‘Disaster’: warning for democracy as experts condemn Meta over Canada news ban
‘Disaster’: warning for democracy as experts condemn Meta over Canada news ban
Retaliatory move against Online News Act is ‘epic miscalculation’ that will promote spread of misinformation, analysts say
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I am no fan of Meta.
But..
This is maybe 10% meta's fault, but 90% the government's.
The law they passed was completely ridiculous in that it would force meta and others to pay Canadian news companies for each link posted. A concept that anyone with an understanding of either the internet or economics could have told you would lead to the situation we are in now.
Any business would react the same way and the have publicly been saying this is what they would do since the law was in the planning/proposal phase. Experts have likewise predicted this. But the government here seemed to think that nobody would dare defy the 'mighty' Canadian government. The fact is we have a smaller population than California alone, and it's not worth it for meta or other companies to comply with this law.
It's almost like the feds here watched the "Canada wants some of that internet money" episode of South Park and thought "great idea!!"
Reminder that Canadian media actually lobbied for this. They spent like two years calling Zuckerberg a thief for displaying news articles on Facebook.
This isn't the result of the government just doing a random thing. They did what they were asked to do by the media outlets.
The media outlets aren't going to get what they want, but this still seems like a potentially good thing for users. After all, it's not just Canadian media sites that are being black listed.
Agreed! The media in Canada asked for this, expecting a big payday and now they are getting screwed (fewer eyeballs means less money from advertising) with themselves to blame.
News companies are now free from pleasing a billionaires gamed algorithm and can find better ways to market themselves. Starting a Fediverse server would be a good way to begin.
100%
It's like, 0% metas fault (and it's not even that I'm not a fan... I viscerally hate them as a company. I do not have a Facebook account)
They're a company and they're obligated to maximize the return on investment of their shareholders. That's it. Full stop.
They crunched the numbers and the cost of compensating for the links outweighs the value of the links. They are obligated to make this decision.
Western governments are absolutely reaping what they've sown. Pathetic anti-trust enforcement and the evisceration of ACTUAL public services (who are instead of shareholders, are obligated to serve the public interest) have put us here.
In a healthy country, "Meta no longer posting news links" would be met with a "so what?". The fact that anyone gives a shit is evidence of a failure of the government to protect the social infrastructure of this nation.
And, it's not the just the liberals fault. They're just the ones still standing when the music stopped.
Indeed. The world is rife with situations where people go "I don't care if it makes sense, I just want money" and this was clearly one of them.
If news companies want to make money off of the content they've posted, it behooves them to find ways to do that themselves. Paywall it, put advertising on it, use it as a loss leader for other paid services. Putting it up on a billboard and then running around demanding cash from anyone that looks at it is just dumb. I fully support telling them no.
Australia went through a similar thing. Facebook got what they wanted after a few days.
They didn't cave Facebook reached an agreement with the News outlets. It says to a total of 200 million AUD to various news outlets. And Facebooks problem with the bill is there was no limit to how much they could pay.
Sensational news articles like this are also expected in the fallout. Most news companies in Canada lobbied for the change and simply hoped that big players would cave right away. But now that Meta and Alphabet have announced that they'll block news in Canada (a predictable response), news companies are realizing the impact it'll actually have on them and the amount of lossed revenue it'll entail if things don't work out the way the want them to. They're basically crapping their pants and writing up these types of headlines to pressure Meta/Alphabet as a last-ditch effort.
The money would go to the news companies, NOT the government.
But it's not what happened in Australia when they did this. So saying it is the expected outcome after the fact fact is a little easy.