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The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

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Re: The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are displaying the snippet and image the website is giving them for a preview.

But they're also prioritizing news sources with such snippets, which forces publishers to have them or lose traffic to competitors, because Facebook is taking advantage of a dominant position in the market. That's what they're arguing about, it's literally the same thing that happened with Google news (and was negotiated) years ago.

Are they putting a thumb on the scale to prioritize them, or are users organically deciding that they are more interested in them? The former I agree would be concerning, but I hadn't heard of this happening before and the article doesn't seem to engage in this level of detail.

Re: The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

#62
post #52
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only show what the website gives them through opengraph tags. If the site doesn’t want to give up that information they can remove the opengraph tags. Even still, fair use should allow Facebook to summarise the contents of the link if they wanted to (but they don’t do that).

Sure, but then proper monopoly laws would ban most of what meta does.

Where does Meta have a monopoly? TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. all compete with it

Re: The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

#63
post #33

The demographics of this site have changed so much that people here are applauding… that it is now illegal to embed opengraph information on Facebook? This is deranged. And it only happens because the government is in bed with legacy media. The government being in bed with the media is awful for the common person. Embedding opengraph data is a clear case of fair use, and it’s sad to see all of this coming from a comm…

Its because the rightsholders instead of treating copyright to advance the arts and sciences and acknowledging that fair use exists, instead use it to nurf creativity under guise of drowning you in a hypotheitical neuanced multi year litigation that will cost millions, if you feel your use is within your right.

People are now upset because since that was the status quoe for so long it got people to believe that they if they made a song, and all they saw was copyright, and copyright sues for everything and wins, and someone heard that song in the background while inventing a microwave they are entitled to all the microwaves earnings, and before if you said no thats absurd, you had to spend millions to see if the system didnt fail you.

And now people are spending millions to prove that it is absurd, and everyone is up in arms that someome called their bluff with resources.

Re: The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

#64
post #39
post #21

Good for these news corps , bad for consumers. Free News websites almost 100% consist of ads trash .

What a perverted logic. Like Meta won't bury you in ads and spy the living shit out of you while you're using.

Adding link tax doesn't change any of that.

Re: The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

#65
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not protecting "normal people". These types of laws are nothing but attempts at rent seeking by dying legacy media companies that were too incompetent to figure out working digital strategies on their own. And they would already be dead without the traffic that big platforms like Meta and Google are sending their way. If you send traffic to some e-commerce platform through an affiliate link, you are the one w…

While you might not like the legacy media, the fact is they're still doing some work. That work needs to be reimbursed? If Meta and co create their own content, they're free to do with it what the like. I need to pay google maps for a certain amount of useage etc. Why should Meta and co get an exception on content ?

Why don't you just subscribe to these newspapers and give them a read instead of demanding other tax payers subsidize their business?

Re: The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

#66
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t Facebook just as full of ads that can’t even be blocked by uBO? When I log into the FB account I haven’t really been using in more than a decade, it’s 99% “sponsored” stuff, ads and reels. Really I could scroll through pages and pages of things I never chose to have in my feed before I see any post from a friend. At least on a news website I get to read just the news and can block the ads.

My Facebook feed is like 90% posts from local news and radio stations that I don't follow. I rarely see ads, just people posting ragebait comments under those local news articles.

The ads are "Sponsored" posts which are ads for anything you can think of. The rest are posts from pages I never liked or clicked on. Most have stupid names like "This is the best thing I've seen in at least 5 or 6 minutes" and post almost exclusively memes, a few are pages like Wccftech or XDA because FB remembers 15 years ago I clicked on them.

The pattern I noticed just now is that for every sponsored post there are exactly 2 "non-ad" posts, usually both from random pages, but occasionally 1 of those posts will be from one of my real connections. Here and there there are some reels. My feed is 98% noise I don't care about nor want to see and no combination of ad and script blocking helps. It's worse than any news site.

Re: The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

#67

Why won't Meta just stop showing Italian news now?

Meta does this in Canada. These same media outlets need to be funded by the government to survive, and as such treats the government with kid gloves, very little criticism, deflection, bias etc.

So I’d say that deal is working well for both the legacy media & the Canadian government.

Re: The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

#68
post #21

Good for these news corps , bad for consumers. Free News websites almost 100% consist of ads trash .

> Free News websites almost 100% consist of ads trash . Most folks don't want to pay for news, but how do you pay journalists so you have an informed citizenry/electorate?

Donation.

Re: The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

#69
post #33

The demographics of this site have changed so much that people here are applauding… that it is now illegal to embed opengraph information on Facebook? This is deranged. And it only happens because the government is in bed with legacy media. The government being in bed with the media is awful for the common person. Embedding opengraph data is a clear case of fair use, and it’s sad to see all of this coming from a comm…

Reading the article and the court ruling, it seems to me that the reference to Open Graph here is beside the point.

Re: The European Union backs Italy's right to make Meta pay for news

#70
post #57
post #33

The demographics of this site have changed so much that people here are applauding… that it is now illegal to embed opengraph information on Facebook? This is deranged. And it only happens because the government is in bed with legacy media. The government being in bed with the media is awful for the common person. Embedding opengraph data is a clear case of fair use, and it’s sad to see all of this coming from a comm…

>The demographics of this site have changed so much that people here are applauding I don't think it has. Meta has been pretty much hated on HN since the beginning. And has only gotten worse and peaked during 2020. It is not about linking information, it is about Facebook.

The commenters here used to be able to separate their disdain for Company X from the actual subject of importance.

Disliking Facebook shouldn't have you supporting government overreach. Defending people or groups you don't like is how you know you have actual convictions.

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