It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google

#21

Post by qsort » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 12:47 AM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #4

> For too long, journalists have given away their stories for free in exchange for distribution by the duopoly. The news industry does not "give" their stories to Facebook or Google. It allows the placement of links to the stories on those sites. (I use the term "allow" loosely, since in many jurisdictions they do not have the right to restrict in-linking.) The news industry is free to try to prevent in-linking. The…

This. The claim Google/Facebook are stealing from the news industry is neither here nor there, they want those stories to appear on social media/search results; if they didn't, they could just paywall their entire websites.

They are just trying to cry loud enough that the government will intervene, pretty much like their colleagues here in the EU.

Re: It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google

#22

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 12:49 AM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

benjaminl wrote: post #12

Towards the end of the post we find out why they want to block news links from Facebook and Google, they are setting up a competing platform. “That’s why we’re building Forth, a news-first platform that pays journalists for their work and offers the audience concise updates with context -- from the reporters they trust. All revenue generated on Forth is shared with our news partners. We only allow trusted and credibl…

Is there any news organization that has deliberately removed themselves from Google that you (or anyone else) know of? As you can de-index your site if this is a problem for you. I am just not aware of any organization that has done it.

The problem with monopolies is that no matter how harmful they are, you can't afford to separate from them.

The very fact that news publishers aren't doing this despite the raw deal they're getting from Google is conclusive proof that the law must intervene against Google and Facebook.

Re: It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google

#23

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 12:51 AM UTC

joegahona wrote: post #13

> We only allow trusted and credible journalists (vetted by our editorial team) to publish to the platform. "Vetted by our editorial team" sounds insanely slow, which will be an excuse when biased Forth staff don't want to approve writers they don't personally like.

Accepting properly vetted anything should be slow!

I mean, honestly, if a website can just pop up online, call itself a news site, and start being almost immediately in news feeds, that's a major problem.

Re: It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google

#24

Post by imgabe » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 12:51 AM UTC

People aren't going to pay for news because the news doesn't provide anything of immediate value for most people. At best, it provides some momentary entertainment. This can be easily replaced by any number of free sources. Mostly it provides negative value in the form of stressing people out about things they have little control over.

In the aggregate, the news does provide value to society (theoretically) by informing the populace about things the government and large corporations are doing. But this value is not immediately useful to an individual.

My own proposal is that the news should have a time-limited paywall. Say, pay to have the news as soon as it's available, then after a day or a week make it freely available to anyone. If knowing about a political scandal or corporate merger is actually important to the day-to-day business of your life, you will probably pay to have access to that information asap. If not, you can learn about it later with plenty of time for it to still inform your voting or consumer decisions.

https://tiltingatwindmills.dev/lets-fix-the-news/

Re: It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google

#25

Post by obiefernandez » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 12:52 AM UTC

What the governments need to do is just ban news content from social media, period.

Re: It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google

#26

Post by AaronNewcomer » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 12:52 AM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #22

MattGaiser wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any news organization that has deliberately removed themselves from Google that you (or anyone else) know of? As you can de-index your site if this is a problem for you. I am just not aware of any organization that has done it.

The problem with monopolies is that no matter how harmful they are, you can't afford to separate from them. The very fact that news publishers aren't doing this despite the raw deal they're getting from Google is conclusive proof that the law must intervene against Google and Facebook.

There are so many websites I visit because they were linked somewhere. I’m sure if Google stopped listing these websites I would never purposely visit la times or Washington post. Or especially local affiliate websites when there is some breaking news somewhere local. Who would know to go there?

I can only imagine it would be even more of a death blow to any news website that is local rather than national and not a top news source that people know by name enough to type in.

Re: It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google

#27

Post by mk_chan » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 12:59 AM UTC

It's a tight rope arguing who deserves what when a lot of business are built on this chain of platforms (like a supply chain). News agencies have many channels, probably some of the largest being FB and G (hence this post) and now they're looking to cut out the middle man because they believe it doesn't provide them value and apparently detracts from it. However, note that there's an inversion of power at some point when a platform becomes much bigger than its customers. News agencies will pretty much die out without G and FB (if they are indeed by far the largest channels) because someone will just post the news from their platform onto G and FB obfuscated enough to bypass copyright because people want news on G and FB.

It stopped being about "I want news, oh cool G and FB have it!" And started being about "I read news on G and FB. What is this WSJ you are talking about" a long time ago.

Platform inversion of power taken to its extreme, some might even say perhaps Google and Facebook should demand revenue share from ISPs and computer/mobile manufacturers for incentivizing people to buy plans and devices to get on the internet?

Re: It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google

#28

Post by arthurcolle » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 1:07 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #8

arthurcolle wrote: post #3

You should just incentivize publishers to use Substack, which actually has the backing and has a good option (publishers can choose to publish for free or by inducing for-profit viewership) and writers don't have to pay. This is a much better option than another no-name entity.

I don't think that replacing one centralized rentseeking publisher with a different one is an improvement. We need better distribution models, not different bosses.

Substack is certainly immediately better than Medium.

Re: It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google

#29

Post by arthurcolle » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 1:07 AM UTC

ryanobjc wrote: post #10

arthurcolle wrote: post #3

You should just incentivize publishers to use Substack, which actually has the backing and has a good option (publishers can choose to publish for free or by inducing for-profit viewership) and writers don't have to pay. This is a much better option than another no-name entity.

We don’t need a thousand damned subscriptions each trying to kill us from the death of a thousand paper cuts. There’s no future for sub space. I want to toss down my quarter and move on without leaving my data and email address for someone to milk.

I agree, but I'd rather use something that actually has working economics, than a Medium-like model that forces everyone to pay for stuff they might not read.

Re: It’s time to remove news from Facebook and Google

#30

Post by BLKNSLVR » Mon, Nov 30, 2020, 1:13 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #6

Legislative force in Australia is driving this change. The government is at odds with public broadcasters. Initially they excluded them from receiving revenue from linkage. They backtracked, but I fear for the consequence: I believe they will use this to introduce cost saving de-funding of public broadcasting. Its "be careful what you wish for" stuff. Also, we have a fight with a union-pension-fund backed news outlet…

Stratechery did a great breakdown of the proposed Australian legislation[0]. Worth the read.

In Australia, I'm not sure about elsewhere, but Google's News service shows a headline, sometimes a picture, and then a link to the original article. I just can't see what value is supposedly being redirected.

[0]:https://stratechery.com/2020/australias-news-media-bargainin...

Disclaimer: I pay for a subscription to the news service Crikey, and it's worth every penny. I read the ABC news website on a daily basis, and I avoid News Corp. services other than for reasons of "know thy enemy".