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Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act
91–100 of 213 posts
Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act
#92Who qualifies as a news organization under this law? Can any random declare themselves a "journalist"? Or do the benefits accrue only to Trusted Sources approved by Your Friend, The Government?
> Trusted Sources approved by Your Friend, The Government This. From the C-18 bill: Requires the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (the “Commission”) to maintain a list of digital news intermediaries in respect of which the enactment applies.
It's not arbitrary. Any organization which meets fairly transparent requirements must be on the list.
Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act
#93Even if you agree that Google should have to prop up Canadian news organizations—which I don't, but for the sake of argument—predicating that support specifically on hyperlinks seems like a terrible precedent to set. Any site of any size should be free to link wherever it wants, freely.
The law explicitly requires a power differential and $1B in revenue, so almost any other site won’t be affected.
I do wish there was more distinction between a link and content display. I think there’s a very real concern that summaries lower click-through rates, which Google has been pushing for years and will be turbo-charged with LLMs summarizing content in the future. It would be interesting to see if there might be some future nuance around that.
Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act
#94I think search engines should be opt-in, not opt-out. Just linking to something is fine, but search engines also takes content and uses it to earn money. One example is the cards on Google where they extract content and shows it alongside ads. Nothing else I can think of works like this. Generally if you take the work of others without being allowed and use it to make money you'll end up in trouble. Now, for most peo…
According to this law, "just linking to something" is not fine.
Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act
#95Even if you agree that Google should have to prop up Canadian news organizations—which I don't, but for the sake of argument—predicating that support specifically on hyperlinks seems like a terrible precedent to set. Any site of any size should be free to link wherever it wants, freely.
Google/Meta do more than link, though. They also grab a hero image and an excerpt. Likely fair use, but definitely getting into the grey area. I don't know how the Canadian law is worded, but it would be much more acceptable to me if Google/Meta could get out of paying if they only linked and didn't excerpt images or text.
The acceptable way you're hoping for is exactly how it's worded. The headline here is fearmongering.
Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act
#96Even if you agree that Google should have to prop up Canadian news organizations—which I don't, but for the sake of argument—predicating that support specifically on hyperlinks seems like a terrible precedent to set. Any site of any size should be free to link wherever it wants, freely.
It is amazing the web-illiterate/ignorant way this is being reported in Canada, too. Lots of mention of Google "posting" or "publishing" content, when all it's doing is linking to the publisher's own site. I'm no fan of Google these days, but I wish they had played hard ball on this. This is a total joke.
>when all it's doing is linking to the publisher's own site
That's not true, however. It is also often including a summary and an image, which is certainly republishing or reposting the content. In no way is it "web-illiterate/ignorant" to refer to it as such, because it is more than just a link.
Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act
#97Respect to Meta for having the courage to stand up to the media lobby in Canada and turn off news in response to this law. I'm happy that Google wrung concessions out of the government, but it would've been better for the open internet had they stuck to their guns and removed news links as well.
>Respect to Meta for having the courage to stand up to the media lobby in Canada I'm not sure what's going on in Canada for Meta to be seen as the "good guy". Feels like rooting for Hitler to defeat Stalin.
Indeed, and the funny thing is that FB itself became a more pleasant place after people stopped being able to post rage-links to news articles anymore. Though I've since de-activated my account, so I can't say if that's still the case.
Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act
#98As a Canadian this is disappointing to me. I disagree with the law. Actually, disagree is too soft. I think it is absolutely ridiculous. By Google agreeing to pay even one penny, it removes a large incentive for our politicans and regulations to realize that this was ill-conceived and to come to their senses and repeal.
Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Open Graph, which all the major news organization in Canada use, was created by Meta/Facebook to ensure that the news organizations have editorial control over what is "grabbed". If the news organizations want them to have less information, all they have to do is give less information.
Canadian journalists could have done this without the government by adapting tactics similar to unions. A union strikes not because they want to withhold work from their company, but because even though both the company and the union members want to work, the strike shifts the power balance. Similarly, Canadian journalists could have gotten together to withhold links from Google & Meta until they got a better deal. T…
It comes down to culture and what kind of onus society expects to put onto worker to create and police de facto legislation, which is prefered in some places to allowing the state to enact the same de jure.
They could have done this but now they don't have to.
Re: Canadian government reaches deal with Google on Online News Act
#100One side effect of this whole ordeal that I hate is the fact that fake news sites and conspiracy theory sites that masquerade as "news sites" are not blocked. The result is that platforms are filled with bad content that some people find hard to differentiate from the truth.
Really? I don't use Meta enough to notice, but I've seen several non-news websites complain that Meta is categorizing them as news websites so I imagine that most fake news sites are also being blocked.