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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

#131

Post by swatcoder »

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?

You know that thing where Google tracks every action you take online, and everything you do on your phone, and everywhere you go with your phone, and every calendar detail you enter, and every contact you keep, and every dumb curiosity you think to look up when you're bored or wanting?

Advertisers like that.

It's tough to sell them on something else, and essentially impossible to replicate as is.

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

#132

Post by AlbertCory »

There's an inconvenient fact that Google prefers to ignore:

-- Frequently, the headline and snippet is all you need. "Inflation still at 3%" is often enough for a lot of readers. An awful lot of them aren't going to follow the link.

Yes, they are trying to preserve a business model that doesn't work, but that doesn't mean they have to provide free services to any and all. If Google just had a link labelled "News on Inflation" the paper would probably be happy.

"You can just use robots.txt if you don't want to be crawled" is a canard. You can just not have a website, too.

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

#133

Post by shadowgovt »

realusername wrote: post #122
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…

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.

Except that they're not, because they know that in this modern era, people use search to find information. So if they don't want to become irrelevant, they have to play the game; they can't just robots.txt-exclude Google, they'll be tossed into the wastebin of history against other news sources that people can just find with a click. It's not real choice when the choice is "Let this company harvest your information or become obsolete."

Similarly, artists in this modern era are stuck because to be relevant, they have to show off online (where the eyeballs are) but everything they put up online can become fodder for an AI synthesizer.

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

#134

Post by paxys »

kerkeslager wrote: post #128
paxys wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You saying "I'm not seeing that anywhere" assumes you made the effort to look. People aren't going to do the homework for you. I don't have anything to prove. Google it and click the first result.

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

#135

Post by adrr »

burnte wrote: post #130
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.

What is the problem with news? Why aren't people willing to pay for it?

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

#136

Post by shkkmo »

jaredwiener wrote: post #35
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…

No idea why this is getting downvoted, but would love to hear what people think is wrong.

I downvoted you because I think you provided an overly facile explanation that focuses too much on headlines rather than the actual issue here.

A headline has always been an attempt to sell an article access to headlines and has a long history of freely accessible for this reason. Publishers WANT links to their article to use their headlines because that is how the articles are sold.

You talk about the 'atomic unit of journalism' being reporting... but that isn't really a meaningful assertion. What is meaningful is that facts are not copyrightable (which is good.) If you are selling access to facts as your product, you have to differentiate yourself on either storytelling, curation or speed.

Notably, the California law covers all links, not just those that include a summary or headline.

I don't think the crisis has anything to do with aggregation. I think the crisis has to do with how money is spent on advertising, how much of that money Google is able to extract via their monopoly, and the degree to which we've allowed capital markets to gut such a vital institution. I think the EFF report linked in the article does a much better job of breaking down the issue, even if I don't agree with every recommendation it makes or think they are sufficient.

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

#137

Post by imzadi »

adrr wrote: post #135
burnte wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is the problem with news? Why aren't people willing to pay for it?

I don't think the issue is that people aren't willing to pay for it. The problem is, there aren't currently good options for paying for it. If I go to a news site and it is paywalled, I just leave. I am not going to subscribe to every single newspaper. If I could easily pay for today's paper (not an individual news story or a full subscription) without giving up all my persona info, I would probably buy 2 - 3 papers a day from various sources.

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

#138

Post by willsmith72 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #64
flavius29663 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Or is this is all just bargaining and leverage before they make a deal, as they have elsewhere in the world

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

#139

Post by ca7 »

adrr wrote: post #135
burnte wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What is the problem with news? Why aren't people willing to pay for it?

I'm not willing to pay for someone else's slanted takes. There are websites that provide that for free (e.g. Reddit).

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

#140

Post by dweymouth »

AlbertCory wrote: post #132

There's an inconvenient fact that Google prefers to ignore: -- Frequently, the headline and snippet is all you need. "Inflation still at 3%" is often enough for a lot of readers. An awful lot of them aren't going to follow the link. Yes, they are trying to preserve a business model that doesn't work, but that doesn't mean they have to provide free services to any and all. If Google just had a link labelled "News on I…

If you're a news site and you want Google to have a link like "News on Inflation", then just give your article the title "Unpacking the latest inflation data" and save the actual info for the article itself. A lot of internet publishers have already figured this out and it's why you see titles like "These 3 states have the most affordable homes" that just entice you to click on the link.
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