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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

#441
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'd be happy to see the ad driven model die. It used to be that people bought newspapers or didn't read them. They still had some ads, granted, but far less intrusive than today's web ads with their colours and animations. I'm huge into supporting good journalism, and think we need some sort of intervention here. But I'm very very strongly opposed to this new law. If news sites want to charge for their con…

It used to be that you could get a paper for a quarter out of a machine on the street. That quarter covered printing and delivery. the newspaper had a classified ads section (plus inline ads, plus ad inserts) which actually funded the people who make the newspaper.

Not to mention they often had a rich owner who ran them at a loss if need be to ensure they keep being friendly to him/her when needed.

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

#442
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does anyone actually win from this? Has someone behind C-18 run the numbers and found a way that this would increase revenue for Canadian media companies? I don't see how Meta and Google weren't completely predictable, and I don't see how Canadian media benefits from getting shut out. I am so confused.

its going to do the exact opposite of what they said its going to do. Google and meta will disable linking to canadian news sites, canadian news sites won't receive the revenue from those visits. Meanwhile american news is still free to share in canada, so linking to american news will be the norm and the act to protect and fund canadian news will create an increase in consumption of US news and will remove money the…

Asa Canadian, I can safely say that any other country's news coverage would be better than the cesspool of US news would be on the table.

This isn't a one way street either. Entrenched big tech use news and any other carrot to keep people locked into their closed platforms. Google Search, Google News, Facebook etc.. are just that much more ripe for disruption having one less bullet to keep the average person plugged into their walled gardens.

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

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no vacuum in power. If it is not the government enforcing one mechanism, it will be another player leveraging another. The fantasy that if it wasn't for the government, everything would be sunshine and roses should be brought behind the barn and finished for good.

How do you define ‘power’. The unique aspect of government controls is that we grant the government a monopoly on force (imprisonment, seizure of property, etc). That is not the case with private actors and that is a significant and consequential difference in ‘power’.

Once you remove physical violence as a mean of interaction, you gain something else which would be violence by any other name. Government minimization is favored the most by those who would gain from the lack of counterbalance.

In the case of market economy, if you can't use violence, then the world would be split into natural monopolies and monopolies after market consolidation. Everyone else will be feudalized because someone else will control their access to water, electricity, education or whatever. Because property is sacred and we can't use violence no matter the consequences.

The ever expanding free to enter and free to participate market is a delusion, so let's not delude ourselves that it will take care of everything without us taking responsibility.

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

#444
post #290

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Yes but the crypto folks didn't do that, they were busy chasing nfts.

There have been a lot of ridiculous things in cryptocurrency land, but what's wrong with Basic Attention Token? It has been around for six years and seems to solve the problem of paying content creators via microtransactions. The only wrinkle is that finance laws force everyone to verify their identity with a government-issued ID before transacting BAT.[1] This is a problem for all microtransactions, not just cryptoc…

...And then we're back with the underlying conflicting interests surrounding governments guarding their citizen's privacy. Yes absolutely we want all our citizens to always use unbreakable and untraceble communication channels. Except when law enforcement needs to surveil and pry on the bad guys.

And where it's impossible to tell difference from a (pseudo) random stream of numbers.

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

#445
post #66

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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. Th…

> But after 30 years we're still missing the infrastructure for micro payments. Sad but true. The closest we have to a solution right now is PressReader, which is just too expensive in my opinion at $30 per month.

Micro payments only make sense if the intrinsic transaction costs are (near) zero. Like reaching for your wallet to pick a coin to give to a homeless person.

With trusted third parties or block chains, the transaction costs are unfortunately much, much higher, especially initially without proper scales economics.

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

#446
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…

> 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. Nobody owes anyone else a business model.

> Nobody owes anyone else a business model

But there is public interest in having newspapers. (A tax on large digital ad platforms to subsidise newspapers makes much more sense.)

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know the fourth option - charge people money for access. Crazy I know.

I don't think there has ever been a successful media organization that relied on subscription revenue, except for very specialized areas (business press, science, hobby). In general, the costs of running a journalistic organization (one which discovers news for itself, not just repackaging news from other media) far outweigh what people are willing to pay for this. Remember that newspapers, even in the times before r…

> except for very specialized areas [...] science

For that specific example, science publications don't create any content, nor do they have paid staff curating collected content. That kind of helps their bottom line.

These organizations are closer in their model to Google than they are to news organizations (ie they gatekeep a specific type of resource that content producers need).

From what little I know from business press, in my business area they also get a significant share of their content for free, although it is much less predatory than science publications.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The law mandates that social networks cannot cease publishing the content So, how does Brazil stop them from withdrawing from Brazil entirely?

Money. They will remain here as long as there's still profit to be made. Would be awesome if they had enough balls to tell the brazilian government to go to hell but they just aren't gonna do that as long as they're making money.

This is the same as increasing taxes then, except that instead of the taxes going to the government to vote for the redistribution, they go straight to news agencies bypassing the government.

When viewed with this angle, the next question is why news agencies get their own dedicated taxes and nobody else?

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

#449
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard it only applies to Google and Facebook at this point in time. I doubt any other companies would be even capable of complying.

Why wouldn’t it apply to Microsoft, Apple, Twitter and Reddit if it applies to Google and Facebook?

Apple and Microsoft generally get their pay from licensing fees rather than advertising fees and are therefore not in competition with news media companies. Reddit has generally been a fairly niche player, although if things change it might get covered. I don't know whether Twitter is as important as people have said it is, or if it is niche: it seems both Canada and a few years ago Australia both decided it was niche. And if anything, I gather than Elon Musk's purchase has made it less dependent on its limited advertising revenue and more dependent on subscriptions etc; if so it is even less in competition with news media organisations today than it was when Australia reviewed it.

Remember that even though people misleadingly call Google and Facebook tech companies, they are in fact advertising companies; and although people speak of news companies, they have generally seen news, opinion and analysis as tools for connecting eyeballs to advertising i.e. they're effectively advertising companies. This bill is about the direct competition between the two kinds of advertising companies - traditional, ~domestic companies with close and personal ties to the people who govern vs new, foreign companies who don't have such essential ties to politicians as journalists do.

If it were literally just about the provision of news, then Canada and Australia fund the CBC/RC and the ABC/SBS so why would they be so fussed? There are people who today make a living from podcasts and substacks who could not make money from traditional advertising/media companies. News would be provided.

(In fact, just to bring the point home, the original version of Australia's equivalent bill didn't allow the ABC and SBS to participate, because as government-funded media organisations they didn't suffer from the transition of advertising from news-sponsoring to tech-sponsoring in the same way as private companies.)

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

#450

The eff had an interesting article[1] about this issue (and others) as well as some alternative ways solve the issue, not that I agree with all of them. Ultimately, this is the wrong approach. The internet should be "open," and people or companies should be free to link to whatever they want without penalty. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

But what does it mean exactly to be open? Are you allowed to monetize via ads on the work of others or no?
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