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Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

nationalpost.com

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Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

#141

Post by smsm42 »

stubybubs wrote: post #108
smsm42 wrote: post #37

The funniest part: > But the Liberal government’s decision does not extend to the party. Liberal Party of Canada spokesperson Parker Lund said in a statement that the party would continue to advertise on Meta-owned platforms. According to the company’s ad library, the party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month. So: we would not deal with FB because it's evil, unless of course it could help us pers…

Honestly, it's pretty reasonable. This is what it looks like when you really treat your party as separate from governance. They are not using public funds for their advertising. Contrast this with the last Conservative government, which made all of its publicly funded announcements from "The Harper Government" instead of "The Government of Canada." https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2012/06/harper-governm...

The point is not public funds. The point is, in public they behave like FB is so horrible no reasonable person can use their services, but when it comes to using the services not for public benefit, but for their personal benefit, turn out FB is not so bad after all. Evidently, using FB is beneficial for them. They are OK with benefitting themselves, but withhold same benefits from the public in the name of political posturing.

Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

#142

Post by 8note »

tomComb wrote: post #66
stewx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the entire complaint about Facebook and Google is the links themselves. It's not anything about embedding articles (which I don't think either company does). They just show the headline and article metadata provided by the news publishers.

There are places where they embed the news itself, but that’s a separate issue that’s already been resolved - they pay the publishers for that. Ironically, one of the results of bill C 18 is that those existing deals will get cancelled.

The title is part of the article, isn't it? Especially when people tend to read headlines without reading the actual article

Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

#143

Post by dopidopHN »

smsm42 wrote: post #37

The funniest part: > But the Liberal government’s decision does not extend to the party. Liberal Party of Canada spokesperson Parker Lund said in a statement that the party would continue to advertise on Meta-owned platforms. According to the company’s ad library, the party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month. So: we would not deal with FB because it's evil, unless of course it could help us pers…

I was driving thought Ontario today, I kept thinking that it was posturing as well. It’s pulling ads from the official government body, it represent maybe 1% of Meta activity in that country.

Weirdly enough the news was in loop on radio but nobody mentioned what Meta had to say. No empty statement saying it’s for the greater good.

Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

#144

Post by jeffbee »

adjav wrote: post #9

Note: This article is by the National Post, which is owned by PostMedia, who were one of the main backers of bill C18. Just something to keep in mind.

PostMedia is itself owned by Chatham Asset Management, an American private equity firm that also owns dozen of U.S. newspapers.

Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

#145

Post by dopidopHN »

telotortium wrote: post #116
fireflash38 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy is flawed. It's like someone consuming coffee but not wanting the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed it to be compensated.

If the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed gave the beans away without asking for compensation because they hoped to obtain ad revenue, most people wouldn't go out of their way to pay the bean producers. Canadian news media (unlike the vast majority of US news media besides NPR and PBS) is very significantly government subsidized, so this bill is really a stealth tax on Meta and Google.

At the end of the day, the question remains : do we want local news?

Meta and Alphabet are not gonna run news room in Manitoba and Northern Ontario.

If we don’t, fine. Local news can die and be replaced by influencer I guess ?

Then if we do, who is paying for it.

In your analogy, Meta & Alphabet are installing a patio in front of the coffee shops, and offer samples of the most popular latte of the day for free and you can get as many as you want.

Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

#146

Post by dopidopHN »

wvenable wrote: post #121
fireflash38 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy is flawed. It's like someone consuming coffee but not wanting the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed it to be compensated.

Your analogy is flawed. It's like someone smelling the coffee but not wanting to compensate the person who grew/roasted/brewed the coffee.

Smelling is not strong enough. People get enough from headlines. I would say “free sample” like those tiny bits or minuscule shots at Whole Food.

Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

#147

Post by dopidopHN »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #127
fireflash38 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy is flawed. It's like someone consuming coffee but not wanting the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed it to be compensated.

I think it's like someone talking about coffee, because that's literally what they're doing, talking about the news. If people were actually consuming the news and reading articles, it wouldn't be an issue. Nobody wants to drink the nasty coffee, they just want to talk about how bad it is. If we want to be a hyperbolic about causality, both social media and news outlets should be paying the school shooters for creati…

Someone has to come up with that headline, the contractor in the Manitoba newsroom office is doing it.

The shooter is usually dead, should be link to the victim’s obituary comment sections instead of a local news article ?

But someone has to write those too? LLM to the rescue!

Why is asking Fangs to give an obole to local news so insulting ?

Until those articles are writing themself, they don’t.

Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

#148

Post by cscurmudgeon »

jeffbee wrote: post #144
adjav wrote: post #9

Note: This article is by the National Post, which is owned by PostMedia, who were one of the main backers of bill C18. Just something to keep in mind.

PostMedia is itself owned by Chatham Asset Management, an American private equity firm that also owns dozen of U.S. newspapers.

Ah, a perfect exemplar of the kind of independent journalism free from corporate influence as stated in the bill.

> Act provides that any such agreements must not allow the freedom of expression and journalistic independence enjoyed by news outlets to be undermined by corporate influence.

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c18_...

Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

#149

Post by cscurmudgeon »

dopidopHN wrote: post #145
telotortium wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed gave the beans away without asking for compensation because they hoped to obtain ad revenue, most people wouldn't go out of their way to pay the bean producers. Canadian news media (unlike the vast majority of US news media besides NPR and PBS) is very significantly government subsidized, so this bill is really a stealth tax on Meta and Google.

At the end of the day, the question remains : do we want local news? Meta and Alphabet are not gonna run news room in Manitoba and Northern Ontario. If we don’t, fine. Local news can die and be replaced by influencer I guess ? Then if we do, who is paying for it. In your analogy, Meta & Alphabet are installing a patio in front of the coffee shops, and offer samples of the most popular latte of the day for free and yo…

> Then if we do, who is paying for it.

Simple, whoever wants the news.

> In your analogy, Meta & Alphabet are installing a patio in front of the coffee shops, and offer samples of the most popular latte of the day for free and you can get as many as you want.

Nah, the right analogy is Meta/Google drive a large bus of customers (only a fraction with tickets) to the coffee shop and not everyone goes into the shop. News orgs are then asking Google to pay them for Google driving the bus.

Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

#150

Post by jt2190 »

bparsons wrote: post #88
bawolff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”, I don't get it - in this analysis would my local coffee shop have to buy and provide free newspapers to me? I'm all for access to free press being a fundamental right. Where you lose me is the part where a private corporation is supposed to subsidize the production of news for me.

Between 1949 and 1987, US private companies were forced to pay for and produce high quality news content under guidelines set by the federal government. One of the conditions of ABC, CBS and NBC being given access to the airwaves was that they had to produce and distribute high quality news broadcasts. News was considered a public good. From wikipedia: The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadca…

This is because the technology of the time severely limited the number of available channels. You’ve enumerated only three, but there weren’t many more than that. Clearly there are more than three points of view, so these laws helped balance things out until the technology for more channels arrived.
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