Private equity firms are buying up local news outfits then lobby to force google/fb to pay up. It's an extortion racket which news outlets refuse to cover for some reason.
Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
31–40 of 448 posts
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#32This threat is credible: Google shut off Spain's access to Google News for eight years for similar reasons [0]. [0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-news-re-opens-spai...
Meanwhile in Canada... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/29/google-ca... Although facebook/insta did refuse to be blackmailed, and many canadian news orgs are actually harmed by this sort of bullshit link taxing because their media can't be shared on facebook anymore, where a lot of older news watchers get their news https://about.fb.com/news/2023/06/changes-to-news-availabili...
So essentially Canada gets to subsidize news outlets by having Google pay for them as a yearly subscription.
No link tax, just a tax for news.
Sounds... reasonable?
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#33This threat is credible: Google shut off Spain's access to Google News for eight years for similar reasons [0]. [0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-news-re-opens-spai...
They reopened in Spain now that they can _"reach individual or group agreements with publishers"_, which makes sense if you believe that asking the publisher before summarizing their content is the right thing to do.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#34People were predicting this would happen when Google caved and started paying "link tax" to Australia and Canada and other jurisdictions with similar laws. Now – to no surprise – every government (really every media conglomerate lobbying arm) around the world wants the free money and so more such laws are popping up.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#35This requires some nuance, since I think it goes beyond a "tax on linking," as I have seen it described. News is a strange product, and one that I think a lot of people in tech get wrong. The atomic unit of journalism is not an article....it's the reporting. Even deciding to write an article is an act based on the analysis of the reporting. Further, a good headline often tells the story itself -- and that is implicit…
No idea why this is getting downvoted, but would love to hear what people think is wrong.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#36If you're using goggle as your news source, you're already assimilated...
I'd be happy if the entire goggle corps left California: take my monopoly, please...
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#37"It’s well known that people are getting news from sources like short-form video, topical newsletters, social media, and curated podcasts, and many are avoiding the news entirely. In line with those trends, just 2% of queries on Google Search are news-related. Nevertheless, we want to continue making targeted contributions to the news ecosystem to help news publishers navigate this inflection point."
Google acknowledges they had a part to play in causing the collapse of journalism but has no solutions to offer.
People aren't consuming news, and when they do they choose the least accurate, most entertaining sources for it. Newspapers and local broadcasters are suffering because the public has lost the will or the capacity to focus. When will we start seeing white box Surgeon General warnings on Tiktok and Youtube that remind the user prolonged exposure can cause serious mental health issues? [1] Where's the DARE school-visit campaigns to remind kids that broadcast news is free over the air and their parents are chumps for paying streaming services' subscription fees?
[1]: https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/23/surgeon-general-is...
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#38I agree with Google on this one. Charging a fee just for linking to something is a bad idea. It does get fuzzier if you're also summarizing, and there's clearly some sort of spectrum from "just the URL" to "AI synopsis of the entire article". But at the level we see on Google News (headline + maybe a picture), I don't feel there's any good justification for charging.
> Charging a fee just for linking to something is a bad idea.
If you're profiting from it, it's not a bad idea.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#39This requires some nuance, since I think it goes beyond a "tax on linking," as I have seen it described. News is a strange product, and one that I think a lot of people in tech get wrong. The atomic unit of journalism is not an article....it's the reporting. Even deciding to write an article is an act based on the analysis of the reporting. Further, a good headline often tells the story itself -- and that is implicit…
No idea why this is getting downvoted, but would love to hear what people think is wrong.
It's true, journalism is a tough business, but that doesn't justify bending the rules in their favor.
Just like Open Source is though: you do all the work, companies make money off of your work without paying a dime 95% of the time, etc. Would that justify a law forcing companies to pay for the open source software they use? No.
In the end, people choose to do open source knowing that they're not going to get much money out of it.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#40There is no love lost between me and Google, but then I have zero regard for "news" organizations that are attempting to strong-arm funds from Google for their failing business model.
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