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Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

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Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#61

Post by scarface_74 »

reaperducer wrote: post #54
dmayle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most ridiculous take on this that I've ever seen. Next you're going to say that newspaper stands need to pay a charge to the newspaper each time someone walks by their stall (or buys gum, for example). They have seen the headline, and then moved on. Very often a headline is all someone needs or wants. That has value. Without anyone buying that newspaper, the newspaper stand has got value from the headline…

The real problem is that newspapers would just like to take a percentage of Google revenue, because they're a big company. If that's the case, let Google do its own reporting and write its own headlines. It's not like it doesn't have the money. Problem solved.

That would be a great outcome for Google wouldn’t it? Just cover national news using paid reporters and capture all of the ad revenue.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#62

Post by pessimizer »

opportune wrote: post #55
anderspitman wrote: post #33

The web may never be better than it was about 5 years ago, and that makes me very sad

To me the inflection point was the 2016 US election (which also coincided with Brexit). Independent of the elections I think social media websites had by this time “perfected” engagement-driven algorithmic feeds and online news had started getting good at optimizing their content for those purposes. And around this time, anecdotally, is when I think a lot of older people started taking the internet more seriously, as…

> To me the inflection point was the 2016 US election (which also coincided with Brexit.)

And with the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#63

Post by jsnell »

reaperducer wrote: post #34
lordleft wrote: post #12

Surely news publications benefit more from Google/Facebook providing links to their content? It's a mutually beneficial relationship. I'm a bit puzzled as to why this was pushed, I'd love some context for this.

Surely news publications benefit more from Google/Facebook providing links to their content? Actually, no. It might be a symbiotic relationship for a small-time blog, but for a major news organization, it isn't. The Toronto Star and Global TV don't need freepub from Google. One example among many: Most people see the headline – the headline written by a paid headline writer based on an article from a paid journalist…

> The Toronto Star and Global TV don't need freepub from Google.

So have those publications opted out of search and Google News? If not, it's pretty clear that they're getting more benefit from those links than they're losing to people "reading the headline and getting all they needed from it".

I assume these news organizations don't even bother writing the article, right? Because your story obviously applies equally well to their own site. Users will open the frontpage of the site, read the expertly crafted headline, and leave.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#64

Post by pyrale »

paddw wrote: post #36

Many people who would otherwise be appalled at laws like this seem to want to rationalize this because its specifically targeting Google and Meta. Sometimes taking the simple view is correct: It's a bad thing to prevent sites from linking to one another. It's a bad thing to interfere with the ability to access information on the Internet for reasons of nationalist politics.

> Many people who would otherwise be appalled at laws like this seem to want to rationalize this because its specifically targeting Google and Meta.

It's not just a matter of the targeted companies being Google and Meta, even though these two especially deserve it.

It's the simple realization that good journalism requires good money, and that the current balance between news organizations and internet brokers isn't up to the task. It is also true of other type of content creators, by the way: there is a structural imbalance between content creators and content brokers. This is even more true with Google's zero-click efforts.

While Canada's bill may not be well-tuned, it is a welcome first attempt.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#66

Post by pipo234 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #15
whywhywhydude wrote: post #9

Going a step further, I think google should stop crawling websites that are paywalled. When I search for something, I want to see results that I can click on. Not some snippets from NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg and others which are heavily paywalled.

When I search for something I want the best results for the query, and sometimes those are behind a paywall.

I'd pay a little if we could get rid of the pop ups and cookie banners, advertisements and click bait content. But after 30 years we're still missing the infrastructure for micro payments.

For news sites and netflix we now have subscriptions shielded by paywals, which really is incompatible with hyperlinked sites or search engines. Even if you subscribed to 1000 services, the experience would probably be horrible. The internet was designed to be free, but evidently that's not a good business model if you want to make a living.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#67

Post by barbazoo »

paddw wrote: post #36

Many people who would otherwise be appalled at laws like this seem to want to rationalize this because its specifically targeting Google and Meta. Sometimes taking the simple view is correct: It's a bad thing to prevent sites from linking to one another. It's a bad thing to interfere with the ability to access information on the Internet for reasons of nationalist politics.

> It's a bad thing to prevent sites from linking to one another. It's a bad thing to interfere with the ability to access information on the Internet for reasons of nationalist politics.

Would this prevent embedding links into your posts? I thought it's about platforms displaying enough information discouraging the person to visit the news site. I get that they want people to stay on their platforms 24/7 but I also get the other side wanting a slice of the advertising cake.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#68

Post by gwright »

swader999 wrote: post #49

As a Canadian, I don't really care about this. The informed citizen model is already broken by censorship, cancel culture, corporate influence, paywalls, monopolies and a soon to be flood of AI content. Burn it all down imo and let something else take its place. I only use google news now to see what agenda/narrative is being pushed at the moment or maybe to check the weather.

> Burn it all down imo and let something else take its place.

Probably hyperbole, but catastrophic failure of our economy/institutions/society isn't something I would choose to experience.

This nihilistic attitude is dangerous, IMHO. In the extreme, it is a self-fulfilling approach with severe consequences.

Seems like we should be able to do better than that as a society.

Re: Bill C-18: Google to remove news links in Canada over online news law

#70

Post by danbtl »

reaperducer wrote: post #57
danbtl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be underestimating the amount of traffic Google sends to publishers through Google News. Anecdotally, I get Android notifications from CBC, Global, etc. through Google News daily and do sometimes click on them.

You might be underestimating the amount of traffic Google sends to publishers through Google News. I have worked for two major newspaper companies. I might know a little bit about this.

Could you share the percentage of traffic coming from Google News, roughly?
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