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Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

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Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#121

Post by shadowgovt »

delfinom wrote: post #100
shadowgovt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What search has done to news has for decades been the canary in the coalmine for what AI is doing to art now. Because news has weaker copyright protections than original artwork ("can't copyright facts"), Google et. al. have been free this whole time to use news as a data input and pull traffic away from the original sources. The end result is what has happened to the news industry, and we can extrapolate what will h…

That's the thing though. Google doesn't cough up the article content. It just shows headlines with links to the article for people to read. It's nothing like the AIs which are actually generating the entire content from questionable source rights. Is the real story that nobody wants to admit the majority of people don't read past the headline? Because that's a pretty stark reflection on how journalism as a field shou…

The majority of people don't read past the headline, and the majority of people don't care if the art on a billboard came from a human or a machine.

It is possible that some human practices aren't compatible with a simple capitalist model of sustaining them.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#122

Post by realusername »

shadowgovt wrote: post #96
timothyduong wrote: post #85

Catch 22? Let the robots scrape cause you want to be indexed, but at the same time, you don’t want to give the data scraped away for free. I mean realistically, shouldn’t the news outlets just not let those articles be scraped and be done with this debate?

What search has done to news has for decades been the canary in the coalmine for what AI is doing to art now. Because news has weaker copyright protections than original artwork ("can't copyright facts"), Google et. al. have been free this whole time to use news as a data input and pull traffic away from the original sources. The end result is what has happened to the news industry, and we can extrapolate what will h…

Nothing is AI based here, the newspaper give themselves what they want to show on Google. So of they are not okay with the content they send, they can just send an empty string instead. The newspapers are in full control here and always have been.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#123

Post by giuseppe_petri »

datavirtue wrote: post #107
Manuel_D wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you want less of something, tax it.

Or provide a better alternative. Less stick, more carrot.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#124

Post by kevincox »

jaredwiener wrote: post #19

This 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…

If they don't think that Google is giving them a good deal they can simply opt-out of the index. But they don't want to do that, because Google is giving them value.

This is their method of side-channeling an "unfair" deal. If they actually wanted a fair negotiation they would just go to Google directly and say "we will opt out of indexing unless you pay us $X". But they think they can get more money by lobbying a law to force Google to accept a better deal.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#125

Post by bevekspldnw »

cherioo wrote: post #113
bevekspldnw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link tax is a red herring and a poor understanding on the part of legislators. The real issue is pre-adtech publishers kept 100% of ad revenue and double click now takes a massive cut (which they briefly touch on). All that cash flowing into MTV is real people’s jobs and livelihood being drained away - it’s also the reason search is entering a utility collapse curve since AI can generate unlimited click bait. Dou…

Genuine question, why don’t publishers stop using doubleclick and build their own?

Google has thoroughly rigged the space, including manipulating bid stream data to underpay publishers while overcharging the advertiser. It’s called Project Bernake which is public now. I have it on reliable sources there is a lot more beyond that.

The search antitrust suit was garbage, but the coming trials in the ad auction suit is going to hurt a lot more. They total lost their way, it’s actually insane when you’ll see what theyve been doing.

Google never stopped “innovating”, they just shifted their innovation to fraud.

https://adtechexplained.com/google-project-bernanke-explaine...

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#126

Post by bevekspldnw »

refulgentis wrote: post #82
bevekspldnw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link tax is a red herring and a poor understanding on the part of legislators. The real issue is pre-adtech publishers kept 100% of ad revenue and double click now takes a massive cut (which they briefly touch on). All that cash flowing into MTV is real people’s jobs and livelihood being drained away - it’s also the reason search is entering a utility collapse curve since AI can generate unlimited click bait. Dou…

Cheers -- I didn't know that. Interesting parallel to the 30% app store wars: people can argue till they're blue in the face with analogy after analogy, and I can easily talk myself into either perspective being obviously correct... ...at the end of the day, I'd be happy to see a tax pass, some mix of what you put excellently as "real people’s jobs and livelihood being drained away", and I imagine similar to you give…

Yes and GNI was always an attempt by the wolf to curry favor with the sheep, they act like it’s some sort of grant but it’s always been about controlling narrative.

Journalists aren’t dumb either, talk to anybody who directly got one or was involved in the process.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#127

Post by standardUser »

johnea wrote: post #36

If 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...

I would hope most consumers of news understand the difference between a source and an aggregator.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#128

Post by kerkeslager »

paxys wrote: post #103
kerkeslager wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation? I'm not seeing that anywhere.

What sources are you looking at?

I'm not playing this game. I'm not claiming that the law was or wasn't repealed; I don't know. You're the one making the claim that it was repealed. Cite a source or you're just making things up.

Re: Google threatens to cut off news after California proposes paying media outlets

#130

Post by burnte »

kemayo wrote: post #6

I 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.

I actually agree with it too. Google and Facebook aren't the reason news outlets have cash problems and a free teat to latch on to isn't the answer. News is important, but let's fix the problem in a better way.
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