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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

#311

Post by pompino »

paxys wrote: post #66
jaredwiener wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google News is operating a content + link farm by copy/pasting content from other sites. Google is pretending to be legitimate but in realty they are just as trashy. If anyone else was doing it, Google would have banned them faster than you can blink.

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

#312

Post by jquery »

chgs wrote: post #253
majormajor wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is DEEPLY and directly involved in the ecosystems that: * pay publishers more for showing video ads than showing text or image ads * encourages and creates invasive tracking Javascript and cookies-and-similar tricks * rewards SEO/spam tricks with higher placements in search

Remember when google first launched and it was so great as it was just some text adverts rather than things like punch the monkey.

I remember when google first launched and didn't have ads because the founders wrote a whitepaper about how ads would inevitably ruin google

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

#313

Post by teeray »

candiddevmike wrote: post #263
asow92 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer who works for one of these news publishers you have little sympathy for, what I can tell you is that: 1) Most people don't want to pay for news. Even $1/year is too high. 2) Ad CPMs are low—especially on iOS thanks to Apple's ATT—so we need more ads to make the same amount of revenue. 3) "SEO clickbait" (especially Taboola) helps keep the lights on. Click at your own peril. 4) If governments pay news o…

RE: 4, NPR seems to do OK, same with the BBC. You're choosing to implement all of these terrible things by continuing your employment, so you "not wanting them" is kind of moot. Find a different job if you genuinely don't agree with what you're building. I'm a firm believer that companies would stop doing this kind of crap if we, collectively as tech workers (even better as a union!), stopped implementing it .

If it’s lucrative enough for the company, they will find an apathetic contractor who will put $LOVECRAFTIAN_HORROR_JS on the site, cash their check, and move on to the next thing.

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

#314

Post by teeray »

aetherson wrote: post #141
adrr wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because people don't value it. I mean, seriously, that's the reason. Back when newspapers were healthy, basically there was all this stuff that was bundled with the actual news that was of more immediate utility to people: classifieds, movie reviews, comics, coupons. And there was less competition for people's leisure time. News is now in a very competitive leisure time landscape and is debundled from stuff that's of…

> most people just don't care that much about news

I stopped caring about what was happening on the world stage in 2022, and it has been sublime. I hear about the big things from friends and random folks, and it gives some instant conversation starters (“oh no, I hadn’t heard about that”). The only news I actually care about is local news, and I skim the newsletter my (small) city publishes on Fridays.

Given that, there is zero value provided to me by traditional media publishers. I say this as someone who gets NYT, WSJ, WaPo, and FT for free through work. I don’t use them, because I’d rather spend my time doing something else.

No judgement here though—if reading the paper is your thing and you like staying informed, that’s great and I fully support it. Just offering my perspective.

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

#315

Post by matrix87 »

paxys wrote: post #34

People 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.

It may be different in the USA though because of the first amendment?

If google decides to delist, forcing them to list news sites would constitute compelled speech, would it not?

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

#317

Post by teeray »

paulcole wrote: post #307
internetter wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you still see ads

There’s nothing wrong with paying for content and still seeing ads.

There is everything wrong with that if that wasn’t the deal to begin with. You’re paying for information and they’re deliberately injecting noise in the signal. It’s degrading the quality of what you’re paying for without a commensurate adjustment in the rate.

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

#318

Post by wustangdan »

drawkward wrote: post #262
wustangdan wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have sympathy for the journalists actually doing journalism You know that with Substack all these actual journalists are having no issue getting paid very well. I'm not sure why we'd want to expand NPR or make more NPR's. We need less of their low-quality and biased journalism IMO, not more.

[flagged]

A senior editor just admitted they are biased.

You can try and guess my politics (you'd be wrong), but I can guess that you don't think journalists who agree with your politics can be biased. I can agree with NPR's politics and still admit they are biased, why can't you?

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/npr-fact-check-media-bi...

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

#319

Post by Alpha3031 »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #265
philipkglass wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facts are not copyrightable, so the meat of a story spreads quickly and with very little money changing hands. One subscriber to the Los Angeles Times can legally and immediately share the factual essence of an article via social media, personal web site, email, or anything else. From there it can be reshared indefinitely. Only people who really want to read the original reporting in full will pay to subscribe to the…

“Facts are not copyrightable” Does anyone have any good pages on that which go into how to extract facts without copyright infringement? And for purposes of creating independent, educational works from those facts?

Sure. Copyright is something that Wikipedia has to deal with, so there's a guide for contributors (which also links to the article on the relevant legal doctrine) here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Close_paraphrasing#S...

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

#320

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

warkdarrior wrote: post #199
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m very pro capitalism but I do think redistribution makes sense in the context of giant corporations that are effectively immune to competition. Why do you think Google and Amazon and others can create entire products that never make a profit for years and then unceremoniously shut them down or reduce their investments in them? Everyone else has to try to survive based on their merits and actually make money. Platf…

> Why do you think Google and Amazon and others can create entire products that never make a profit for years and then unceremoniously shut them down or reduce their investments in them? It seems like Google and Amazon shutting down or divesting some products would make room for a lot of competitors to step in and dominate that space.

Maybe, but a lot of the would-be companies often get starved of revenue and die before the big companies exit. Until then, the big companies are often giving things away for free, or at a loss, or bundling them in an anti-competitive way (see MS Teams). That doesn't leave much room for a startup to survive.
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