6 ms·

This whole fiasco was such an obvious own-goal cooked up by an unholy coalition of newspaper industry lobbyists and progressive politicians who are explicitly h

This whole fiasco was such an obvious own-goal cooked up by an unholy coalition of newspaper industry lobbyists and progressive politicians who are explicitly hostile to understanding the simplest economic principles. To illustrate the absurdity, imagine if a newspaper had a community section containing blurbs about upcoming local events. Some well-meaning politician comes in and says that the newspaper should pay $10 to every event they feature, because they're benefitting from selling ads on the next page. The obvious outcome would be for the newspaper to decide that it's just not worth the trouble and remove the community events page. Now everyone is crying and blaming the rich evil newspaper because the events are struggling with less attendance than before. It turns out that having free links to their stories all over social media really was beneficial to the media, and they were the ones who would be harmed the most by punishing social media companies for allowing it. I've even seen news organizations' official accounts posting obfuscated links to their stories to get around the ban. Why would they do that, if the core premise that uncompensated links are "stealing" were even remotely close to being true?

SpecialistK 2y ago
Very well put. The whole legislation is completely backwards to how the web has always worked. I run a website. I can pay Google, MS, Meta, etc money to make my site show up higher in search results. Or gain an audience through SEO and organic growth, including on social media. I'm happy when someone shares a link to it, because that means more eyeballs on what I'm putting out. Then I can choose if and how to monetize it. By suggesting that this harms the publisher makes no sense. Why would anyone ever pay for Google sponsored search results if it's harmful to their business? The lobbyists and politicians have framed it as "using" or "stealing" the content, which is an outright lie: reproducing content without permission is already covered by copyright law. Many of these news sites even have abstracts and social cards specifically for preview when shared. The other analogy I like is "journalists drink coffee when writing. Starbucks has lots of money. Let's force Starbucks to give journalists free coffee, and a dollar out of their till whenever a journalist walks in." It's backwards! Offensively so! If these publishers didn't want their content on Facebook or Google, they can use paywalls, robots.txt, or referral blocks to stop it showing up. But none did - they just wanted to bite the hand that feeds for a few bucks, and we see how well that worked out for them.
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- seryoiupfurds 2y ago
  Yes! The only argument I could ever get out of supporters of this law was "but they're billion-dollar corporations, they should pay their fair share!" Well fine, then adjust the corporate tax rate however you like -- but don't be surprised when the corporations you just described as self-interested and greedy react in the obvious way to a brand new, explicitly created economic disincentive.
  - nemothekid 2y ago
    >"but they're billion-dollar corporations, they should pay their fair share!" I don't think this is an invalid argument. This is arguable how YouTube works. One thing that is very interesting about Meta is that they have side-stepped the need to actually invest in content. There's nothing wrong with saying "my content drove eyeballs to your platform, so give me a cut of the ad revenue". I think the bigger issue is, we have decided the marginal cost of journalism is nearly 0
    - Spivak 2y ago
      YouTube pays because they're displaying copyrighted works. I don't think even the worst case— displaying opengraph tags that sites have to opt into, meets the bar for reproduction of a copyrighted work. I mean we're talking about linking here. It's not that the marginal cost of journalism is a pittance, but that the marginal value to a social network of links to a few news sites is actually zero. I would take a bet that if social networks just up and banned all external links period it would be at worst revenue neutral.
      - nemothekid 2y ago
yc_anus 2y ago
[dead]
eddythompson80 2y ago
This is not really a dry cut. There are people that pay to be on a talkshow or in a newspaper or to perform in an event. Then there are people who get paid to do the same. It all has to do with the economics of the situation. In this case, those big newspapers were betting that they drive a large portion of Facebook engagement in Canada, so they wanted a cut. Facebook didn't think so. It's trying to find the answer to the question "How many people use Facebook because that's where they get their news?" vs "How many people get the news because they happen to be on Facebook?"
- zitterbewegung 2y ago
  I think it’s more apparent that this shows “for how many people Facebook is the internet to them”.
fmajid 2y ago
It was an attempt to replicate similar legislation in Australia. The difference is Rupert Murdoch is almighty in Australian politics and any retorsion of the kind Meta deployed in Canada would have been met with stern reprisals from the supine government. No media group has that kind of power in Canada.
- slyall 2y ago
  Meta gave notice at the start of 2024 that it wouldn't renew it's agreements in Australia when they expire. It looks like the agreements have expired in the last few weeks and things are working their way through a process.
  - fmajid 2y ago
    Good, the Canadian example gives them the ability to tell Murdoch to buzz off.
II2II 2y ago
One flaw with the comparison is that event organizers submit their upcoming events to the newspaper and may even agree to an interview if the newspaper thought it worthy enough to write their own blurb. In some cases the event organizers will be paying to appear in the events list. Notice how the event organizers are making most of the decisions. The incentives are also completely different. Those events lists are promotional tools in the eyes of event organizers. They benefit from being in them. With respect to news organizations and social media, they (or at least a subset of them) felt that social media companies were receiving a disproportionate benefit from their product. What resulted was a battle of the titans, where pretty much everyone loses out. It's important to remember that bit about titans. Both the news organizations and social media companies are taking their stance to benefit themselves, not consumers.
- seryoiupfurds 2y ago
  News organisations would routinely post links to their latest stories using their official social media accounts. Don't you think they would have stopped if they felt they were being harmed by it?
  - II2II 2y ago
    That's why I made the comment about disproportionate benefit. It is clear that news organizations want, or at least feel compelled, to use social media as a promotional tool under some circumstances. Yet they don't like the terms that social media sites offer them. In some respects, I don't blame them. If most people just skim the headlines and never click through to read the article, newspapers would be better served by their readership going to their own landing page. The other option is to recognize that the title and summary have intrinsic value, in which case the news organizations should have the right to request compensation. I realize that there are other factors to consider here. For example: end users sharing links, either as information or to solicit discussion, should be considered a form of expression. Unfortunately, the business interests of social media sites muddies the waters.
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hackerbeat 2y ago
What you don’t consider is that FB is heavily profiting from professionally created content that takes a lot of money to create, with many users just skimming the headlines without ever clicking through. In short, just another billionaire profiting off of other people’s work without ever paying for it. Those new AI companies, which are also conducting large-scale theft, are no different and should either seize operation or also start paying their fair share.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > In short, just another billionaire profiting off of other people’s work without ever paying for it. Why are the news orgs unhappy after Facebook stopped doing it?
  - hackerbeat 2y ago
    How do you know they’re unhappy?
    - seryoiupfurds 2y ago
      Because they're constantly posting articles whining that "Meta's news ban" is killing the media.
      - hackerbeat 2y ago
        Yeah, but Meta wasn’t willing to pay for it. Why should power-hungry Zuck get everything for free when YouTube, for example, is giving everyone a cut?
        EQYV 2y ago
        Well, maybe he shouldn’t but it seems he’d rather not deal with this problem at all and now we have the status quo. That has to be a situation you’re willing to accept, unless you’re saying Facebook should be forced to allow news, and be forced to pay for it.
jszymborski 2y ago
> progressive politicians I would characterize the current gov't as staunchly neolib. The Trudeau gov't has listened with great attention to all corpo lobbyists from oil & gas to big media groups, so I don't think "hostile to economic principles" particularly applies eotber.
aaplok 2y ago
Now imagine that the newspaper not only has a page on community events but starts selling tickets for those events. Some well-meaning politician comes in and says that the newspaper should pay a portion of the ticket sale to the organisers. So the newspaper stops advertising the event in their pages, and the event starts struggling with less attendance than before. Analogies are nice, but one should always be cautious that they don't oversimplify the issue.

SpecialistK 2y ago

Very well put. The whole legislation is completely backwards to how the web has always worked. I run a website. I can pay Google, MS, Meta, etc money to make my site show up higher in search results. Or gain an audience through SEO and organic growth, including on social media. I'm happy when someone shares a link to it, because that means more eyeballs on what I'm putting out. Then I can choose if and how to monetize it. By suggesting that this harms the publisher makes no sense. Why would anyone ever pay for Google sponsored search results if it's harmful to their business? The lobbyists and politicians have framed it as "using" or "stealing" the content, which is an outright lie: reproducing content without permission is already covered by copyright law. Many of these news sites even have abstracts and social cards specifically for preview when shared. The other analogy I like is "journalists drink coffee when writing. Starbucks has lots of money. Let's force Starbucks to give journalists free coffee, and a dollar out of their till whenever a journalist walks in." It's backwards! Offensively so! If these publishers didn't want their content on Facebook or Google, they can use paywalls, robots.txt, or referral blocks to stop it showing up. But none did - they just wanted to bite the hand that feeds for a few bucks, and we see how well that worked out for them.

deleted 2y ago
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seryoiupfurds 2y ago
Yes! The only argument I could ever get out of supporters of this law was "but they're billion-dollar corporations, they should pay their fair share!" Well fine, then adjust the corporate tax rate however you like -- but don't be surprised when the corporations you just described as self-interested and greedy react in the obvious way to a brand new, explicitly created economic disincentive.
- nemothekid 2y ago
  >"but they're billion-dollar corporations, they should pay their fair share!" I don't think this is an invalid argument. This is arguable how YouTube works. One thing that is very interesting about Meta is that they have side-stepped the need to actually invest in content. There's nothing wrong with saying "my content drove eyeballs to your platform, so give me a cut of the ad revenue". I think the bigger issue is, we have decided the marginal cost of journalism is nearly 0
  - Spivak 2y ago
    YouTube pays because they're displaying copyrighted works. I don't think even the worst case— displaying opengraph tags that sites have to opt into, meets the bar for reproduction of a copyrighted work. I mean we're talking about linking here. It's not that the marginal cost of journalism is a pittance, but that the marginal value to a social network of links to a few news sites is actually zero. I would take a bet that if social networks just up and banned all external links period it would be at worst revenue neutral.
    - nemothekid 2y ago

yc_anus 2y ago

[dead]

eddythompson80 2y ago

This is not really a dry cut. There are people that pay to be on a talkshow or in a newspaper or to perform in an event. Then there are people who get paid to do the same. It all has to do with the economics of the situation. In this case, those big newspapers were betting that they drive a large portion of Facebook engagement in Canada, so they wanted a cut. Facebook didn't think so. It's trying to find the answer to the question "How many people use Facebook because that's where they get their news?" vs "How many people get the news because they happen to be on Facebook?"

zitterbewegung 2y ago
I think it’s more apparent that this shows “for how many people Facebook is the internet to them”.

fmajid 2y ago

It was an attempt to replicate similar legislation in Australia. The difference is Rupert Murdoch is almighty in Australian politics and any retorsion of the kind Meta deployed in Canada would have been met with stern reprisals from the supine government. No media group has that kind of power in Canada.

slyall 2y ago
Meta gave notice at the start of 2024 that it wouldn't renew it's agreements in Australia when they expire. It looks like the agreements have expired in the last few weeks and things are working their way through a process.
- fmajid 2y ago
  Good, the Canadian example gives them the ability to tell Murdoch to buzz off.

II2II 2y ago

One flaw with the comparison is that event organizers submit their upcoming events to the newspaper and may even agree to an interview if the newspaper thought it worthy enough to write their own blurb. In some cases the event organizers will be paying to appear in the events list. Notice how the event organizers are making most of the decisions. The incentives are also completely different. Those events lists are promotional tools in the eyes of event organizers. They benefit from being in them. With respect to news organizations and social media, they (or at least a subset of them) felt that social media companies were receiving a disproportionate benefit from their product. What resulted was a battle of the titans, where pretty much everyone loses out. It's important to remember that bit about titans. Both the news organizations and social media companies are taking their stance to benefit themselves, not consumers.

seryoiupfurds 2y ago
News organisations would routinely post links to their latest stories using their official social media accounts. Don't you think they would have stopped if they felt they were being harmed by it?
- II2II 2y ago
  That's why I made the comment about disproportionate benefit. It is clear that news organizations want, or at least feel compelled, to use social media as a promotional tool under some circumstances. Yet they don't like the terms that social media sites offer them. In some respects, I don't blame them. If most people just skim the headlines and never click through to read the article, newspapers would be better served by their readership going to their own landing page. The other option is to recognize that the title and summary have intrinsic value, in which case the news organizations should have the right to request compensation. I realize that there are other factors to consider here. For example: end users sharing links, either as information or to solicit discussion, should be considered a form of expression. Unfortunately, the business interests of social media sites muddies the waters.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

hackerbeat 2y ago

What you don’t consider is that FB is heavily profiting from professionally created content that takes a lot of money to create, with many users just skimming the headlines without ever clicking through. In short, just another billionaire profiting off of other people’s work without ever paying for it. Those new AI companies, which are also conducting large-scale theft, are no different and should either seize operation or also start paying their fair share.

robertlagrant 2y ago
> In short, just another billionaire profiting off of other people’s work without ever paying for it. Why are the news orgs unhappy after Facebook stopped doing it?
- hackerbeat 2y ago
  How do you know they’re unhappy?
  - seryoiupfurds 2y ago
    Because they're constantly posting articles whining that "Meta's news ban" is killing the media.
    - hackerbeat 2y ago
      Yeah, but Meta wasn’t willing to pay for it. Why should power-hungry Zuck get everything for free when YouTube, for example, is giving everyone a cut?
      - EQYV 2y ago
        Well, maybe he shouldn’t but it seems he’d rather not deal with this problem at all and now we have the status quo. That has to be a situation you’re willing to accept, unless you’re saying Facebook should be forced to allow news, and be forced to pay for it.

jszymborski 2y ago

> progressive politicians I would characterize the current gov't as staunchly neolib. The Trudeau gov't has listened with great attention to all corpo lobbyists from oil & gas to big media groups, so I don't think "hostile to economic principles" particularly applies eotber.

aaplok 2y ago

Now imagine that the newspaper not only has a page on community events but starts selling tickets for those events. Some well-meaning politician comes in and says that the newspaper should pay a portion of the ticket sale to the organisers. So the newspaper stops advertising the event in their pages, and the event starts struggling with less attendance than before. Analogies are nice, but one should always be cautious that they don't oversimplify the issue.