3 ms·

Does this mean HN will have to pay for all the links too? Tired of this overregulation

tekla 5mo ago
Why not? We the posters are providing free content and views and exposure for a VC fund worth billions of dollars. Why are we not getting kickbacks?
- notrealyme123 5mo ago
  Sounds ridiculous, but yes. They earn "something" via their exclusive advertisement spots here. I guess the daily active users are something else though.
- Scarblac 5mo ago
  Because you're doing it voluntarily.
  - dotcoma 5mo ago
    Agree. But, sadly, we live in a world in which so often what is obvious needs to be stated.
  - tekla 5mo ago
    Did I hallucinate several years of discourse about volunteer work on the internet should be paid? And that lefty types were yelling about how billionaire corps should compensate volunteer work because they clearly had money? Something starting from Reddit mods?
    - wholinator2 5mo ago
      I don't know if you read it but I've never heard such a thing and i do read the lefty sites sometimes.
    - Scarblac 5mo ago
      Sometimes but I've never seen commenting counted as work.
    - some_random 5mo ago
      Those conversations have definitely happened and while I have no clue what the lefty types settled on, in my opinion such internet volunteers should lose money.
cromka 5mo ago
Do you think Meta is asked to pay for the titles?
- stephen_g 5mo ago
  They are in Australia, and it’s probably safe to assume this law would be pretty similar to ours. In our version, Part 52B explicitly renders these three things as being exactly the same for the purposes of the law: (a) the content is reproduced on the service or is otherwise placed on the service; or (b) a link to the content is provided on the service; or (c) an extract of the content is provided on the service. Which quite literally means that they consider a post that only contains hyperlink (b) or a link and only a title (even just the title would fall under (c)) to be as bad as a social media site ripping off the whole article! This was the same conflation used by the supporters of the law and pretty much every news article about it before it was passed, basically all of which dishonestly claimed that social media sites were doing (a) when they were mostly only posting a title and sentence or two synopsis (that is supplied by the news site itself in its meta tags!!)
  - cromka 5mo ago
    Fair enough. Wonder what Italians want to do. I searched briefly and all I could find was "content", which I assumed were actual extracts.
bilekas 5mo ago
> Tired of this overregulation Why ? When the alternative is to let companies to whatever makes the number go up at the expense of everyone else, regulation is the only thing to protect normal people.
- this_user 5mo ago
  You are not protecting "normal people". These types of laws are nothing but attempts at rent seeking by dying legacy media companies that were too incompetent to figure out working digital strategies on their own. And they would already be dead without the traffic that big platforms like Meta and Google are sending their way. If you send traffic to some e-commerce platform through an affiliate link, you are the one who gets paid. These companies are instead trying to rig the system in such a way that the affiliate would be forced to pay them. It's an absurd and desperate proposal that deserves to be rejected.
  - buellerbueller 5mo ago
    >If you send traffic to some e-commerce platform through an affiliate link, you are the one who gets paid. These companies are instead trying to rig the system in such a way that the affiliate would be forced to pay them. It's an absurd and desperate proposal that deserves to be rejected. This isn't what is happening. People read the summarized headline/article on meta's turf and then don't go to the source article. If meta were just posting the link, it would be fine, but that isn't what is happening here.
    - abigail95 5mo ago
      Should HN links be compensated on a percentage of non-click-throughs? There are people who just come for the comments. Would you support this law being universal and not only applied to Meta/news?
      - buellerbueller 5mo ago
        HN links are not article summaries, so your question is not apt.
buellerbueller 5mo ago
Meta doesn't have to pay for the links. It's the summaries. I suspect the publishers would welcome the links, as they'd drive traffic and ad revenue. Instead, Meta is siphoning the revenue by summarizing the content.
- nitwit005 5mo ago
  While they cite the summaries as copyright infringement, news organizations have previously rejected removing them as a way to resolve things. They ultimately want money. Meta's fix has been to try to walk away from the news. They removed the news tab in some regions.
  - buellerbueller 4mo ago
    I think Meta walking away from news is doing the second best thing they could here, albeit cowardly. The best thing, imo would be that Meta has enough dev talent that they could just post the link and not the summary. It isn't for the publishers to decide what information a Meta user's post contains. In other words (IMO): rev share for summaries seems reasonable; a tax on links does not. It's like the way music handles sampling: there were many lawsuits that resulted in there being a clearing requirement for the cost of using a sample of a song in your music, e.g., Biz Markie vs. Gilbert O'Sullivan (1991).

tekla 5mo ago

Why not? We the posters are providing free content and views and exposure for a VC fund worth billions of dollars. Why are we not getting kickbacks?

notrealyme123 5mo ago
Sounds ridiculous, but yes. They earn "something" via their exclusive advertisement spots here. I guess the daily active users are something else though.
Scarblac 5mo ago
Because you're doing it voluntarily.
- dotcoma 5mo ago
  Agree. But, sadly, we live in a world in which so often what is obvious needs to be stated.
- tekla 5mo ago
  Did I hallucinate several years of discourse about volunteer work on the internet should be paid? And that lefty types were yelling about how billionaire corps should compensate volunteer work because they clearly had money? Something starting from Reddit mods?
  - wholinator2 5mo ago
    I don't know if you read it but I've never heard such a thing and i do read the lefty sites sometimes.
  - Scarblac 5mo ago
    Sometimes but I've never seen commenting counted as work.
  - some_random 5mo ago
    Those conversations have definitely happened and while I have no clue what the lefty types settled on, in my opinion such internet volunteers should lose money.

cromka 5mo ago

Do you think Meta is asked to pay for the titles?

stephen_g 5mo ago
They are in Australia, and it’s probably safe to assume this law would be pretty similar to ours. In our version, Part 52B explicitly renders these three things as being exactly the same for the purposes of the law: (a) the content is reproduced on the service or is otherwise placed on the service; or (b) a link to the content is provided on the service; or (c) an extract of the content is provided on the service. Which quite literally means that they consider a post that only contains hyperlink (b) or a link and only a title (even just the title would fall under (c)) to be as bad as a social media site ripping off the whole article! This was the same conflation used by the supporters of the law and pretty much every news article about it before it was passed, basically all of which dishonestly claimed that social media sites were doing (a) when they were mostly only posting a title and sentence or two synopsis (that is supplied by the news site itself in its meta tags!!)
- cromka 5mo ago
  Fair enough. Wonder what Italians want to do. I searched briefly and all I could find was "content", which I assumed were actual extracts.

bilekas 5mo ago

> Tired of this overregulation Why ? When the alternative is to let companies to whatever makes the number go up at the expense of everyone else, regulation is the only thing to protect normal people.

this_user 5mo ago
You are not protecting "normal people". These types of laws are nothing but attempts at rent seeking by dying legacy media companies that were too incompetent to figure out working digital strategies on their own. And they would already be dead without the traffic that big platforms like Meta and Google are sending their way. If you send traffic to some e-commerce platform through an affiliate link, you are the one who gets paid. These companies are instead trying to rig the system in such a way that the affiliate would be forced to pay them. It's an absurd and desperate proposal that deserves to be rejected.
- buellerbueller 5mo ago
  >If you send traffic to some e-commerce platform through an affiliate link, you are the one who gets paid. These companies are instead trying to rig the system in such a way that the affiliate would be forced to pay them. It's an absurd and desperate proposal that deserves to be rejected. This isn't what is happening. People read the summarized headline/article on meta's turf and then don't go to the source article. If meta were just posting the link, it would be fine, but that isn't what is happening here.
  - abigail95 5mo ago
    Should HN links be compensated on a percentage of non-click-throughs? There are people who just come for the comments. Would you support this law being universal and not only applied to Meta/news?
    - buellerbueller 5mo ago
      HN links are not article summaries, so your question is not apt.

buellerbueller 5mo ago

Meta doesn't have to pay for the links. It's the summaries. I suspect the publishers would welcome the links, as they'd drive traffic and ad revenue. Instead, Meta is siphoning the revenue by summarizing the content.

nitwit005 5mo ago
While they cite the summaries as copyright infringement, news organizations have previously rejected removing them as a way to resolve things. They ultimately want money. Meta's fix has been to try to walk away from the news. They removed the news tab in some regions.
- buellerbueller 4mo ago
  I think Meta walking away from news is doing the second best thing they could here, albeit cowardly. The best thing, imo would be that Meta has enough dev talent that they could just post the link and not the summary. It isn't for the publishers to decide what information a Meta user's post contains. In other words (IMO): rev share for summaries seems reasonable; a tax on links does not. It's like the way music handles sampling: there were many lawsuits that resulted in there being a clearing requirement for the cost of using a sample of a song in your music, e.g., Biz Markie vs. Gilbert O'Sullivan (1991).