This is a perfect example of Regulatory Capture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
And Rent-Seeking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
61–70 of 448 posts
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#62I 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.
In that case Google should pay everyone they link to, not just the ones with politician friends that can lobby for themselves.
If they don't want a Google to index them they can use robots.txt to prevent it.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#63Isn’t the issue that Google links to websites and then reduces their commercial viability by showing summaries in search pages or by having their AI present the data without letting the website get the traffic? If so, I think a link tax is justified. At that point, Google is creating value for itself by removing value from others so it seems fair to me. And we don’t need the law to be perfect - let’s just make it app…
> For example with AI, big tech companies are in a position to put themselves first in front of customers and prevent any smaller players from competing for users and market share.
This has already been the case for >10 years.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#64I 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.
Well, yeah it is a bad idea. Because if you tax links to your content Google will just stop linking to your content. Which is exactly what they're poised to do, as per TFA.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
It's not healthy for news outlets to depend on being subsidized. Or, more accurately: it's not healthy for every news outlet to be subsidized by the same source, especially in this sorta roundabout way that can be pulled out from under them with a single decision by Google. If I've come to one conclusion about professional news in the last 25 years, it's that they need to control their source of revenue and not depend on being a vassal of big tech. Our ability to get quality journalism shouldn't require a FAANG company to provide the necessary resources; not distribution, not editorial, not financial.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#66This 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.
Nobody is saying this is wrong. However if journalism is so valuable then the government (so really, the people) should be subsidizing it. Passing illogical laws and putting the burden on 2-3 big tech companies makes zero sense.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#67Isn’t the issue that Google links to websites and then reduces their commercial viability by showing summaries in search pages or by having their AI present the data without letting the website get the traffic? If so, I think a link tax is justified. At that point, Google is creating value for itself by removing value from others so it seems fair to me. And we don’t need the law to be perfect - let’s just make it app…
My understanding is you have to ask to be in the news wheel.
Anyone can ask to be removed from the index. The internet is old enough that it has long been standard that search is opt out, when you are part of the World Wide Web.
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#68[flagged]
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#69With the increasing shift of media companies from reporting the news to selling an ideology, they should be welcoming people linking to it and summarizing their sales pitch.
https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...
Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
This tax applies only to Google. It doesn't apply to any other tech company, and it never will. The DMA at least provides more-or-less objective criteria for what constitutes a "gatekeeper", but this is literally a private deal between Canada and Google. I don't have a problem with publishers getting a greater share of ad revenue, but there are better ways to do it. The govt could increase taxes on ad exchanges categ…
It applied to Facebook/Meta and any larger social media sites. Meta just shut it down and any direct contributions to journalism that they were making, and now the publishers are crying because their traffic has plummetted, to the surprise of precisely nobody except them.
Not sure where you're getting your information.