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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

#361
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.

We have seen that in other markets this type of law has hurt not helped publishers. This is Canada but it can easily be any country. We need a fix, big tech has monopolized ad revenue and is choking out the publishers. The quality of newspaper stories has deteriorated over the years and local news has suffered to the point of almost being nonexistent. Also, we now have very few companies that dominate the news. Look…

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

#362
post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMP worked like shit for me. Any time I had weird behavioural issues with a site, I’d look to the address bar and spot AMP. Using an extensions to prevent AMP stealing my clicks has made my phones browser work much better.

Guess: you were running iOS and your parent was running Android

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

#363
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 g…

I thought so too, and thought that removing the sites from Google Search was a bit bullyish, but it looks like the bill specifically targets links in (2)(b).

"Making available of news content (2) For the purposes of this Act, news content is made available if (a) the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced; or (b) access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content."

https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-a...

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

#364

Deeply shameful, as a Canadian. I did not ask for this.

Not you specifically, but the majority of Canadians are in favour of the principle. https://mediapolicy.ca/2022/11/09/nanos-survey-shows-public-...

The linked article says that the survey was commissioned by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the line of questioning seems very leading to me. I wouldn't put too much faith on the accuracy of the poll.

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

#365

Deeply shameful, as a Canadian. I did not ask for this.

Not you specifically, but the majority of Canadians are in favour of the principle. https://mediapolicy.ca/2022/11/09/nanos-survey-shows-public-...

On some very loaded questions. Holy crud. Had they just asked "Are you in favour of tech companies like Google and Facebook paying news companies for linking to their articles?" perhaps the outcome would have been different.

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

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The can post a robots.txt file to say not to index.

How do they say "You can index the story in your search engine, but you cannot borrow the text or images of our content for use on your own news site or info panels"?

Google and Meta (or Twitter or anyone else) don't 'borrow' them. Websites explicitly declare what image and snippet they want anyone to use to summarise a link in the metadata on the web page. it's a choice by newspapers to place that image and text below the link.

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

#367
post #64
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 u…

Slogans like "good journalism requires good money" don't really bring any reasonable argument to the table, let's be frank. Neither good journalism nor good money is defined for everyone, and the correlation between the two is not really established. One may say media corporations used to have an unwarranted political influence, and excessive revenues during the TV era, and now things are settling to a level which is more normal than the past which media people would like to bring back.

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

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The news sites in Canada are owned by billion dollar media and telecom companies. Nowhere near the scale of Google & Facebook, but among the largest companies in Canada. Speaking as a Canadian, this is very much a protectionist law trying to prop up an old media business the public no longer has much interest in.

Right.. so the post I'm replying to suggests that Google and Facebook should just drop these larger publishers and instead abuse smaller publishers who "would just be happy for the exposure." So.. your argument is, because you don't like some media companies and are willing to speak on behalf of all Canadians, the market really isn't worth protecting at all?

I don't see what is "abusive" about sending media companies free traffic. There are millions, if not billions, of web sites on the internet that would be thrilled to be "abused" by Google and Facebook in this way.

The "abuse" here is certain media companies that think they're entitled to shake down tech companies that do them the favor of sending traffic their way. The core business model of Google and Facebook, which has made them into 2 of the most valuable companies in the world, literally involves other companies paying them for ads to draw some incoming Google and Facebook traffic to their web sites. If you can't run a profitable business when you're getting an enormous inbound of free inbound traffic from Google and Facebook then you're so utterly incompetent at running a business that it is best for everybody that capitalism be allowed to work its "creative destruction" magic and reallocate those resources to somebody who can use them profitably.

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

#369
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.

I've always considered linking perfectly fine, but what to me is shady when platforms start to summarize or preview content of the link to the point where that functions as a substitute for the site. There needs to be a distinction between reference to content and the content itself. When platforms start to profit from other people's work without their consent that shouldn't fly. Google search's primary purpose is to…

Snippets are explicitly declared in the metadata of a web page. Those previews only appear because the publisher explicitly asked for them to be used.

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

#370
I think this will turn out great. As a news outlet, there are two ways it could go:

- Your revenue goes up, because people are now visiting your website and giving you ad hits instead of just seeing a blurb on Facebook.

- Your revenue goes down, because nobody cares about news unless it's dropped in their feed, and the few page views you were getting are now gone. Not to worry, you can strike a deal with Facebook and Google for them to reinstate your links for $0.

The secret third option is that your revenue goes down, you go to Facebook and Google to ask them to show your links again, and they ask you to pay them for the privilege of having your links shown.

Diclaimer: I have not yet read the bill.

Edit: After reading the bill, it looks like if Google links to any news at all in Canada, it has to participate in the bargaining and arbitration process, so their only winning move is not to play. Looks like Option B won't work unless all of the news outlets decide on it together.

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