[HN Gopher] Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with F...
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Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and
Instagram
Author : bparsons
Score : 101 points
Date : 2023-07-05 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nationalpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nationalpost.com)
| stewx wrote:
| The TLDR of this issue:
|
| Canadian govt: When someone posts a link to a news article on
| Facebook, that is like stealing from that news publisher.
|
| Facebook: Your logic makes no sense, but okay, we will stop doing
| that.
|
| Govt: No, we don't want you to stop posting the links, we want
| you to pay a fee every time someone posts a link.
|
| Facebook: No thank you.
|
| Govt: You're bullying us and behaving irresponsibly! We won't
| stand for it!
| jamincan wrote:
| Isn't the issue that Facebook/Google don't just share the link,
| they share the content behind the link as well?
| bregma wrote:
| Yes. These advertising companies extract the excess wealth
| created by the labour of the news-reporting media without
| compensation. The people of Canada decided that this is
| unfair and not in their best interest. The advertising
| companies decided it is not in their best interest to pay the
| cost of leverage that resource for their wealth-extraction
| strategies and are going to discontinue it.
|
| Everyone wins.
| stewx wrote:
| > These advertising companies extract the excess wealth
| created by the labour of the news-reporting media without
| compensation.
|
| I can't tell if this is serious or sarcasm. If it is
| serious, can you explain how Facebook and Google are
| getting rich from including links to news web sites on
| their platforms? I haven't seen any evidence of this. On
| the contrary, platforms like Facebook drive a lot of
| traffic to news sites, which becomes ad revenue for the
| news publishers.
|
| > The people of Canada decided that this is unfair
|
| Is there some polling to support this assertion? People may
| want to "stick it to Big Tech" but most of the support for
| this policy has come from legacy media who think that it
| will bring in free money for them.
| stewx wrote:
| No, the entire complaint about Facebook and Google is the
| _links_ themselves. It 's not anything about embedding
| articles (which I don't think either company does). They just
| show the headline and article metadata provided by the news
| publishers.
| tomComb wrote:
| There are places where they embed the news itself, but
| that's a separate issue that's already been resolved - they
| pay the publishers for that. Ironically, one of the results
| of bill C 18 is that those existing deals will get
| cancelled.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Isn 't the issue that Facebook/Google don't just share the
| link, they share the content behind the link as well_
|
| The fundamental issue is they "stole" the classified section
| that paid for the content. (Secondarily, they commoditized
| the content by owning the discussion around it.)
|
| All that said, this is a solution that only makes sense to
| folks in media. The right one is a tax that funds a subsidy
| for news.
| adjav wrote:
| > The right one is a tax that funds a subsidy for news.
|
| The thing here though is that the Canadian government
| _already does this_. I really don 't understand their logic
| with introducing this fee vs just raising the existing
| subsidy directly.
| fooster wrote:
| Don't they use this?
| https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/snippet
| halifaxbeard wrote:
| Close. Sharing it on Facebook means you'll comment on the
| story on Facebook and not on the linked website hosting the
| comment. Facebook gets the linger time to show you more ads
| but the organization doing the actual reporting misses out.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| If someone didn't read the article, then why would you
| expect them to spend time on your website?
|
| This seems really odd to me.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| The text of the bill includes "indexing" and "ranking" as
| equivalent to displaying. So even making them searchable
| (with just links) would cost FB/G.
|
| Also, the thumbnail/blurb is usually in the html head tag for
| use like this. You can literally set it to "click through to
| learn more" instead of a summary and FB would respect that.
| koboll wrote:
| "The party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past
| month."
|
| Oh no! Fifteen thousand dollars?! I'm sure Facebook is shaking
| and crying and will reverse their decision immediately.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| I think you should re-read the article.
|
| What you quoted seems to refer to what the Liberal Party of
| Canada itself was spending, and the article makes it sound like
| they plan to continue buying ads going forward.
|
| Farther down in the article, it also mentions recent spending
| by the federal government (rather than just the Liberal Party
| itself), and that amount is significantly larger.
| intunderflow wrote:
| On the plus side, if Canada double down and lose it will set a
| strong global precedent against these rent-seeking laws.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _"Facebook has decided to be unreasonable, irresponsible, and
| started blocking news,"_
|
| I don't feature news on my website. Am I also an unreasonable,
| irresponsible news blocker?
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| That should just be the default setting shouldn't it? Why are
| they wasting a bunch of money advertising on social media?
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Ironically, no FB users will be able to read about this from a
| Canadian news source.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Just the members in the media cartel. Still plenty of Canadian
| news sources just not ones demanding payment
| wvenable wrote:
| It's kind of weird to describe FB users as being in a cage
| where their browser is incapable of going anywhere else.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| But FB exactly wants users to stay within their "walled
| garden".
| wvenable wrote:
| There are no walls in this garden. They might want people
| to stay but they have to work for that.
| xdfil wrote:
| [dead]
| ipaddr wrote:
| I've never seen anyone appearing less qualified in parliament or
| interviews. Pablo Rodriguez isn't being roasted for his foolish
| responses and the Canadian media is losing credibility by taking
| sides. Seeing less national cartel linked media stories will do
| everyone good. The government not advertising on social media is
| positive.
| zpeti wrote:
| Oh no... bids for impressions will decrease in canada by:
| $0.00001.
|
| This is just silly, this is the least of facebook's worries.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd want my government spending money on ads anyway.
| gruez wrote:
| The government needs to get out messages to its citizens. If
| ads on facebook is more cost effective than sending out mailers
| or whatever, why shouldn't they spend money on facebook ads?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Who is living under a rock and not getting bombarded with
| political BS every second on FB but seeing FB ads from PBS?
|
| I'm just not sure that's a good forum for governments to try
| to get out a message.
| throw0101c wrote:
| If social media platforms can identify certain
| demographics, like those who smoke cigarettes, then why
| wouldn't the government use that to (e.g.) target ' _Would
| you like help to quit smoking?_ ' program availability ads
| to them?
|
| * https://www.ontario.ca/page/support-quit-smoking
|
| * https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/smoking-
| toba...
| rightbyte wrote:
| The government can put ads on the packages of cigarettes
| them self for free. Without the moral defeat of
| benefiting from spyware.
|
| Why would you want to waste tax money on Zuckerberg's
| mansions.
|
| Etc.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Because it selectively reaches only Facebook users. So the
| government can begin tailoring messages to certain
| demographics, for maximum "effect".
| BluePen7 wrote:
| Because our government doesn't understand technology and
| generally gets fleeced anytime they encounter it.
|
| Remember the Phenix pay system? It was an IBM project that
| was supposed to save us 70 million a year, instead they paid
| IBM an additional 2+ BILLION to try and fix the broken crap
| they'd delivered. Never even worked, they're currently taking
| bids to replace it already.
|
| 80% of public servants had pay issues, many were foreclosed
| on because they couldn't pay their mortgages, someone even
| killed themselves.
|
| And we expect the Canadian government to accurately determine
| ROI on digital ad spend? That's hard enough for skilled
| people in the space (some who have found it to have no effect
| altogether). Our government is simply going to be fleeced for
| every penny they have (and then some).
|
| Remember, these are the same people who shut down the CRA
| website every night. Can't even access your tax info after
| hours.
| derefr wrote:
| > Remember the Phenix pay system? It was an IBM project
| that was supposed to save us 70 million a year, instead
| they paid IBM an additional 2+ BILLION to try and fix the
| broken crap they'd delivered. Never even worked, they're
| currently taking bids to replace it already.
|
| Do you really believe that this was a result of bad in-the-
| moment decision-making at all levels, instead of a result
| of being trapped by previously-negotiated long-term vendor
| exclusivity agreements?
|
| (In my experience, governments are generally _good_ at
| cutting their losses -- they 're far more rational re: the
| sunk-cost fallacy than individual people are. So it would
| be surprising to me if this were true.)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Actually, they're as bad as everyone else at that, e.g,
| Obamacare website; state of Maine website; lots more.
|
| And then we have, by three or four orders of magnitude,
| the great Sunk Cost Fallacy of all time, by anyone ever:
|
| _Not ending World War One in 1915, 1916, or 1917_ : "All
| those lives and treasure we've spent! We have to get
| something for it."
|
| And so we had the Spanish Flu, which killed more than the
| combat deaths, and of course, the combat deaths.
|
| https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu
|
| Not to mention World War Two.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Sounds to me like you should fix those problems rather than
| just giving up altogether.
|
| The idea that there is something fundamental about
| governments that maeks them incapable of doing these things
| correctly is nonsense.
| bawolff wrote:
| Idk, if we could bring back the heritage minutes and the
| canadian house hippo, I'm all for it.
| vortext wrote:
| I don't agree with the bill, but yes, I don't want the
| government to spend money on Meta ads either.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Facebook holds all the power here. Canadian gov't ad spend is not
| a significant cudgel.
| grf27 wrote:
| Isn't the issue that Google/Facebook sell ads and make money from
| linking to news sources? And those news sources have their costs
| but don't see any income?
|
| I think about this often when I read a story on some small-town
| newspaper, and know that the newspaper is making nothing off of
| me and millions of others reading their story.
|
| Didn't Australia implement a similar law and get Google/Facebook
| to pay something?
|
| There's a similar issues with some news sites basically copying
| or rephrasing the content of a newspaper story. I've seen news
| stories by third-parties, where the story lists their source as
| "The New York Times"
|
| It's tough to figure out a way to compensate the people who
| create the news, and the people who disseminate the news.
| foogazi wrote:
| > And those news sources have their costs but don't see any
| income?
|
| Don't those news sources have ads too ? How are they making
| income from local views?
| babypuncher wrote:
| Because very few people click through to the article, they
| just read the headline, summary, and comments on Facebook.
| Facebook is capturing most of the economic value generated by
| these articles.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Reminds me of hackernews. I'm doing it now (commenting)
| without visiting the site because I'm aware of the story.
| Marsymars wrote:
| Eh, I'd content that most of the economic value is captured
| by users reading the articles. The comments and ads are
| near-zero-sum in the aggregate, if that.
| grf27 wrote:
| Yes they do. But the income from one story doesn't pay the
| cost to generate all the other stories that the paper
| produces. According to our local paper that just shut down,
| their ads couldn't compete with the ads on Google/Facebook.
|
| So the only profitable stories are very narrow, or the click-
| bait type that might be picked up by Facebook, assuming that
| Facebook doesn't just extract and show the core of the story.
|
| This isn't a new problem. A friend of mine used to do
| articles on historical issues and post them on his blog. They
| were good enough that there were other sites that would just
| copy them and change the byline to themselves. Grounds for a
| lawsuit, but the cost of the lawsuit and the tiny amount of
| damages made it impractical. Now he does the articles but
| tries to sell them to publishers. His income from that is now
| so tiny that it's no longer cost effective.
|
| Local papers now are money-losers, and the centralization of
| those many papers in the hands of a few corporations seems
| more to provide political influence than make money from
| news. In our recent election, the 160 papers owned by one
| corporation all made the same political endorsements.
|
| Australia's moves to charge for local news was a first, I
| think, and at the time there was comment that it could be the
| wave of the future. Google/Facebook have financial incentive
| to try to head off the same action in other countries.
| PulpNonfiction wrote:
| [dead]
| rossjudson wrote:
| If you'd like to understand what Google is actually _doing_
| with the news, it 's outlined here.
|
| https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/CHPC/Brief/B...
|
| And Jeff Elgie provides an informed view:
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/village-medias-c-18-update-je...
| darkclouds wrote:
| > I think about this often when I read a story on some small-
| town newspaper, and know that the newspaper is making nothing
| off of me and millions of others reading their story.
|
| How do you think University's and teachers feel? They teach
| millions of people who later go on to make lots of money off
| the efforts of the educational establishment and educator,
| although in this case I seem to remember Zuck dropped out.
|
| Perhaps Govt taught him, if you are big enough, you can do wtf
| you like, so maybe he's a modern day Robin Hood like figure?
| Robbing from the rich to give to the poor?
| halifaxbeard wrote:
| My understanding of the core issue is people aren't clicking
| through to read the article, but they're commenting on Facebook
| based on the headline. Facebook gets ad views and user-
| generated content/comments, and the organization doing the
| reporting sees nothing of the economic value generated in this
| scenario. (Hacker News is specialized in audience and news orgs
| generally aren't posting all their stories here)
|
| CBC tried to head this problem off by disabling comments on all
| their Facebook posts so people would comment on CBC.ca.
| wvenable wrote:
| My issue with this, is this a problem that needs to be
| solved? Do we need to guarantee monetization of every human
| interaction?
|
| If my friend and I go a cafe, see a newspaper headline, and
| have a discussion about that headline without ever opening
| that newspaper should the cafe have to pay for that
| discussion? Why should any media adjacent interaction
| anywhere happen without payment? If the cafe is playing
| music, they're paying licence fees for that. Why not
| everything?
| grf27 wrote:
| No, but if you're a government seeing your media industry
| shrinking because they can't make a profit to sustain
| themselves, meanwhile others are profiting off their work,
| then you want to try something, and I guess this is their
| attempt.
|
| One of the other solutions proposed was taxes on media
| aggregators. This is similar to the taxes on entertainment
| aggregators currently in place that pay into a fund that
| supports domestic entertainers. These approaches have lots
| of complications.
| wvenable wrote:
| The real threat to local news is Craigslist and Facebook
| marketplace. Local newspapers were mostly funded by their
| classifieds section. The news is merely to bring eyeballs
| to those ads.
|
| When the market for classifieds disappeared, there was no
| longer any financial support for local news.
|
| You could even argue that newspapers were only viable
| businesses because they had a monopoly over the local
| distribution of information. It was never the news itself
| that was profitable but being the local gatekeeper of
| that news. The Internet destroyed that entirely.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Local newspapers were mostly funded by their
| classifieds section.
|
| Local newspapers (at least in my US state) were mostly
| funded by their commercial ad placements, not by the
| classified section. Classified ad revenue and the
| purchase price of the paper were minority fractions of
| their revenue.
| wvenable wrote:
| Most reports have classified ads at at least 1/3 of total
| ad revenue for newspapers. Some sources show higher but
| none lower.
| delfinom wrote:
| > because they had a monopoly over the local distribution
| of information
|
| Not to worry, several US states still have draconian laws
| to keep the local newspaper in business. In NYS, when you
| start a LLC or corp, you have to publish an announcement
| in 2 papers in the state announcing it and get
| certificates from the paper proving it. Of course there
| are ever so convenient "business papers" to leech off it.
| Some law makers tried to change that a few years ago and
| queue the lobbyist outrage.
| wvenable wrote:
| Governments pick winners and losers. For all these laws,
| like this Canadian law and the one you mention, there are
| plenty of business models that disappear without anyone
| doing anything about it.
|
| I feel that if there is still a market for news then the
| market will figure it out. We should make laws encourage
| smaller players and avoid monopolies. Instead of making
| laws that transfer money from one giant corporation to
| another giant corporation. But that'll never happen
| because giant corporations have all the influence.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I actually don't think the Internet has been a good
| substitute for a local distribution of information. It's
| too global and too big. There's people who aren't from a
| neighborhood talking about it and skewing information
| about that neighborhood. Portland's supposed to be
| literally a BLM-flagged wasteland or something, y'know?
|
| I'd really love for there to be a local newspaper that
| tells me a new bakery opened in town, or that the
| elementary school passed a new measure for students, or
| that there's going to be an art exhibit presented by some
| local artists. I want to know when there are some foster
| kitties looking for temporary homes, and a little
| articles about people who go all-out on halloween decor.
| The internet doesn't give this to me, not without a load
| of muck.
| wvenable wrote:
| My go to solution for that was reddit.com/r/somecommunity
| which was local enough to have posts about lost cats and
| dogs.
|
| More than once local media near me has literally just
| published a story that was first posted as text to
| Reddit.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I've tried this strategy but often r/somecommunity is
| either never used by people who live there/is too small
| to be useful, but the bigger neighborhood/city is
| absolutely astroturfed by people who don't live there.
| wvenable wrote:
| I do live in a country with a disproportionately large
| Reddit population.
|
| I guess you just have to get everyone together in one
| place -- but that place could still be on the Internet.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I actually don't think the Internet has been a good
| substitute for a local distribution of information.
|
| It started off looking very promising for that sort of
| thing -- but when people fled for the likes of large
| social media properties, that killed things dead.
| Facebook, Reddit, etc., are very bad at encouraging local
| community.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| I'm a member if many local communities on Reddit and
| Facebook.
|
| Where I live, Facebook Marketplace is _the_ place to go
| to buy and sell used goods. And it is absolutely hopping
| in my community. So much waste is averted from landfills
| due to the platform Facebook provides, which has good
| search, and a reasonable UX.
|
| If all we had were the old school classifieds in the
| newspaper, I doubt nearly as much activity would happen.
|
| HN just loves to shit on social media and lament the fall
| of old school local news, but I think that's just rose
| coloured glasses.
|
| Through Facebook I do local second hand shopping, I
| discovered and am and member of several local niche
| sports and activity groups. And I see local news through
| the eyes and mouths of locals talking about it rather
| than what the one or two employed local journalists
| think.
|
| If all you do is scroll /r/all or your Instagram feed
| than sure you're not getting local info, but you get what
| you consume.
|
| And I say this as someone who doesn't like Meta/Facebook
| and would delete it in a heartbeat if there was a viable
| alternative, but the matter stands it _does_ support and
| encourage local communities and content in some places.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| The real threat to local news is national/international
| news. An organization selling a story to the entire
| anglosphere has an advantage over an organization trying
| to sell a story to just one town or country. Both stories
| cost about the same to write and distribute, but the
| story with [manufactured] international appeal has
| massively more earning potential. So newspapers with a
| focus on national news (NYTimes, WaPo) end up killing the
| local newspapers even in big cities like Chicago. And the
| same dynamic applies internationally; the organization
| which is best at manufacturing international interest for
| their stories will have an advantage over any
| organization that focuses on national news with national
| interest.
|
| If the intention is to get Canadians to focus more on
| local news, making Facebook pay to link to local news is
| completely backwards. Facebook will (and apparently has)
| simply transition to showing cheap international news.
| Instead, Canada should be making Facebook pay when
| linking to foreign news, or paying Facebook when linking
| to local news.
| delfinom wrote:
| I would argue many local papers could just be a monthly
| town newsletter. Lol.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is a perfect example of how people confuse causality
| and responsibility. They are not the same.
|
| Trying to monetize and compensate for every externality is
| absurd.
|
| If I make coffee at home that causes a coffee shop to lose
| out on Revenue. Surely I'm not responsible for paying the
| coffee shop for the Lost Revenue.
|
| If I do go to the coffee shop, should the coffee shop have
| to share their revenue with the car company because it gave
| me a reason to drive my car?
|
| In this case, social media makes money because people talk
| about news online instead of actually read it. This doesn't
| make social media companies responsible for the fact that
| no one wants to read a news article.
| fireflash38 wrote:
| Your analogy is flawed. It's like someone consuming
| coffee but not wanting the persons who grew the coffee
| beans/roasted/brewed it to be compensated.
| wvenable wrote:
| Your analogy is flawed. It's like someone _smelling_ the
| coffee but not wanting to compensate the person who grew
| /roasted/brewed the coffee.
| telotortium wrote:
| If the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed
| gave the beans away without asking for compensation
| because they hoped to obtain ad revenue, most people
| wouldn't go out of their way to pay the bean producers.
|
| Canadian news media (unlike the vast majority of US news
| media besides NPR and PBS) is very significantly
| government subsidized, so this bill is really a stealth
| tax on Meta and Google.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think it's like someone talking about coffee, because
| that's literally what they're doing, talking about the
| news.
|
| If people were actually consuming the news and reading
| articles, it wouldn't be an issue.
|
| Nobody wants to drink the nasty coffee, they just want to
| talk about how bad it is.
|
| If we want to be a hyperbolic about causality, both
| social media and news outlets should be paying the school
| shooters for creating the news
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| > My issue with this, is this a problem that needs to be
| solved? Do we need to guarantee monetization of every human
| interaction?
|
| The failure of traditional news funding models, and their
| replacement with clickbait, has already caused devastating
| damage to...well, to society in general, honestly, but
| certainly to anyone trying to produce a balanced,
| informative news service. I can't blame publishers for
| trying to find _something_ to keep them out of the Buzzfeed
| gutter.
|
| I don't think this idea actually helps at all. But I get
| why they're desperate.
| doublebind wrote:
| I believe the problem is that the situation you describe
| occurs on a much bigger scale. It's no longer you and your
| friend in the cafe; it's millions of people looking at the
| headline on the screen.
| wvenable wrote:
| The scale has always existed. Thousands of cafes filled
| with millions of people.
|
| Even on Facebook, if I comment on a headline it's still
| just me making that comment. I, singular, provide some
| value to Facebook by being there and no value to
| newspaper because I didn't click though. If Facebook
| didn't exist, the value I bring to the newspaper by not
| reading it is the same.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| In your example the cafe isn't monetizing the fact that you
| view the headline and comment, which inherently increases
| the advertising value of the cafe (i.e. more people won't
| come to the cafe because of the headlines and their need to
| comment on it) and which captures significantly more value
| than everyone else involved. You just read the headline, a
| few people buy the paper and everyone is equitable and
| happy.
|
| If Meta wants to pay 100% tax on their ad revenues to fund
| journalism, all they have to do is say so.
| wvenable wrote:
| This theoretical cafe is monetizing the fact that people
| come and hang out and have discussions and order some
| coffee. The place is filled with games and magazines and
| newspapers that anyone can open a view the advertising
| within. But I never bother, I just read the headlines and
| discuss those without ever looking inside.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > This theoretical cafe is monetizing the fact that
| people come and hang out and have discussions and order
| some coffee.
|
| Therein lies the difference.
|
| 1. People come and hang out - can't effectively do this
| on Meta sites, though their VR push seems aimed at trying
| to fulfill this need. I would also put "read the
| newspaper" under this category.
|
| 2. Have discussions - for varying definitions of
| "discussion", this is where Facebook is heavily
| monetized.
|
| 3. Order some coffee - again, can't effectively do that
| on any Meta sites.
|
| Given that parks exist without coffee shops, we can infer
| that 3 is what coffee shops are monetizing, while 1 and 2
| act as an additional enticement.
|
| The newspapers suffer because, even though YOU may only
| comment on the headlines, there are plenty of people who
| go to the coffee shop and don't think twice about buying
| the paper to read or do the crossword puzzle. The
| newspaper is able to monetize 1 and 2 and the coffeeshop
| monetizes 3 - everyone is equitable and happy. On
| Facebook, Facebook monetizes 2 and claims (without much
| proof) that they are providing 1 as a service to
| customers. No coffee is ever served - everyone but Meta
| is unhappy.
| wvenable wrote:
| A newspaper doesn't monetize #1 (People come and hang
| out). Facebook is, first and foremost, a social media
| platform. People go there to learn about what other
| people they know are doing. So the cafe and Facebook have
| the most in common there. The cafe monetizes that hang
| out by selling you coffee and Facebook monetizes that by
| showing you ads.
|
| Newspapers are very much secondary to both businesses.
| They enhance the experience but are not fundamental to
| it. They also both provide a service to those newspapers
| by providing a point of distribution. People might, as
| part of their experience in the cafe/Facebook, read the
| newspaper.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _My understanding of the core issue is people aren't
| clicking through to read the article, but they're commenting
| on Facebook based on the headline._
|
| If this is the meat of the matter, then how does asking
| Facebook to pay for links/headlines address the problem?
| Whether or not facebook pays for linking to news stories, the
| discussion on facebook remains vapid and the public isn't
| properly informed.
|
| Unless the idea was to make Facebook remove the
| links/headlines and drive traffic back to the news websites,
| which is what happened.. so why are they complaining now that
| it has played out that way?
| brailsafe wrote:
| * * *
| tensor wrote:
| Correct. Essentially the root of the issue is that the news
| sites believe that the value is in their article, but in
| reality for the majority of users the value is in the
| headline, which the news sites give away for free along with
| the link so that they can be indexed.
|
| In my opinion, the answer here is for the news sites to not
| show any headlines for free, and require a login to access
| all content. Then, they are free to negotiate with google and
| meta and others if those companies want access to the
| content. It wouldn't require any new laws.
|
| They would need to solve users being able to post links, but
| a link shortener of sorts forcing the user to write their own
| headline in the post would probably do the trick. Most people
| would still want to see the actual headline, and then they'd
| be forced to login or at least view the page.
|
| I'm very strongly against bill c18.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > [...] _but they're commenting on Facebook based on the
| headline._
|
| People have been not-reading and commenting since the early
| days of Slashdot. See also Reddit and HN. :)
| dmix wrote:
| Oh god, comment threads on news sites are some of the worst
| things on the internet. Never well designed, properly
| threaded, each requires a different login, etc.
|
| If that's the business they want to be in then they (and
| every other news site) completely sucks at it and there's a
| reason people want to talk on FB/Twitter instead beyond
| network effects.
| jsnell wrote:
| > Isn't the issue that Google/Facebook sell ads and make money
| from linking to news sources?
|
| No. The law would apply even if Google and Facebook showed no
| ads on a same page as a link to a news article, and made no
| money from them. (And in fact, e.g. Google News does not show
| any ads.)
|
| > Didn't Australia implement a similar law and get
| Google/Facebook to pay something?
|
| Not really, no. Australia passed a law but didn't actually make
| it apply to anyone. (Yes, seriously, the law is defined to
| apply to a set of companies that the government designates at
| their whim, and they've so far not designated any companies).
| The deals that Google/Meta made with Australian news companies
| are the same kinds of deals they've made in countries all over
| the world without such a law, including Canada.
|
| Those Australian deals will reportedly terminate if Google/Meta
| are designated as being in scope of the law, so now any news
| company with a deal has an incentive to argue against their
| designation while a company without a deal will argue for. In a
| similar vein, the deals in Canada are apparently going to be
| terminated due to this law.
| zsz wrote:
| Although I confess I haven't completely kept up with this
| development (meaning, what I am about to say may be entirely due
| to my own lack of relevant knowledge in this case), I have
| noticed that there are occasional references made to a similar
| law that was passed in Australia (last year?).
|
| Well, I'm surprised that no one's brought up a similar case that
| occurred in the EU and which focused primarily on Google's news
| aggregation service, rather than Meta's.
|
| One significant difference was that the publisher/holding company
| initiated and won the lawsuit against Google at the national
| level (see for example this EFF article from 2014:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop...
| ). From what I vaguely remember about the case, Google's ability
| to shut down its news service in Spain only (while keeping it
| running in neighboring countries) was what ultimately allowed it
| to demonstrate that the news aggregation service had benefitted
| the publishers rather than costing them revenue, because once
| they halted their aggregation service in Spain only, Internet
| traffic to the publications affected was substantially reduced. I
| assume the lawsuits in Australia and now Canada were initiated on
| a similar premise, i.e. that Google, et al. Were negatively
| impacting revenue, rather than bolstering it by referring
| additional traffic beyond what they would otherwise receive. In
| other words,
|
| In the European case, what happened next was that publishers,
| realizing they couldn't win at the national level (actually, they
| couldn't reasonably win at any level, since their principal claim
| had already been invalidated at the national level) took it up to
| the EU level. They still wanted to be paid of course, regardless
| of the validity of their allegation, so they figured that if they
| could get a law (or amendment) passed at the EU Commission level,
| then this would be binding for all member states--and Google's
| only response would be to shut down their aggregation service
| completely in the EU, or accept the demand to play for each news
| article headline/summary that was hosted on their site.
|
| The amendment that was ultimately passed was something quite
| byzantine as well, since it forbade any exceptions (to prevent
| Google from only hosting headlines that came from blogs or other,
| relatively unknown news services that were prepared to "forego"
| revenue (due to Google reducing their visitor count, as claimed),
| in return for the privilege of receiving tons of exposure for
| being hosted on Google's aggregator. The idea was (IIRC) was that
| there would be a pool of funds that would be disproportionately
| divided based on the relative portion of total traffic that each
| site received--which, needless to say, benefitted the big and
| well known publishers, while hurting the smaller ones (blogs)
| that didn't receive much money from this pool, but was still
| forced by law to participate in this scheme.
|
| Which brings me to the final point: if the law that was passed in
| Canada has anything in common with the EU law (ie to force Google
| to pay their "fair share"), then the case against Meta/Facebook
| is a legal extortion racket, sanctioned by the government.
|
| There were numerous articles, legal opinions, etc posted around
| that time, several by the EFF (again, based on my vague
| recollection).
| infamouscow wrote:
| Seeding control of the mainstream media narrative over this silly
| law is going to have hilarious implications for the future of the
| Canadian government.
|
| Most importantly, it's now 10x harder to control the narrative
| and for the government to manufacture consent.
| cryotopippto wrote:
| For this alone they will backtrack really fast.
| kneebonian wrote:
| It's cedeing not seeding.
| Wistar wrote:
| It's ceding not cedeing.
| adjav wrote:
| Note: This article is by the National Post, which is owned by
| PostMedia, who were one of the main backers of bill C18. Just
| something to keep in mind.
| woodruffw wrote:
| For those of us not from Canada[1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_News_Act
| gloryjulio wrote:
| Upvote this post for the context. In the oligarchy society of
| Canada, it's important to know who the big players are
| qqcqq wrote:
| There was another post that was on the front page earlier today
| that pretty much asked: if the [Canadian] government hates
| [Facebook] social media platform so much, why don't they just
| build their own? https://loeber.substack.com/p/10-why-is-there-
| no-government-...
|
| And I agree with the author that it's sort of weird that for all
| the handwringing and grandstanding these governments are doing,
| none of them are willing to build a replacement platform for
| their users
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Network effects aside, Governments can not build social media
| or any website competing with private markets (Even google with
| unlimited pockets gave up on G+). Government just trying to
| create a barebones micro-twitter straight from the rails
| tutorial will easily cost millions of dollars to the taxpayer.
| Animats wrote:
| Why was the government of Canada advertising on Facebook and
| Instagram anyway?
| version_five wrote:
| Canadian political parties, when in power (and it's not a
| partisan thing, they both do it) see fit to "advertise" their
| party under a thin veil of pretending to advertise government
| programs. The example that immediately comes to mind (despite
| my distain for the current government) is the former government
| who circa 2008 had advertising everywhere for their "economic
| action plan" and how it was helping us. It was partisan garbage
| paid for by taxpayers. They all do it.
| vkou wrote:
| Same reason it, and other governments advertise programs, PSAs,
| etc, on television, YouTube, etc. It reaches eyeballs.
| betaby wrote:
| We have tax-backed CBC for that (+other tax supported media)
| vkou wrote:
| Which doesn't reach people who don't watch CBC/listen to
| CBC radio. Many young people don't do either.
|
| Most government advertising is brand/awareness advertising,
| which is pretty cheap when other brands aren't competing
| for the same keywords as you.
|
| And the cost of running a government ad on CBC is non-zero.
| It could be occupying space used for a program people
| actually want to watch/listen to.
| kernal wrote:
| Tourism.
| Marsymars wrote:
| This is my take. Bad law, but the government should never have
| been advertising there in the first place.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| Nice. Less propaganda in my feed is a plus. Did they think this
| would somehow make me mad at Facebook? Thanks Zucc!
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| regimeld wrote:
| As a Canadian, I find the current government's policy on the
| internet to be very 1990's. I fully support Google's and Meta's
| decision to remove Canadian news from their platforms. This is a
| complete "own-goal" by the government.
| dmix wrote:
| Probably the biggest self-own in recent memory.
|
| I feel bad about the journos/web teams who have to suffer as a
| consequence of the current gov and the rich Canadian media
| aristocracy who pushed this through. But I can't say it's going
| to immediately impact my life. I'm not a particular fan of any
| of the Canadian media sites besides maybe the hyper local ones
| like CP24. Nor would I touch the Canadian subreddits with a ten
| foot pole to go discuss them (some of the worst parts of
| Reddit).
|
| Canadians are already obsessed with American news/politics
| anyway. They will just be fed slightly more of that than before
| on social media.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| If you believe in the force is only justified in response to
| force principle, what force is Facebook using against Canadian
| broadcasters to justify being forced to pay a ransom?
| kneebonian wrote:
| > "We've met both Google and Meta multiple times to better
| understand the concerns. We believe we have a path forward and
| we're willing to continue talking with the platforms," Rodriguez
| said. "We're convinced what Google is asking at this moment can
| be done through regulations."
|
| This here is the most concerning part. The government is making
| shady back room deals with large corporations. If I had to guess
| the nature of the deals is "we won't enforce anything or make you
| pay anything if you agree to ensure that stories that paint the
| government in an unfavorable light don't stick around."
|
| Even if that's not what the deal is like now that is what it is
| going to turn into.
| adjav wrote:
| Given that's exactly what ended up happening in Australia I
| wouldn't be surprised.
| chomp wrote:
| > Facebook has decided to be unreasonable, irresponsible, and
| started blocking news.
|
| Are they acting unreasonably though? There is a product, and the
| government rules it has a price. Isn't Facebook allowed to go,
| sorry, I don't like that price?
| fwlr wrote:
| If you analyze news as a product, it's entirely reasonable for
| Facebook to refuse a price they don't think is worth it. If you
| analyze news as something more like "a right to information" -
| "integral to the function of democracy", as it was taught to me
| in school - then it does start to look unreasonable. The
| Canadian government is simply equivocating between these two
| analyses as it suits them (one could ask, if access to news is
| so important, whether it's irresponsible and unreasonable for a
| government to try to charge a fee for it).
| bawolff wrote:
| > If you analyze news as something more like "a right to
| information" - "integral to the function of democracy",
|
| I don't get it - in this analysis would my local coffee shop
| have to buy and provide free newspapers to me?
|
| I'm all for access to free press being a fundamental right.
| Where you lose me is the part where a private corporation is
| supposed to subsidize the production of news for me.
| jtr1 wrote:
| Meta is not your local coffee shop.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| But your local coffee shop probably _does_ have a
| newspaper rack, so why is Facebook removing theirs such a
| big deal? Grab a newspaper the next time you get coffee.
| I don 't use any meta property at all and it hasn't
| impeded my ability to read the news.
| bawolff wrote:
| What is the relavent distinction?
| gameman144 wrote:
| It might be worthwhile to point out which bits of an
| analogy you take objection with when trying to refute an
| analogy. Meta is _not_ my local coffee shop, but for the
| sake of the argument it might be fine to interchange
| them. If it 's _not_ fine to compare them as such,
| pointing out what aspects you think break the comparison
| is helpful, since it lets others in the discussion try to
| come up with a better argument /analogy and elevate the
| discussion overall.
| bparsons wrote:
| Between 1949 and 1987, US private companies were forced to
| pay for and produce high quality news content under
| guidelines set by the federal government.
|
| One of the conditions of ABC, CBS and NBC being given
| access to the airwaves was that they had to produce and
| distribute high quality news broadcasts. News was
| considered a public good.
|
| From wikipedia:
|
| _The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required
| broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing
| controversial matters of public interest, and to air
| contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were
| given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views:
| It could be done through news segments, public affairs
| shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal
| time for opposing views but required that contrasting
| viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has
| been cited as a contributing factor in the rising level of
| party polarization in the United States._
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Even if you think newspapers are vital to democracy, that
| doesn't oblige other businesses to sell newspapers. These
| newspapers own their own distribution mechanisms (websites)
| that are unaffected by the decision of one third party
| website to part ways with them.
|
| Okay, but facebook is really ubiquitous so that makes it
| different... How is this any different from... the one
| grocery store in town removing their newspaper rack? It's
| _the one grocery store_ , everybody in town shops there so
| that makes it super important or something. But the
| newspapers are still free to mail their newspaper to
| everybody's front door. They still have their websites too,
| anybody who wants to read those newspapers can still do so.
| derefr wrote:
| It is, however, an interesting hypothetical to ask: if
| journalism itself is _entirely_ unprofitable, such that
| _all_ the newspaper companies eventually shut down, and
| private journalism stops being done -- then what should we,
| as a public, do to retain our duty to be informed? Can
| there be such a thing as "non-partisan state-sponsored
| media"?
| geodel wrote:
| If there were any enforceable duty to be informed. People
| would be buy newspaper subscriptions already to keep them
| running.
| betaby wrote:
| > if journalism itself is entirely unprofitable, such
| that all the newspaper companies eventually shut down
|
| CBC and many other are backed by tax money. Some (many)
| Canadians think that we overspend on CBC and other media
| subsidies.
|
| > Can there be such a thing as "non-partisan state-
| sponsored media"?
|
| It supposed to be CBC. Some (many) believe it fails its
| goal.
| vkou wrote:
| > Can there be such a thing as "non-partisan state-
| sponsored media"?
|
| You can add enough layers of indirection and semi-elected
| committees and cultural expectations to make it mostly
| non-partisan (Think the process for awarding government-
| funded research grants)[1], but a government devoted to
| turning it into a partisan organ can, with enough effort,
| eventually corrupt any such system.
|
| That's why you need to push back, and punish governments
| that are trying to shift cultural expectations that
| prevent weaponization of various public institutions.
|
| [1] The incentives for corrupting this are _far_ greater
| for media than they are for science, so I can 't expect
| it will work well in practice. PBS, NPR, CBC, BBC are
| always a political football for this reason.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Full disclosure, that's not the National Post saying this.
| That's a quote from Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez.
|
| The way you are quoting the remark, some might assume this is
| the National Post saying this when it's really NP quoting
| someone else. This isn't to imply you are misrepresenting
| anything.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| No FB fan but yeah exactly.
|
| Yet another confusing the definitions of "what is reasonable"
| and "what I think".
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| > Isn't Facebook allowed to go, sorry, I don't like that price?
|
| It really depends on the laws involved. If the government
| decides Facebook accepting certain terms is the cost of
| business, then Facebook doesn't get a say in it. Kind of like
| taxes. If you want to operate in a country, you're taxed
| accordingly. In general, you don't get to not pay a tax just
| because you don't want to.
|
| Basically, if the law allows, they can. Reasonability doesn't
| have a lot to do with things at the upper levels of government.
| ecshafer wrote:
| This isn't a tax though. This is mandating that company A
| sell company B's product, and also pay a set price, which may
| or may not be a fair price. Should a company be willing to
| happily go out of business because they are not allowed to
| sell at a fair market price?
|
| This is actually a step further into absurdity since Facebook
| is not selling news articles, they are merely linking them.
| Its the equivalent of the Government telling me I need to pay
| Nike $5 every time I say the word Nike to someone.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Kind of like taxes_
|
| A tax to fund a newspaper subsidy would make sense. This
| isn't a tax. It's mandated commerce. We usually restrict that
| for protecting protected classes.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I disagree with a lot of C-18 as-is, but I can't pretend like I'm
| not happy to see the fed gov't not spending ad dollars on Meta.
| smsm42 wrote:
| The funniest part:
|
| > But the Liberal government's decision does not extend to the
| party. Liberal Party of Canada spokesperson Parker Lund said in a
| statement that the party would continue to advertise on Meta-
| owned platforms. According to the company's ad library, the party
| spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month.
|
| So: we would not deal with FB because it's evil, unless of course
| it could help us personally to win the elections, in which case
| of course we'll deal with them. Taxpayer money is another
| business, this is what you use for posturing.
| stubybubs wrote:
| Honestly, it's pretty reasonable. This is what it looks like
| when you really treat your party as separate from governance.
| They are not using public funds for their advertising.
|
| Contrast this with the last Conservative government, which made
| all of its publicly funded announcements from "The Harper
| Government" instead of "The Government of Canada."
|
| https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2012/06/harper-governm...
| wilg wrote:
| Should HN pay National Post for linking to this article?
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