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

Post by caycep » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

bratao wrote: post #5

Brazil is currently considering a similar law that would require social networks to compensate content creators for each republication [1]. However, unlike the situation in Canada, the Brazilian lawmakers have taken into account this scenario. The law mandates that social networks cannot cease publishing the content and must negotiate compensation in "fair terms." Personally, I find this approach to be quite perplexi…

Post by ars » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

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…

Post by verdverm » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 9:06 PM UTC

viktorcode wrote: post #206

chaostheory wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone might correct me, but I believe that’s what France did.

I think you are right. I vaguely remember French publishers losing revenue after Google News stopped referencing them.

Post by robertlagrant » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 9:08 PM UTC

AYBABTME wrote: post #167

pyrale wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 u…

> there is a structural imbalance between content creators and content brokers As seen in Twitch.tv vs Kick.com where streamers are dropping Twitch and migrating en-masse to Kick. Abusing the content creators can backfire. However Google is in a different situation; they have a virtual monopoly on content discovery and not existing on Google basically means not existing at all. How do you fix that? Is Google an inter…

Post by carlosjobim » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #135

carlosjobim wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I ask you what is the best restaurant in town, will you answer that it's your mommas house because there you always eat for free? Cost has nothing to do with determining the quality of a search result, and search engines shouldn't discriminate against paywalled content. But I think it's a good idea to let users like you check a box to hide paywalled results.

There are millions of websites out there that are free for anyone to read, including this one! Restaurants that serve free meals are not the norm, so this analogy doesn't make a lot of sense. If every website was paywalled and required a subscription, like cable TV channels, then you might have a point.