Meta “threatens” to pull news from Canadian users

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Lakados

[H]F Junkie
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So the Canadian government is in the process of adopting a bill that would make Meta, Google, and the likes follow the same rules the CRTC has laid out for news publishers.

They are mad they would be held accountable for user content and instead threatening to just block and remove it.

Sounds like a real loss to us up here… /s
 
4saken said:
So government approved news only, got it. Meta and Google are probably 100% for it.
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You’d think that but no it just means that if somebody posts a link to an article and they divert add revenue away from the site by injecting their own adds instead of the sites ones they have to pay a portion of that add revenue.
It also opens them to the same libel and slander laws that any other publisher is.
Few things like that but it mostly focuses on add revenue.

https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/third-reading
 
No, it’s just Meta and Google know a shakedown when they see one. The result will be predictable. News organizations will lose a ton of money because people won’t be able to access their content, but no doubt our fabulously intelligent government will ride to the rescue and extend even more taxpayer dollars to their “approved” list of news sources (like all real democracies do) and we’ll go back to watching over-the-air TV and reading the printed newspaper again like the old days.
 
Lakados said:
You’d think that but no it just means that if somebody posts a link to an article and they divert add revenue away from the site by injecting their own adds instead of the sites ones they have to pay a portion of that add revenue.
It also opens them to the same libel and slander laws that any other publisher is.
Few things like that but it mostly focuses on add revenue.

https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/third-reading
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My understanding is that it’s broader than that.

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2023/03...-drop-news-sharing-in-canada-under-bill-c-18/

The concern facing both Google and Facebook is very clear. Bill C-18 establishes a system of mandated payments for links. While the government often characterizes its approach as requiring compensation for using news, the reality of the bill is that it requires payment for linking, indexing or any other activity that is seen as “facilitating access to news.”
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I’d do the same thing Meta and Google are doing given this. Canadian news isn’t a big part of their business, so why deal with the headache? The big losers here will be Canadian news organizations and regular Canadians.
 
HockeyJon said:
we’ll go back to watching over-the-air TV and reading the printed newspaper again like the old days
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Ah yes, the OLD DAYS.... back when things were real, honest, and factual for the most part, instead of the over-hyped, over-sensationalized, mega-poopoo non-researched psycho-babble click bait that we live by nowadayz.....
 
HockeyJon said:
No, it’s just Meta and Google know a shakedown when they see one. The result will be predictable. News organizations will lose a ton of money because people won’t be able to access their content, but no doubt our fabulously intelligent government will ride to the rescue and extend even more taxpayer dollars to their “approved” list of news sources (like all real democracies do) and we’ll go back to watching over-the-air TV and reading the printed newspaper again like the old days.
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Username match reacting to a Canadian story.
 
You can see why they want it, to protect ad revenue for news companies. But I suspect it will do more harm than good.

It's a typical response when those governing have only a topical understanding of technology, and someone with some money comes along and lobbies for change X.

If it can be written in a such a way that a portion of possible revenue that would be made by Meta/Google when serving these links or someone posts it on Facebook, gets passed to the original news source, it shouldn't be hard to do and could be beneficial to keep those news sources going. I don't see anything wrong with them wanting some of the pie.
It isn't likely to be much, but it would be something. Google probably makes 1/4 cent for showing ad X alongside a post with a link to a valid journalism source. So if they pass along 1/10cent in that instance, they both make money.

Hell, they will probably just negotiate something like here is this much cash per month, allow us to post your news links. And it will be as simple as that, and not very expensive.
 
GoodBoy said:
You can see why they want it, to protect ad revenue for news companies. But I suspect it will do more harm than good.

It's a typical response when those governing have only a topical understanding of technology, and someone with some money comes along and lobbies for change X.

If it can be written in a such a way that a portion of possible revenue that would be made by Meta/Google when serving these links or someone posts it on Facebook, gets passed to the original news source, it shouldn't be hard to do and could be beneficial to keep those news sources going. I don't see anything wrong with them wanting some of the pie.
It isn't likely to be much, but it would be something. Google probably makes 1/4 cent for showing ad X alongside a post with a link to a valid journalism source. So if they pass along 1/10cent in that instance, they both make money.

Hell, they will probably just negotiate something like here is this much cash per month, allow us to post your news links. And it will be as simple as that, and not very expensive.
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Well, the current government in Canada is obsessed with big government and control, and they've surely got some kind of lobbyist right now seeing an opportunity to shake the tech companies down for money. We've already had legislation passed in Canada, with this government, that taxpayer money is now being redirected to fund news organizations selected by a committee of members put together by the government who decides who qualifies for government funding and who does not, because that doesn't introduce any clear conflict of interests with respect to freedom of the press or anything like that. Now they're seeing an opportunity to feed that same group.

The problem with this is they're talking about mandated payment for links. Meta or Google linking to a news website is not stealing their revenue. As a matter of fact, this is probably a key source of ad revenue for the news organization because it's the way people are accessing the story. It's different if they were talking about Meta or Google republishing the story on their platform with no way for the original news organization to get access to the ad money. As the legislation is written, this isn't that. It's a poorly written piece of legislation and a terrible idea, full stop. The objectives are clear. If I were Meta and Google, I'd be doing the same thing and just cutting it off, then waiting for the call from the Canadian government imploring them to find a way to open it up after Canadian news organizations see their revenue tank since no one can easily access their articles.
 
HockeyJon said:
The problem with this is they're talking about mandated payment for links. Meta or Google linking to a news website is not stealing their revenue. As a matter of fact, this is probably a key source of ad revenue for the news organization because it's the way people are accessing the story. It's different if they were talking about Meta or Google republishing the story on their platform with no way for the original news organization to get access to the ad money. As the legislation is written, this isn't that. It's a poorly written piece of legislation and a terrible idea, full stop. The objectives are clear. If I were Meta and Google, I'd be doing the same thing and just cutting it off, then waiting for the call from the Canadian government imploring them to find a way to open it up after Canadian news organizations see their revenue tank since no one can easily access their articles.
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I agree with this take. The very news organizations wanting to get paid for the links all host their own Facebook pages and post links to their news articles. So they're actively putting their content on Facebook and then complaining that they want to get paid by Facebook for the links on the Facebook service.

Right now they're seeing a drop in ad revenue. It's not hard to see why. People who go to their website see ads on the main page. Then they see ads when they go to an article. They go back to the main page for more ads, and then the next article for more ads. If they spend some time browsing around they can be shown dozens and dozens of ads by bouncing from page to page. Compare that to someone pulling a link from the news site facebook page and they're only seeing ads for the article itself, not the intervening pages. So, definitely less ad revenue.

That said, if they wanted to force people to their website they'd be trying to get Google and Facebook to block access to everything except their main page. But, since they know that's a disaster which will lead to them seeing an even bigger drop in revenue they're instead looking for Google and Facebook to start paying for those links. Links they, themselves, make really easy for people to post and they actively post themselves. I mean, they all have little Facebook, Twitter, etc icons on their websites for people to easily share their articles and yet they complain when those links show up on those sites.

They facilitate the very thing they're complaining about and politicians around the world are stupid enough to fall for it.
 
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