Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing

#61

Post by andsoitis » Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #47

andsoitis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll assume you're writing in good faith, so I will try to explain why I think some are disagreeing with you. > Amazing what greed can do. They want to make money from the news, yet they don't want to pay the news sources for letting them feed off of it. The Canadian government has said that a law is going to come into effect that will ban a company like Facebook from allowing news links unless the news provider is c…

> arbitrary exemption Public safety? As soon as you codify it into the law it is no longer arbitrary. Maybe arbitrarily enforced (down the road) but that is a different battle.

What makes it arbitrary is that "a public safety exemption" isn't specified or codified in the language of the anticipated regulation.

Even it if were, there's also another practical wrinkle with using the concept of "public safety" when it comes to "news". Would the definition, for example, include "fake news"?

A company can also decide that it is too risky to automatically detect whether a news article complies with the law (e.g. IF public_safety THEN allow_share) and so it is more practical to just have a simple exclusion for sharing news.

Re: Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing

#62

Post by catchnear4321 » Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #31

catchnear4321 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if information about disasters is “content,” then the correct answer is “everyone.”

It costs money to gather information, send reporters + photographers places, etc. rent seeking is wanting to be paid for no new work, not wanting to be paid for work that is in the public interest.

the content was already created. posting it to facebook is an optional means of distribution.

no, i wont consider posting the article to be work.

> rent seeking is wanting to be paid for no new work

which if it weren’t information about disasters, most people wouldn’t care about too much.

posting or hosting, once the article is written, it’s all rent seeking.

Re: Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing

#63

Post by benj111 » Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 2:18 PM UTC

phyrex wrote: post #48

benj111 wrote: post #22

What actually is the law? Is it just embedding an article? Hyperlinks? What? They can't be doing it with hyperlinks surely, or else that would break the web. Edit: it does apparently include links. But links go the newspapers website, who presumably can monetise how they like, so why would that be an issue?!?

They very much didn’t want to ban it, they ALSO wanted to get paid for the social media links too. It just backfired on them.

Well I can sort of see the wisdom in news sites getting paid for embedded content, otherwise no one goes to their site.

But links? If I search Google for news, are Google supposed to pay for displaying links to news websites?

Re: Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing

#64

Post by kennywinker » Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

three3 wrote: post #46

kennywinker wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs money to gather information, send reporters + photographers places, etc. rent seeking is wanting to be paid for no new work, not wanting to be paid for work that is in the public interest.

Well, Facebook already blocked sharing news, so... Where's the rent seeking?

Fb killed most of the previous forms of media that people would have turned to for this news. But now facebook will sell us the solution, but only if we don’t regulate them in any way. Sounds fair?

Re: Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing

#65

Post by ksaj » Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 2:19 PM UTC

codetrotter wrote: post #38

Why is content from the news media needed for this? The Canadian government should find ways to produce public information about the fires, and find ways to distribute that. I am all for punishing Facebook in many ways. But if they want to use Facebook to publish public service info, don’t make demands that Facebook allow sharing articles from commercial news agencies. Make a deal with Facebook to have Facebook distr…

I agree to some degree, but we sorta-kinda already have that. Canadians can go to CBC or any other Canadian news source for that information. A certain large demographic have learned to rely on social media for discourse, as they not only get the news, they can have threaded discussions about it.

The law that Meta is complying with hasn't even passed yet. This is a clinch found in that upcoming law, so you'd hope that Meta would be willing to work around it if the ones implementing the law are willing to.

Re: Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing

#66

Post by matheusmoreira » Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

hotstickyballs wrote: post #52

matheusmoreira wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Brazil they tried to sneak in similar provisions into a fake news law. They actually preempted Facebook's move by simply writing into law that social media companies have no right to block the links as retaliation.

Then block users! Governments have nothing on tech talent and that’s their loss

Oh I wish FAANG would just rangeban my entire country due to the dictatorial politicians and judges. I bet WhatsApp alone could generate enough pressure to bring these people to their knees. I mean, Google posted a small link against the law in the search page and they hit them with a totally arbitrary $200k per hour fine for "abuse of market position" until they removed it. You'd think they wouldn't want to be in a country with literal power tripping supreme court judges ordering censorship left and right.

The truth is of course they're making far too much money to give a shit and would rather obey and make slightly less money instead of leaving and making zero.

Re: Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing

#67

Post by LukeLambert » Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 2:20 PM UTC

Can someone explain what it looks like from a user's perspective when an article is blocked? Is there an error message? Limited reach? Plain link instead of rich preview?

If the publishers don't want their photo, headline, and first sentence or two appearing without payment as a rich preview on Facebook, well ok. I think it's a stretch, but I can at least see their perspective. It's worth noting that publishers are already in control of that preview with Open Graph tags.

However, if they want to get paid for an unadorned tag, that completely goes against the spirit of hypertext.

Re: Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing

#68

Post by JKCalhoun » Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

hotstickyballs wrote: post #58

JKCalhoun wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it "dying business model" or the public good that the Canadian government are responding to? Seems like the loss of local news has become more like a dying societal model.

You’re squarely on the side of protectionist government funded media here like the CBC, not local news

I'm on the side of journalism in general. Local journalism is my most favored, national my second. Both though are more important to me than an ad-selling corporation.

I know "protectionist" is a word that is supposed to have negative connotations. Maybe though I missed how the government is acting against the interests of the Canadian people.

Re: Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing

#69

Post by jszymborski » Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 2:22 PM UTC

Both the Gov't of Canada and Facebook will try to get you to believe there is a righteous side here, but believe me when I say that when it comes to this particular matter, both of these folks can fuck straight off.

Excuse my Canadian French.

Re: Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing

#70

Post by kennywinker » Sat, Aug 19, 2023, 2:24 PM UTC

catchnear4321 wrote: post #62

kennywinker wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs money to gather information, send reporters + photographers places, etc. rent seeking is wanting to be paid for no new work, not wanting to be paid for work that is in the public interest.

the content was already created. posting it to facebook is an optional means of distribution. no, i wont consider posting the article to be work. > rent seeking is wanting to be paid for no new work which if it weren’t information about disasters, most people wouldn’t care about too much. posting or hosting, once the article is written, it’s all rent seeking.

> posting or hosting, once the article is written, it’s all rent seeking.

That almost makes sense in a non-digitized world. I.e. It’s not rent seeking to sell newspapers, because each newspaper costs money and takes work to make - but in a digitized world, you’re essentially saying any profiting off content is “rent seeking”. Like if I make a video course teaching a skill and I try to sell it, that’s rent seeking? Seems like that waters the concept of rent seeking down to the point of uselessness.