Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 193 posts

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#31

Post by tqi »

imachine1980_ wrote: post #14
jeffbee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously newspapers spent the entire 20th century charging people as much as $100 for classified ads, job postings, real estate listings, etc. Craigslist murdered them and they deserved it . Everything after that has been sour grapes.

Do you realy think the value they give to communities is less than have 100$ job post

People have a really rosy memory of local newspapers, but I grew up in a small midwest town with an "award winning" local newspaper in pre internet days, and I remember it mostly consisting of poorly written drivel and AP wire articles.

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#32

Post by annexrichmond »

freediver wrote: post #4

Newspapers allowed Google and Facebook to drag them to their territory of online ad-monetized business models in which they have no way of competing (because of tech discrepancy). This then led to deterioration of journalism and its inevitable transformation into sensationalism and entertainment, again driven by the incentives of the ad-monetized business model, because clickbait makes more ad money. It is a sad stat…

I'd love a subscription service that gives me access to all my local news sources

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#33

Post by BitwiseFool »

freediver wrote: post #4

Newspapers allowed Google and Facebook to drag them to their territory of online ad-monetized business models in which they have no way of competing (because of tech discrepancy). This then led to deterioration of journalism and its inevitable transformation into sensationalism and entertainment, again driven by the incentives of the ad-monetized business model, because clickbait makes more ad money. It is a sad stat…

>"This then led to deterioration of journalism and its inevitable transformation into sensationalism and entertainment, again driven by the incentives of the ad-monetized business model, because clickbait makes more ad money."

People have this notion that the media used to be way more honest and impartial before the digital age but I doubt that was ever the case. Papers were playing fast and loose with the truth long before the ad revenue model in order to get subscriptions (edit: and quite frankly, to be partisan and shape public opinion). The internet no doubt accelerated things, but I assert it only exacerbated what was endemic to journalism itself.

Even George Washington had to deal with sensationalism and slander: "He regarded the press as a disuniting, "diabolical" force of falsehoods, sentiments that he expressed in his Farewell Address."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#Second_term

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#34

Post by freediver »

deadalus wrote: post #28

I HATE clicking on a Google link and discovering that it's paywalled. It's a massive waste of time.

How is Google supposed to know if you have access or not? (because if you have, and it doesn't show you the relevant result, it is doing a disservice to you)

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#35

Post by bb611 »

hash872 wrote: post #19

I'd imagine these lawsuits' chance of success will very strongly hinge on where they are impaneled. A jury in a conservative, working class or populist area will probably be pretty sympathetic to striking back at Big Tech, regardless of how weak the merits of the case are. An appeals court may later throw the verdict out. To my understanding, the US is the only developed democracy to still use juries for civil matter…

> I am personally anti-populism, and think that civil cases with large financial stakes should be decided by an (appointed not elected) judge- not a random group of folks who can afford to skip work for two to four weeks.

US Federal judges are all appointed, not elected, so not much to worry about there.

The judge and jury serve different purposes in the US system. The judge's job is to decide questions of law, the jury's is to decide questions of fact. Appeals courts can generally only consider failures by the initial judge on questions of law, meaning it only gets overturned if the first judge really screwed up their job.

Given that, it's not clear to me how removing the jury improves the system.

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#36

Post by Gunax »

hash872 wrote: post #19

I'd imagine these lawsuits' chance of success will very strongly hinge on where they are impaneled. A jury in a conservative, working class or populist area will probably be pretty sympathetic to striking back at Big Tech, regardless of how weak the merits of the case are. An appeals court may later throw the verdict out. To my understanding, the US is the only developed democracy to still use juries for civil matter…

So basically you're saying that the lawsuit will be decided by sentiment, and not legal precedent?

I think that's a concern, but I also have more trust in juries than they are given. As an example, many meritless lawsuits against gun manufacturers have been won by the manufacturers.

This also strikes me as a legal stretch--regardless of how good for society local newspapers were, it feels like horse breeders suing car manufacturers.

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#37

Post by NikolaNovak »

13415 wrote: post #15
NikolaNovak wrote: post #2

On one hand, if there is a new media outlet via new distribution model that's winning the market, fair. So if an online-only news source is taking away traffic and money away from physical newspapers, there's part of me that'll feel sad, but whatcha gonna do. On the other hand though, it's a completely different model in my mind to scrape/link/copy/extract somebody else's hard work and news and editorials; and then b…

Potentially stupid questions: Aren't there efficient techniques to prevent web scraping? And if Google really scrapes web content from them without their permission, wouldn't that be commercial copyright infringement which falls under criminal law? That's the thing I don't understand about the current situation.

1. Are there techniques to prevent web scraping? Yes. Are they "Efficient", and even more importantly, effective? Debatable

2. However, more to the point, what's the end game there? If there are 10,000 outlets out there; and arbitrary number, say 100 of them block scrapes; now the other 9,900 will show up in Google/Facebook search and shares, and those who implemented scraping protection will quietly fade into non-existence.

It's a damned-if-you-do:damned-if-you-don't choice of modern media consumption model. I assume that most outlets have decided that the exposure, trickle of users and monetization they DO get is superior to the influx of users drying out. It's consequence of the oft-quoted platitude that these days, for most people Google and Facebook ARE "The Internet" :-/

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#38

Post by AnthonyMouse »

enobrev wrote: post #23
cageface wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers and magazines have derived most of their revenue from ads since long before Google and Facebook. They're lucky to break even on subscription fees.

This is right. It's not Facebook that ate the media's lunch, it was craigslist, ebay, and any marketplace that allows free listings. They've been trying to make up that revenue ever since. Subscriptions were always a pittance. That's not to say Facebook didn't make things worse. They make everything worse; They even ruined wishing friends happy birthday. But the news vs the internet is a much older story than middle-…

> Subscriptions were always a pittance.

It's not that they were a pittance, it's that they were eaten by the cost of printing and distribution. But the internet doesn't have that.

The problem was the chronology of how this happened.

Newspapers had paid print subscribers and advertisers and were profitable. Then the advertisers were eaten by eBay and Craigslist, so they went into the red. But their paid subscribers were still print subscribers, so they still had all the costs of printing and distribution. So they responded by laying off reporters.

Then they had no content worth subscribing to, so the subscribers went away. At that point they're just worthless clickbait mills chasing online ad money.

But the model of paying to subscribe to high quality content which is then distributed over the internet so that money goes to the reporters instead of the distribution costs, that works fine.

The real "problem" with it is that it works fine without a newspaper company. The reason you had a hundred reporters working together in the same building was so they could share a printing press. Without that need, you end up with individuals doing reporting on substack. Which works, but not for the shareholders of the New York Times.

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#39

Post by hash872 »

bb611 wrote: post #35
hash872 wrote: post #19

I'd imagine these lawsuits' chance of success will very strongly hinge on where they are impaneled. A jury in a conservative, working class or populist area will probably be pretty sympathetic to striking back at Big Tech, regardless of how weak the merits of the case are. An appeals court may later throw the verdict out. To my understanding, the US is the only developed democracy to still use juries for civil matter…

> I am personally anti-populism, and think that civil cases with large financial stakes should be decided by an (appointed not elected) judge- not a random group of folks who can afford to skip work for two to four weeks. US Federal judges are all appointed, not elected, so not much to worry about there. The judge and jury serve different purposes in the US system. The judge's job is to decide questions of law, the j…

Many state judge are elected- for a very long time, the US was the only country in world history to ever elect judges. It's unheard of, not just in the developed world, but also among developing countries. (We were however joined by Bolivia in 2011). And of course many important civil cases are heard in state court. This reminds me of the famous quote by a judge in West Virginia, Richard Neely. He actually said this!

“As long as I am allowed to redistribute wealth from out-of-state companies to in-state plaintiffs, I shall continue to do so. Not only is my sleep enhanced when I give someone else’s money away, but so is my job security, because the in-state plaintiffs, their families and their friends will re-elect me. ”

Re: Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook

#40

Post by mitchdoogle »

freediver wrote: post #34
deadalus wrote: post #28

I HATE clicking on a Google link and discovering that it's paywalled. It's a massive waste of time.

How is Google supposed to know if you have access or not? (because if you have, and it doesn't show you the relevant result, it is doing a disservice to you)

I don't think they are blaming Google. It's the news org's fault in that case, for showing the Google bot a full article while actual people get a paywall.
Post reply on HN