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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

#171

Post by dylan604 »

reissbaker wrote: post #143
adrr wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Journalism quality has tanked, and social media acts as some degree of (free+fast) competition, furthering the death spiral.

To expand, journalists used to actually investigate which took time which means it took money so that the story released had lots of corroborating sources, scrutinized by editors, and then released as a complete story. That might have meant things like actually interviewing people, requesting documents from places, or visiting the places in question.

Today, it is just a bunch of people collecting tweets of random people on the interwebs. Race to publish before competition means there's no time for editorial review of simple things like grammar and coherent thoughts let alone accuracy, so lots of FUD can be spread very quickly as "news".

Those well thought out articles are also considered too long and boring and get reposted on socials as TL;DR as if it were their own thoughts.

We used to make fun of the microwave generation with "I want it now" type comments. Now, it's I need it in less than 140chars, or I'm scrolling past it.

The death spiral you describe is like a train wreck that you can do nothing about.

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

#174

Post by wmf »

paxys wrote: post #45

I wonder if these media conglomerates think the same laws should apply to them. If your news article has any linked information in it, you need to pay money to the owner of that link every time your article is opened. Seems only fair.

They never link out though.

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

#177

Post by jedberg »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #149
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.

Just to think about this more, are there any other business types, besides online news, where your success so radically depends on the decisions (read google news ranking and summarization algorithms) of some other business that you have zero relations with. Google news+facebook+twitter can drastically change the revenue of any online news site with an internal decision. Where else do we see something like this in th…

Consumer reports (both the company and the category). A bad review can destroy a company.

Yelp.

TripAdvisor.

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

#178

Post by notatoad »

zmmmmm wrote: post #170

I have sympathy for news publishers but I worry a lot about the principle of asserting that linking to something is an act that the link target has proprietary rights to over. At some level, it is almost a free speech issue. If I can't refer to what you are saying, without owing you something, you have power over not just my speech, but a power to limit how your work is subjected to criticism and debate. It's effecti…

>I have sympathy for news publishers

i have very little sympathy for news publishers. I have sympathy for the journalists actually doing journalism, but news publishers have spent the last couple decades making their websites absolutely unusable, so that unless somebody links to an article externally there's almost no point in going to their site directly. And even after you've followed that link it's almost impossible to read an article around the ads, login prompts, and chumboxes. News websites are terrible, and it's their own fault. Giving them more money to do the thing they've spent so long failing at isn't going to solve this problem.

>directly tax the platforms and then redistribute the revenue to a fund created by government for news journalism themselves

yes. and specifically, make sure the fund is actually funding journalism. a link tax that gets paid out to news sites only incentivizes them to do the bare minimum amount of journalism to still qualify as a news site, and then fill up the rest of the site with SEO clickbait to maximize their clicks for the link tax.

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

#179

Post by paxys »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #167
paxys wrote: post #150

"The news media industry is dying because of tech" is a massively successful myth perpetuated by the news media industry. Back in the day before tech platforms there used to be 5 successful news companies and 5 failing ones. Today there are 5 successful news companies and 500 failing ones. Tech reduced the barriers to entry and made the playing field more level, giving rise to smaller publications and indie journalis…

> "The news media industry is dying because of tech" is a massively successful myth perpetuated by the news media industry. Why do you think that's a myth? The news industry was always reliant on advertising for revenue. The tech giants of the Internet era all figured out how to better target advertisements, so a huge amount of that advertising money shifted from news to tech giants (and not just tech "giants" - Crai…

The news industry is still getting money via ads, same as before. The only thing that has changed is the broker that is connecting them to the advertisers. Print media had its own ad ecosystem, and the online one is controlled by Google and Facebook (but of course the media companies can use whoever they want or even talk to advertisers directly). So what is the complaint exactly? That Google shouldn't take a cut? Except that the law isn't even about advertising, it's about link aggregation (which Google also happens to do, but that is completely separate from its advertising arm).

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

#180

Post by notatoad »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #152
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.

> free teat to latch on to isn't the answer It's the news sites' content that Google is scraping and monetizing. How is it not Google that's latched on to a "free teat"? Serious question. What am I missing? EDIT: Thanks for the downvotes everyone. I need 'em from time-to-time to ensure I've not succumbed to The Matrix. Of course, you're all wrong. But, keep 'em coming!

and they should pay for scraping. but that's not what this is about, this is about charging for linking to news articles.
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