the summary without visiting the source. Sharing that ad revenue seems fair given the comparative levels of contribution.
  - sh1tpostexposer 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - blululu 3y ago
    The laws in question are more or less devoid of any fiscal definition of fairness. They operate on a vague sense of envy that someone might be making more money than a preferred class. If the distribution of revenue were still profitable to Google then I don’t see why Google and Facebook would both be spending NRE to make less money.
    - isykt 3y ago
      > They operate on a vague sense of envy that someone might be making more money than a preferred class They operate on the principle that without revenue the people doing the actual work of journalism will go out of business. Do you think the regulators are wrong on that point?
      - blululu 3y ago
        A link tax is fine in principle and can be good policy in a number of situations. In practice such a tax needs to be set in such a way that all parties make money for their efforts. The rates given in the Canadian and Australian taxes were basically made up by media companies and represented a significant inflation of the value of their content.
      - nradov 3y ago
        If government regulators think we need more paid journalists then they could simply subsidize them, or even hire them directly like the BBC.
        footy 3y ago
        A link tax could be construed as a way to do that, particularly in countries in which these companies operate but do not really pay tax.
        acdha 3y ago
        Isn’t a tax on aggregators’ ad revenue effectively that? It’s not saying that Google or Facebook can’t make plenty of money, only that they need to share some of their profits with the people whose work allowed them to make that profit in the first place.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Okay. If that’s the case, let the newspapers and Google negotiate. We already see who is hurt more when Google walks away
  - nradov 3y ago
    If the content providers don't like that arrangement then they can simply opt out of Google News. No one is forcing them to participate.
    - CydeWeys 3y ago
      That's not how the country's laws work, though. They fixed that "loophole".
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    So in that case, the news organizations should just not allow Google to index their sites. Who do you think that’s going to hurt more - Google or the news orgs? We already know the answer from other countries where Google was forced to share ad revenue or not index the papers.
    - acdha 3y ago
      That’s an option but it makes both of them less money. Google has pulled out of other countries as a negotiating tactic because they can afford to lose that money indefinitely but that does not mean it’s optimal for anyone.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    But they aren't making enormous amounts of money from news content. Google News shows no ads, and never has. I've never seen an ad for a news query on search either, but can't say whether that's by policy or because nobody buys those searches. But it doesn't matter what the reason is: when there's no ad revenue, there's nothing to share. Also, news sites have control over how their site shows up on Google. If they want to continue being indexed and show up in the search result with just a title and no snippet of the page, that's something they could make happen immediately just by themselves. That none of them are choosing to do so makes it pretty clear that the "people just read the summaries and don't click through to the article" thing isn't a problem in reality.
    - acdha 3y ago
      Yes, but they do show news along with ads on Google search results. My point isn’t that Google delivers no value but that we need to find a balance which pays for good journalism if we want healthy societies - the 20th century had local businesses paying for things like foreign reporting which kept subscribers but that clearly doesn’t work any more.
      - jsnell 3y ago
        Like I said, I've never seen ads on the kinds of searches that return news. You're the one making claims about "enormous amounts of revenue" being generated by that. Have you seen ads next to news articles? Could you take a screenshot? > we need to find a balance which pays for good journalism if we want healthy societies Sure. Why do you think that it's search engines and social networks that should be doing the paying?

CydeWeys 3y ago

It does seem like, because of all the national laws requiring big tech companies to pay news organizations merely for linking them, that big tech companies are increasingly getting out of the news business. And I don't blame them.

acdha 3y ago
I do think it’s worth remembering that Google makes enormous amounts of money from the news companies’ content and knows that a fair fraction of readers only read the summary without visiting the source. Sharing that ad revenue seems fair given the comparative levels of contribution.
- sh1tpostexposer 3y ago
  [flagged]
- blululu 3y ago
  The laws in question are more or less devoid of any fiscal definition of fairness. They operate on a vague sense of envy that someone might be making more money than a preferred class. If the distribution of revenue were still profitable to Google then I don’t see why Google and Facebook would both be spending NRE to make less money.
  - isykt 3y ago
    > They operate on a vague sense of envy that someone might be making more money than a preferred class They operate on the principle that without revenue the people doing the actual work of journalism will go out of business. Do you think the regulators are wrong on that point?
    - blululu 3y ago
      A link tax is fine in principle and can be good policy in a number of situations. In practice such a tax needs to be set in such a way that all parties make money for their efforts. The rates given in the Canadian and Australian taxes were basically made up by media companies and represented a significant inflation of the value of their content.
    - nradov 3y ago
      If government regulators think we need more paid journalists then they could simply subsidize them, or even hire them directly like the BBC.
      - footy 3y ago
        A link tax could be construed as a way to do that, particularly in countries in which these companies operate but do not really pay tax.
      - acdha 3y ago
        Isn’t a tax on aggregators’ ad revenue effectively that? It’s not saying that Google or Facebook can’t make plenty of money, only that they need to share some of their profits with the people whose work allowed them to make that profit in the first place.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        Okay. If that’s the case, let the newspapers and Google negotiate. We already see who is hurt more when Google walks away
- nradov 3y ago
  If the content providers don't like that arrangement then they can simply opt out of Google News. No one is forcing them to participate.
  - CydeWeys 3y ago
    That's not how the country's laws work, though. They fixed that "loophole".
- scarface_74 3y ago
  So in that case, the news organizations should just not allow Google to index their sites. Who do you think that’s going to hurt more - Google or the news orgs? We already know the answer from other countries where Google was forced to share ad revenue or not index the papers.
  - acdha 3y ago
    That’s an option but it makes both of them less money. Google has pulled out of other countries as a negotiating tactic because they can afford to lose that money indefinitely but that does not mean it’s optimal for anyone.
- jsnell 3y ago
  But they aren't making enormous amounts of money from news content. Google News shows no ads, and never has. I've never seen an ad for a news query on search either, but can't say whether that's by policy or because nobody buys those searches. But it doesn't matter what the reason is: when there's no ad revenue, there's nothing to share. Also, news sites have control over how their site shows up on Google. If they want to continue being indexed and show up in the search result with just a title and no snippet of the page, that's something they could make happen immediately just by themselves. That none of them are choosing to do so makes it pretty clear that the "people just read the summaries and don't click through to the article" thing isn't a problem in reality.
  - acdha 3y ago
    Yes, but they do show news along with ads on Google search results. My point isn’t that Google delivers no value but that we need to find a balance which pays for good journalism if we want healthy societies - the 20th century had local businesses paying for things like foreign reporting which kept subscribers but that clearly doesn’t work any more.
    - jsnell 3y ago
      Like I said, I've never seen ads on the kinds of searches that return news. You're the one making claims about "enormous amounts of revenue" being generated by that. Have you seen ads next to news articles? Could you take a screenshot? > we need to find a balance which pays for good journalism if we want healthy societies Sure. Why do you think that it's search engines and social networks that should be doing the paying?