I've never seen anyone appearing less qualified in parliament or interviews. Pablo Rodriguez isn't being roasted for his foolish responses and the Canadian media is losing credibility by taking sides. Seeing less national cartel linked media stories will do everyone good. The government not advertising on social media is positive.
Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
81–90 of 203 posts
Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if you think newspapers are vital to democracy, that doesn't oblige other businesses to sell newspapers. These newspapers own their own distribution mechanisms (websites) that are unaffected by the decision of one third party website to part ways with them. Okay, but facebook is really ubiquitous so that makes it different... How is this any different from... the one grocery store in town removing their newspape…
It is, however, an interesting hypothetical to ask: if journalism itself is entirely unprofitable, such that all the newspaper companies eventually shut down, and private journalism stops being done — then what should we, as a public, do to retain our duty to be informed? Can there be such a thing as "non-partisan state-sponsored media"?
> if journalism itself is entirely unprofitable, such that all the newspaper companies eventually shut down
CBC and many other are backed by tax money. Some (many) Canadians think that we overspend on CBC and other media subsidies.
> Can there be such a thing as "non-partisan state-sponsored media"?
It supposed to be CBC. Some (many) believe it fails its goal.
Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
#83Isn't the issue that Google/Facebook sell ads and make money from linking to news sources? And those news sources have their costs but don't see any income? I think about this often when I read a story on some small-town newspaper, and know that the newspaper is making nothing off of me and millions of others reading their story. Didn't Australia implement a similar law and get Google/Facebook to pay something? There…
> I think about this often when I read a story on some small-town newspaper, and know that the newspaper is making nothing off of me and millions of others reading their story.
How do you think University's and teachers feel? They teach millions of people who later go on to make lots of money off the efforts of the educational establishment and educator, although in this case I seem to remember Zuck dropped out.
Perhaps Govt taught him, if you are big enough, you can do wtf you like, so maybe he's a modern day Robin Hood like figure? Robbing from the rich to give to the poor?
Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
#84There was another post that was on the front page earlier today that pretty much asked: if the [Canadian] government hates [Facebook] social media platform so much, why don't they just build their own? https://loeber.substack.com/p/10-why-is-there-no-government-...
And I agree with the author that it's sort of weird that for all the handwringing and grandstanding these governments are doing, none of them are willing to build a replacement platform for their users
Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
#85Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And those news sources have their costs but don't see any income? Don’t those news sources have ads too ? How are they making income from local views?
Because very few people click through to the article, they just read the headline, summary, and comments on Facebook. Facebook is capturing most of the economic value generated by these articles.
Eh, I’d content that most of the economic value is captured by users reading the articles. The comments and ads are near-zero-sum in the aggregate, if that.
Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
#87Why was the government of Canada advertising on Facebook and Instagram anyway?
This is my take. Bad law, but the government should never have been advertising there in the first place.
Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you analyze news as a product, it’s entirely reasonable for Facebook to refuse a price they don’t think is worth it. If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”, as it was taught to me in school - then it does start to look unreasonable. The Canadian government is simply equivocating between these two analyses as it suits them (one could ask, if acc…
> If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”, I don't get it - in this analysis would my local coffee shop have to buy and provide free newspapers to me? I'm all for access to free press being a fundamental right. Where you lose me is the part where a private corporation is supposed to subsidize the production of news for me.
Between 1949 and 1987, US private companies were forced to pay for and produce high quality news content under guidelines set by the federal government.
One of the conditions of ABC, CBS and NBC being given access to the airwaves was that they had to produce and distribute high quality news broadcasts. News was considered a public good.
From wikipedia:
The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited as a contributing factor in the rising level of party polarization in the United States.
Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
#89Ironically, no FB users will be able to read about this from a Canadian news source.
Just the members in the media cartel. Still plenty of Canadian news sources just not ones demanding payment
Re: Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the issue that Facebook/Google don't just share the link, they share the content behind the link as well?
Yes. These advertising companies extract the excess wealth created by the labour of the news-reporting media without compensation. The people of Canada decided that this is unfair and not in their best interest. The advertising companies decided it is not in their best interest to pay the cost of leverage that resource for their wealth-extraction strategies and are going to discontinue it. Everyone wins.
> These advertising companies extract the excess wealth created by the labour of the news-reporting media without compensation.
I can't tell if this is serious or sarcasm. If it is serious, can you explain how Facebook and Google are getting rich from including links to news web sites on their platforms? I haven't seen any evidence of this. On the contrary, platforms like Facebook drive a lot of traffic to news sites, which becomes ad revenue for the news publishers.
> The people of Canada decided that this is unfair
Is there some polling to support this assertion? People may want to "stick it to Big Tech" but most of the support for this policy has come from legacy media who think that it will bring in free money for them.