[HN Gopher] Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Goo...
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Over 200 newspapers now involved in lawsuits vs. Google, Facebook
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 196 points
Date : 2021-12-07 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| gberger wrote:
| What makes a lawsuit "quiet"?
| freediver wrote:
| 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 state, but hardly it is fair to blame someone else
| for it.
|
| Own it up, create credible news products, and monetize it like
| news were monetized for hundreds of years - you pay to read it.
|
| The lawsuit admits that what we call "news" is really
| entertainment with the goal of producing content, not to inform
| the public, but to maximize CPM. Fox News already made it
| official [1]. Now you have to explain it to your viewers/readers
| too and make life less stressful for everyone.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/vladquant/status/1454288815049240586
|
| Edit:
|
| I get a lot of value from my local newspaper. It is monetized
| with (local) ads but they are unobtrusive and non-invasive. The
| content matters because there is a limit to how much it can fit
| in an edition.
|
| I can simply skip the pages with ads if I do not want to read
| them.
|
| And sometimes the ads are the only thing I am interested in, when
| I am looking for something specific or want to see what is new.
| That is the beauty of it.
|
| Now compare that to the horror story that is the online news.
| Content is created by the droves. Ads are everywhere, obtrusive
| and invasive to user experience, not to mention all the tracking
| and mining of user data. I never purposefully check the online
| ads. It is a lose-lose-lose situation for the business, the
| advertiser and for the user. The only reason it exists is because
| it is 'free', coming with two caveats. One obvious - we get what
| we pay for. The other not as obvious - we are what we read.
|
| "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I
| have eaten; even so, they have made me." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
| colinmhayes wrote:
| No one is willing to pay for news because as soon as a piece is
| published there are thousands of other publishers posting
| copycat articles. The copycats have next to zero expenses and
| post on aggregators like facebook with no fee so everyone just
| reads them. It's a tragedy of the commons that only the
| government can solve since people prefer to read their news
| through facebook/google blurbs for free.
| KorematsuFredt wrote:
| > tragedy of the commons that only the government can solve
|
| Tragedy of commons are not always solvable by governments, in
| this case most certainly not as people in government have
| their incentives aligned with getting favorable publicity
| from media.
|
| Government can be a more effective regulatory mechanism for
| say polluted air or river because cleaner air benefits
| everyone equally. Media is not the case. Media benefits to
| those who can control it and putting government in charge
| will give us another CNN and FOX News.
| KorematsuFredt wrote:
| > Own it up, create credible news products, and monetize it
| like news were monetized for hundreds of years - you pay to
| read it.
|
| Yes. Online adverts did not break journalism. The news media
| houses did this to themselves and frankly I think they are
| getting what they deserve.
|
| "Opposite of reading is not reading, it is reading something
| like New Yorker or Atlantic". - Source unknown.
| [deleted]
| cageface wrote:
| 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.
| enobrev wrote:
| 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-aged social media platforms.
|
| The news companies had their opportunity to win this, but
| they moved far too late.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >They make everything worse
|
| I would go further. Facebook are just filling in a need and
| by doing so, making it worse. They never created anything.
| Calling the problem 'Facebook' won't help in the broader
| sense, i think that ultimately it's a distraction but
| people are happy with it because it allows them to
| outsource their problems rather then acknowledge them.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > 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.
| freediver wrote:
| I mostly agree with your assessment apart from this part:
|
| > Without that need, you end up with individuals doing
| reporting on substack.
|
| Content that is produced on substack is opinion, not
| news. It is produced from a comfort of a chair, not from
| a war zone or a hurricane zone. Nothing wrong with that
| (if opinion is what you are after), but you actually need
| to have a news organization to produce news coverage. A
| single person can not do it in a professional and
| repeatable way.
| [deleted]
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > A single person can not do it in a professional and
| repeatable way.
|
| Putting aside whether this is even true, there is no
| requirement for a substack to always be exactly one
| individual, or for that individual to be unable to hire a
| third party proof reader or fact checker. That still
| doesn't require a billion dollar media corporation.
|
| There is also no requirement for it to be opinion rather
| than factual reporting. Most of what existing large media
| companies produce is _not_ factual reporting.
| freediver wrote:
| You just defined a news company.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Yet that thing is not a publicly traded multi-billion
| dollar media corporation.
| freediver wrote:
| Hm I think we have a misunderstanding. Who said that a
| news company has to be publicly traded multi-billion
| dollar media corporation? My local newspaper is a news
| company. It can not effectively be replaced by someone on
| substack, let alone a news company with aspirations of
| more than local news coverage. Substack is OK for
| opinion, not news. That was my whole argument.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Seriously newspapers spent the entire 20th century charging
| people as much as $100 for classified ads, job postings, real
| estate listings, etc. Craigslist murdered them _and they
| deserved it_. Everything after that has been sour grapes.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| Do you realy think the value they give to communities is
| less than have 100$ job post
| jeffbee wrote:
| My local newspaper is a notoriously worthless rag that
| has probably done more to harm humanity than to benefit
| it, including starting a major war.
| trulyme wrote:
| Your local newspaper has started a major war?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes.
| https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-
| journa...
| yesbabyyes wrote:
| I was about to say you must be from New York, but I was
| rather thinking about NYTimes, Judith Miller and the US
| War on Iraq. Plus ca change...
| trulyme wrote:
| Incredible, I'm glad I asked - TIL. Thank you!
| tombert wrote:
| I think local papers give lots of value, but at the same
| time if I am a for-profit business, my goal isn't to help
| out the local newspaper, it's to make (and possibly save)
| as much money as possible. I don't know the success
| numbers of job classified ads, but I doubt it comes
| anywhere near the success numbers of places like Indeed
| or StackOverflow Jobs or Dice, all of which charge
| substantially less money and reach a larger audience.
| tqi wrote:
| 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.
| joedevon wrote:
| I'm sure it was a mixed bag but Corporate Media did not
| break the Epstein story. They famously avoided it, @see
| Amy Robach and ABC News leak. The Miami Herald, a local
| paper, broke the story thanks to a great journalist
| there.
|
| IMO you are really discounting just how massive the
| importance of local journalism has historically been.
|
| PE firms are now buying up and destroying these once
| great outlets, including the Miami Herald.
| bduerst wrote:
| I don't think the local newspaper in their community
| would have broken the Epstein news story either. The
| Miami Herald is one of the largest in Florida, and where
| many of Epstein's crimes took place.
| mdoms wrote:
| News media organisations were forced into bed with Google and
| Facebook by a tragedy of the commons. Readership was going to
| go to those platforms as long as any small proportion of media
| organisations published there. Smaller orgs like the ones
| involved in these lawsuits had only two options - publish on
| FB/G or miss out on a large proportion of readership.
|
| > monetize like news were monetized for hundreds of years - you
| pay to read them
|
| Very, very few news organisations have been sustained only or
| even primarily on readership spend. Your local paper you paid
| $1.20 for per issue barely paid for its own distribution with
| that money, much less the staff writers and freelancers doing
| the actual reporting. Unfortunately advertising dollars have
| been paying for news for much longer than FB/G have existed.
| briffle wrote:
| My local paper was bought by USA Today. They shut down the
| printing press, and laid off everyone except a literally
| handful of reporters/staff. Printing is done at another paper
| they bought in another medium sized town 60 miles away.
|
| They increased the cost of the paper subscription (even
| online) and force us view the ads, even with a online
| subscription. Last time I looked at a giant Sunday paper, 3
| articles were local, and from the reporters, the rest was
| from the USA today pool reporters or AP. The other fun thing
| was cancelling, that requires a telephone call, only during
| east coast business hours (we are west coast) and then 20 min
| of them doing anything they could to keep me from actually
| cancelling.
|
| they can F-ck off and die.
| mdoms wrote:
| I'm not sure how your post is related at all? Is USA Today
| one of the small news organisations involved in these
| lawsuits? My understanding is that USA Today is a behemoth
| news organisation.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, my understanding was always that subscriptions and
| newsstand sales basically paid to get a physical paper into
| people's hands. But actually creating the content for that
| physical paper was paid for by advertising. I'm sure the
| specifics varied but, to a first approximation, those were
| the basic economics.
|
| Put the paper online for free and, again to a first
| approximation, you now need the same advertising revenue to
| support the same reporting, editing, etc. But with the
| classifieds blown up and advertising generally going from
| print dollars to digital dimes, the revenue available to put
| out a newspaper cratered while the relevant costs didn't go
| down much at all.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Subscriptions also sell ads.
|
| If you can tell an advertiser you've got XX,000 subscribers
| paying some nominal amount for your newspaper, that tells
| them that there are that many people who (probably) read
| the paper, and that they have some small amount of
| disposable income.
| ghaff wrote:
| That was of course the long-time model of the trade
| press. You had XX,000 qualified subscribers and you
| supported sending an issue out every week or month with
| ads sold against those subscribers.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Slightly differing perspective:
|
| Newspapers and Google/Facebook (hereinafter "Big Tech") are not
| competitors, regarding the product of news. The former produces
| news, the later does not. Access to news can be sold. Readers
| will pay for it.
|
| The question is what exactly does Big Tech produce that is
| saleable. IOW, what does Big Tech produce that can be sold.
| What do they produce that people will pay for. With respect to
| news product, Big Tech are intermediaries, what we colloquially
| refer to as "middlemen".
|
| Newspapers may be willing to provide some news "for free",
| e.g., via a website. However newspapers also can sell
| subscriptions. Newspapers have a saleable product. The saleable
| product is what attracts an audience, irrespective of whether
| readers are paying subscribers or not.
|
| Big Tech generally provide access to the work of others "for
| free". Generally, Big Tech has no saleable products (cf.
| services) of their own labour. Any audience that Big Tech
| attracts is reliant on the products of others. Big Tech
| generally does not produce the content it uses to attract an
| audience. The content belongs to someone else.
|
| To any reader who sincerely believes Big Tech has "products"
| (cf. services) of their own labour, please consider how much
| revenue could Big Tech "earn" without acting as intermediaries
| for the work product of others. IOW, how much revenue could Big
| Tech earn solely from _selling_ their own "products". Would
| Big Tech still be "Big".
|
| NB. "cf. services" as used above means please distinguish
| products (tangible) from services (intangible).
| freediver wrote:
| The sellable product that Big Tech sells is aggregating and
| ranking billions of pages of content somebody else produced,
| so when you type a few characters into a search box, the most
| relevant results show up in few milliseconds. The ability to
| do that turns out to be more valuable than the actual content
| being read if measured by a typical ARPU of Big Tech vs ARPU
| of News co.
|
| One of the problems of course is that Big Tech then does not
| actually sell this valuable product but chooses to monetize
| it with ads instead, which did democratize access to
| information, but also incentivized creation of huge
| quantities of low quality information and misinformation
| (again mostly for the purpose of monetization with ads).
| Whether we are better off as a society is another question.
| babypuncher wrote:
| The problem with monetizing news the old fashioned way is
| cultural. When a user posts a paywalled article on Reddit or
| Tildes or any number of other similar sites, they are often
| crucified for it and asked to post low quality blogspam
| versions instead. People are used to the idea that news should
| be free, and seem unwilling to give up that idea.
| [deleted]
| annexrichmond wrote:
| I'd love a subscription service that gives me access to all my
| local news sources
| ghaff wrote:
| The problem is that, increasingly, those local news sources
| simply don't exist. My town doesn't have a newspaper. There's
| a website that hosts local news in my state but there is just
| hardly ever anything there. I get more news from Facebook or
| Next Door.
| babypuncher wrote:
| My idea has been to build a centralized subscription service,
| somewhat like Apple News, but structured differently.
|
| You buy a monthly subscription that grants you credits each
| month. You can allocate those credits to whichever news
| sources you want, and for that month you get unlimited access
| to your chosen outlets.
| bduerst wrote:
| That's just monthly newspaper subscriptions with extra
| steps.
|
| Better to do the music subscription route, where the user
| sub revenue is automatically divided amongst all the
| newspapers the user accesses for the month.
|
| IIRC Google tried to do this with display ads, where you
| would see pictures of cats instead of display ads on the
| news pages and pay the website the few cents they would
| have made on the impression. Dunno what happened to it but
| people who are willing to pay for content always
| overestimate the size of the market of other people who are
| willing to do the same.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"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
| bduerst wrote:
| Also _Yellow Press_ , which was the big fake news of the late
| 1800/early 1900s:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
|
| For a while during the last half of the 20th century, this
| type of sensationalism was staved off though, as the FCC had
| determined anyone with a news broadcast license had the
| public responsibility to present different sides to
| controversial issues. And for a while, it worked pretty well.
|
| This was the fairness doctrine, which was abolished in 1987:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
| ipaddr wrote:
| Thank you for your research and insight. I was trying to
| figure out why both sides stopped being presented.
|
| In the 90s, 2000s both sides were still presented until
| Omaba, got really bad under Trump. Now a cnn panel of 6
| people all have to agree with each other or they won't be
| back next week.
| bduerst wrote:
| Yeah despite being abolished in 1987, the lack of
| fairness doctrine took about a decade or two for the
| market to adjust (as conglomerates like Sinclair grew).
| We're only recently getting back to early 20th century
| sensationalism levels it seems.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I think people have short memories. They perceive that the
| news used to be better, so they assume it was always that way
| and that the current supposed decline is unfixable- after
| all, such a state of affairs has no precedent!
|
| Similarly with claims of censorship over covid. Yes it is a
| cause for concern, but no, it probably won't lead to the
| Ministry of Information, as some people claim. But crucially,
| even if it does, that isn't in itself dystopia, our
| governments created propoganda ministries during WW2, and
| they don't continue to exist today. Military censorship has
| always existed but the propoganda ministry of WW2 was much
| more active than just censoring military information.
| mindslight wrote:
| First, there's no mention of the legal theory under which they're
| claiming damages. Is this something to do with caching,
| aggregation, AMP, or what? The only thing the article touches on
| is Google being a monopoly for ads, but that would seem to be a
| very small part of how Google contributed to undermining the news
| industry.
|
| Also even if these newspapers are successful, does anyone foresee
| any of the damages actually going towards reporters' salaries for
| doing real investigation again? It would seem that the case is
| really just an attempt at extracting some money for whatever
| private equity firms are currently feeding on the carrion.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I agree. Any time I see daydreamy claims like "treble damages",
| I feel confident that someone is getting scammed.
|
| Either newspapers are trying to extort the runaway success of
| Google and Facebook or lawyers are trying to loot what remains
| of the newspaper industry. Given the lack of legal basis here,
| I'm inclined to believe the latter.
| Gunax wrote:
| My guess/gut is this is a legal theory/stretch and it's
| unlikely to work.
|
| But my understanding of anti trust law is it's always running
| into new situations that need to be adapted to.
|
| Even anti trust law itself was new/controversial at one point,
| and the concept of forcing or breaking apart private businesses
| was novel.
| mindslight wrote:
| IMO all this talk of "antitrust" with regards to big tech is
| a red herring. At best, it will just facilitate the synergy
| of government and corporate power, through a "do this or
| else" cudgel.
|
| What we need is strong privacy legislation (ala GDPR) so that
| we can actually opt out of being data subjects, and mandated
| interoperability (through open protocols and published APIs)
| such that companies have to compete for each user's business
| rather than just abusing Metcalfe's law.
|
| That legislators don't understand this feels like it's
| because they don't _want_ to understand this. They see a
| growing power and their focus is on how they themselves can
| control that power, rather than how to prevent it for the
| benefit of all (ie preserve freedom).
| worker767424 wrote:
| > private equity firms
|
| Well that's clever.
|
| PE is known to do interesting things. I would not have thought
| that part of the value they saw in dying newspapers is a well-
| timed lawsuit against big tech. Even if it only has a 25%
| chance of winning, I could see PE taking that bet and baking it
| into the value of the scraps they bought.
|
| Here's a good, long read about what's been going on with
| newspaper ownership.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/alden-g...
| hash872 wrote:
| 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 matters (and even for
| criminal cases it's relatively rare). 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.
|
| The standard explanation we all learn in business school is that
| newspapers had geographic monopolies pre-Internet, so they were
| able to rake in astonishing profit margins via advertising (like
| 30-40% margins). Their lunch was mostly eaten by Craigslist,
| years before Google and Facebook- plus the fact that the
| effectively infinite number of websites out there drove
| advertising prices down a ton
| bb611 wrote:
| > 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.
| lordnacho wrote:
| A bunch of randoms might not be good at deciding the facts.
| You'd think someone experienced would be better at this than
| a load of people who won't be held to account.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| The jury system sounded nice on paper but it runs into two
| problems
|
| 1 the average citizen is not the philosopher king that the
| Founding Fathers envisioned
|
| 2 people can't even be arsed to vote how much do they
| really care about their civic duty
| hash872 wrote:
| 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. "
| pyrale wrote:
| > regardless of how weak the merits of the case are.
|
| Why would you think the case is weak?
|
| Documents recently disclosed by state AGs [1] strongly hinted
| at widespread fraud on AdX, Google's ad exchange. It was the
| top thread here about a month ago.
|
| It's absolutely not surprising that in the light of these
| revelations, the primary victims of this fraudulent system seek
| reparation.
|
| [1]:
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...
| hash872 wrote:
| According to the Axios article, the lawsuits are about
| antitrust, not alleged fraud. As I detailed, the reason
| newspapers are in a precarious financial position is because
| they previously held a geographic monopoly on classifieds
| advertising in their cities, but now the Internet (starting
| with Craigslist) destroyed their monopoly & greatly lowered
| classified rates by its sheer size. This would have happened,
| and indeed already did, without Google or Facebook existing
| Gunax wrote:
| 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.
| desireco42 wrote:
| That is all fine and dandy, but if Google and FB decide to drop
| them all-together, and offer you news that isn't "protected",
| then they are screwed even more then today. It is dying industry,
| well, the model is dying, not the need for news.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It's been dying for too long, but it isn't really, no? What
| gets to the frontpages of HN and reddit are copyedited
| articles, not tweets. And like 85% of my twitter timeline is
| links to those articles. So, who are we fooling, people do want
| to read edited articles.
| coretx wrote:
| How many of those 200 newspapers have the same owner ?
| hairytrog wrote:
| "IF YOU DON'T READ THE NEWSPAPER, YOU'RE UNINFORMED. IF YOU DO,
| YOU'RE MISINFORMED." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)
| kungito wrote:
| It was actually Denzel Washington who said that:
| https://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-if-you-don...
| imapeopleperson wrote:
| I still can't believe we are going to let a company with such a
| horrendous track record launch a platform that has the potential
| to be 90% of where we spend our waking time.
| knorker wrote:
| But what do they want? I mean aside from "make laws to force
| google to license our stuff, they must be forced to publish our
| stuff, and forced to pay for it", which is totally insane.
|
| Personally just fucking let me pay $1 per article for me to read.
| I will NEVER subscribe to a recurring thing, but i bet you I'll
| start paying a lot, as I want to read many articles per month.
|
| Paywall sure, but get the fucking subscription the hell away from
| me.
| sorum wrote:
| What they want is a tax. But they don't want to call it a
| "tax", because that's unpopular.
|
| As Benedict Evans put it, when France fined Google for the same
| reasons:
|
| > The shakedown continues. It's hard to see how making tech
| companies pretend to 'buy' something that has little to no
| economic value to them is a path to a sustainable model for
| newspapers. If you want a tax and a subsidy, be honest and call
| it that.
|
| https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1414856375348482050
| knorker wrote:
| So they all want to be the BBC? They should be careful what
| they wish for. Having revenue stream depending on the good
| grace of the government seems even more dangerous.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Totally agree, although $1 is too much. But $0.25 sounds about
| right.
|
| To be honest, just give me the price you charge advertisers to
| advertise to me and let me read it with no advertisements. I'd
| be immensely satisfied with that solution, but no way in hell
| am I paying $15-$30/month for every single separately
| affiliated site. It's ridiculous honestly when they're
| otherwise perfectly happy to serve me ads instead for a
| fraction of that price.
| kmonsen wrote:
| I think it needs to be less than $1, and really easy to do. And
| there needs to be trust that the card will only be used for
| that one article.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Something like $sqrt(n) per month for `n` articles would be
| interesting.
| knorker wrote:
| Sure. I may be showing my money privilege. I would pay, but
| that doesn't mean it's the best price. Just an example.
|
| Yes: fast, easy, and safe. But those are implementation
| details, and solvable ones.
|
| But seems to me they're not onboard with any of it. They want
| an account, and a bunch of BS.
|
| I was once so tempted that i was FIVE screens into one
| paper's registration process when I went "fuck this" and
| closed the tab. Apparently they don't want my money.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The vast majority of people are willing to pay exactly $0 for
| news, because they can access it for free through sites that
| copy articles as they're published.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| 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 become the majority/sole recipient
| of monetization (direct or via ads or other means). It's not good
| for society, it's not good capitalism either as it'll simply dry
| out the sources and then nobody can play and have fun anymore.
| Swizec wrote:
| Fewer than 50% of Google searches result in a click these days.
| Largely thanks to the helpful (to the user) excerpts they
| provide ... and (I think) the trashy SEO-focused barely
| readable writing that you often find upon clicking through.
|
| https://sparktoro.com/blog/less-than-half-of-google-searches...
| cblconfederate wrote:
| The sad thing is that newspapers allow that themselves. They
| can block out google and FB but they don't want to. It's a
| similar tragic fate to that of a drug addict. However if
| content-makers want to overcome this they need to cut off big
| tech access to their content, at least temporarily.
|
| The frontpage of HN is mostly news articles and some blogs.
| They get a lot of exposure, a lot of readership. Yet somehow
| google + FB end up making the money.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Facebook and Google control demand. If a newspaper doesn't
| let them post their content the aggregators will just grab an
| article that is nominally the same from a different publisher
| that does provide them access.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| If their content is so interchangeable, why should they all
| stay in business?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Someone has to actually write the content before everyone
| else copies it.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| News has always enjoyed / suffered a tricky carve-out in our
| understanding of the interaction between the first amendment
| and copyright because (by its nature) its value to the public
| is in dissemination.
|
| So while it's generally not okay to wholesale-copy a news
| article, it's _always_ been okay to quote it (and, in the
| concrete and particular case of Google and Facebook, it 's also
| always been okay to point people to it).
|
| So the disruption of the revenue model (surprise; turns out
| people were only getting the ads as a consequence of buying the
| paper, they weren't _why_ they bought the paper) is
| particularly tough because the core activity that is disrupting
| the model (making news universally accessible and useful) is
| _by itself_ a public good.
|
| (It's worth noting that the newspapers in this story have to go
| through the anti-trust door on this topic specifically because
| [I assume] there isn't any meat on the bones of claiming
| ownership of the news Facebook / Google are aggregating.)
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Captured my exact sentiments.
|
| How many US tech websites were involved in lambasting decisions
| by France and Australia to force Google to play nice?
| 13415 wrote:
| 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.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| 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" :-/
| claudiulodro wrote:
| > Aren't there efficient techniques to prevent web scraping?
|
| Not especially, since internet browsers make GET requests the
| same as scrapers. There are techniques around blocking user
| agents, rate limiting, etc. but that's an arms race against
| the scrapers.
|
| The tricky part about blocking Google is that if you do, your
| site won't show up in Google search results. :)
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| The newspapers have missed the opportunity to monetize for
| themselves and now need to roll out everything anew.
|
| As they should, today's google amp links are much worse content
| wise than daily mail articles, and that's one hell of a low bar.
| ghaff wrote:
| >The newspapers have missed the opportunity to monetize for
| themselves
|
| What do you think that opportunity was for most even decent-
| size city newspapers? A few national/international brands have
| done OK but that's because the NYT, say, has subscribers all
| over the world. Even something like the San Francisco Chronicle
| never had that same opportunity.
|
| Maybe if everyone had pushed back harder on making content
| available for free and paywalls were more the norm in the early
| days of the newspapers going online. But I sort of doubt that
| would really have worked.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They could have formed a joint venture to build a Craigslist
| killer, go after MLS listings, any number of things that
| would enhance their traditional business with desirable
| services. Instead they just stood by and watched the world
| change.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| It's hard to tell, even in hindsight.
|
| Maybe something like free access without ads to paper
| subscribers.
|
| I just tried to run a search query with explicit "without
| google" and am returned the full spectrum of google marketing
| tools:-)
| deadalus wrote:
| I HATE clicking on a Google link and discovering that it's
| paywalled. It's a massive waste of time.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Why is this even allowed by google? It's a bait and switch
| similar to serving visitors and search engines different
| content.
| bduerst wrote:
| Many news websites won't paywall the first article from a
| Google Search (WSJ is one though).
|
| I'd be willing to bet in these instances you're using a
| traffic blocker or privacy extension that's clearing HTTP
| referer or some other means by which the website detects
| you're from Google instead of being direct (paywall) traffic.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Google has an official policy against this sort of
| behavior.
| bduerst wrote:
| Which behavior? _First Click Free_ was ditched years ago,
| but websites will still allow x number of free articles.
| Some don 't, and still get indexed.
| joegahona wrote:
| How is it a bait and switch? If the content is relevant, it's
| relevant. If you clicked through to something that said it
| was about NBA basketball and it was instead about knitting,
| _that_ would be a bait and switch.
| zajio1am wrote:
| First, if i get paywall page instead of the article then it
| is not relevant, because it is about paying and not about
| the original query.
|
| Second, it does not make sense - if i use a public search
| engine, i expect publicly available information. If i have
| subscription to specific newspaper i would use search
| dialog in that newspaper. If a public search engine returns
| me paywall for a specific newspaper, it is minimal chance
| that it is the same newspaper i am already subscribed to.
| joegahona wrote:
| So if a user subscribes to the paywall site, that article
| is "about paying"?
|
| The article's content is distinct from the method by
| which the publication chooses to earn revenue. A paywall
| article is "about paying" as much as an ad-ridden article
| is "about belly-fat ads." They're both designed to make
| money, only one shifts the cost to the end user. I'm all
| for putting a lock icon next to it in Google searches, or
| doing whatever's necessary to signal that it's paywalled,
| I guess, but don't blame the search engine for attempting
| to organize the world's information.
| freediver wrote:
| 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)
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Even if I were to subscribe to a hundred newspapers (which
| nobody does), that would leave tens of thousands I don't.
| Google should avoid showing me results that are 99% useless.
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| 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.
| freediver wrote:
| Well again, the people that have a subscription do not get
| a paywall, they get content when they click the same Google
| link and are probably very happy with that outocme. How is
| Google supposed to know who has access?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Google could log which sites have a paywall, and put an icon
| next to search result that you might need to pay money to
| access the article. I could also let google know which sites
| I subscribe to and if I have a WSJ subscription, it could
| rank those articles a little higher to similar results on
| sites I don't have a subscription to. For example, something
| similar happens when you google TV shows, e.g.
| https://www.google.com/search?q=mad+men
|
| There is a panel on the right hand side showing which
| streaming services stream the show. I can tell google which
| ones I have and it will improve the recommendations based on
| that.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| I am not sure being salty that you suck at the internet qualifies
| as grounds for a lawsuit
| ineedasername wrote:
| I think they're fighting the wrong fight, and too late. The
| advertising angle here seems moot:
|
| 1) Google found a way to get ads to consumers that is more
| attractive to advertisers. Whether or not they have a monopoly,
| advertisers won't suddenly go back to ineffective new media ads
| if Google is broken up and makes room for other competitors that
| get ads to consumers better than legacy media does the job
|
| 2) They're ad revenue is much more limited by lack of readership
| than anything else.
|
| #2 is why I said it's not just the wrong fight, but too late:
| online news sold out their future to Google years ago in a race
| to the bottom with each other. No one wanted to stop Google
| scraping their content because, once a few outlets allowed it,
| none were willing to cede readership to others that might get
| more attention from Google. So pretty much everyone allowed
| Google to scrape news content and present chunks of it in search
| results, and over time is means fewer people have any reason to
| click through. At the same time the outlets ramped up syndication
| and cut budgets on original work so readers had even less reason
| to click through to any particular site.
|
| That's where they lost the fight.
|
| If Google has an ad monopoly, the news outlets have no special
| status as victims of it and there every reason to believe their
| decades-long foot shooting would have placed them exactly where
| they are anyway.
| kragen wrote:
| This was predicted in the EPIC 2014 video in 02004. If you
| haven't seen it, it's a very thought-provoking look at the future
| of news. The original requires Flash, of course.
|
| It got a few things wrong. It doesn't mention filter bubbles and
| algorithmic radicalization, for instance.
| namdnay wrote:
| Ohhhh was that the one with "Googlezon"? I remember that video
| doing the rounds
| kragen wrote:
| Yup. And although that particular merger hasn't happened, it
| correctly predicted the trend toward consolidation.
| willhinsa wrote:
| I'd never heard of this before. I found a copy on YouTube, and
| it's fantastic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUHBPuHS-7s
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I wish adblockers would just block paywalled content.
| gerash wrote:
| The most important factor is that on the internet local news
| media lose their geographical monopoly. So everyone can subscribe
| to NYT or WSJ no matter where they live. This effectively creates
| a winner takes all situation like in many other industries which
| get closer to a free market.
|
| Add to that the fact that classified ads have been taken over by
| likes of ebay, LinkedIn, craigslist, etc. Basically the business
| model of the old newspapers have been disrupted and trying to
| blame it on popular targets like Google and FB is pointless.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| The NYT and WSJ were always available outside of their
| respective home markets. You would maybe get each day's issue a
| day late. But that still meant you got the same stories on the
| day the local paper reported on them.
| giarc wrote:
| Hasn't that always been the case? Even before the internet, I
| remember seeing copies of the NYT or WSJ on newsstands
| everywhere. I believe you could subscribe and it would get
| delivered to your door.
| athenot wrote:
| I receive the NYT on my doorstep on weekends and my copies
| say "Printed in Georgia". The content does not vary, though.
| reaperducer wrote:
| It does vary, depending on your region. My observation is
| that not all regions get extra content.
|
| NYT papers in New Jersey used to have different content.
| I'm not sure if that's still the case.
|
| West coast editions printed in Los Angeles used to have an
| entire extra section. The last time I checked, that section
| is no longer there, but there are other subtle changes.
| Like the weather forecast in the upper right corner of the
| front page.
| alex_young wrote:
| > ...local news media lose their geographical monopoly
|
| I realize what you're saying, but really, local news will
| always have a geographical monopoly.
|
| Can the NYTimes or WSJ even think about covering local issues?
| How will investigative reporting function for say a local
| office holder or a local environmental problem?
|
| To my knowledge the real problem is that the traditional
| business model supporting reporting has dried up. Running
| classified ads or selling marketing inserts is an obsolete
| practice. This doesn't really change the need for local
| reporting though.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Sure, the few remaining quality papers can (and do) introduce
| local editions for markets other than their "traditional"
| home base. Unfortunately, the economics aren't much different
| than they are for the regional paper that previously covered
| the area.
|
| I say "not much" because there might be a chance that people
| would appreciate the combination of local news combined with
| the national and international coverage that would be shared
| among all these editions. But that, also, isn't exactly new:
| it's what these "newspaper chains" have been doing for at
| least 20 years.
| varenc wrote:
| My interpretation is people just care about local news far
| less than they used to? I'm in a semi-major city and the
| local news is only a small part of my news consumption.
| indigochill wrote:
| Which is kind of weird, right? In theory if there are local
| issues, maybe you can get involved. You can't directly get
| involved in most of what you hear about at the
| national/global level (even though a national stock market
| means you can invest at the national level and thus you
| have an interest there, though your investment doesn't move
| the needle).
| dralley wrote:
| And the shift from local news to national news (cable and the
| internet), and news conglomerates created by private equity
| buying up local papers and gutting their staff, has largely
| _not_ broken down any geographical monopolies, it has for the
| most part simply removed local news from existence.
|
| And no, Twitter and Facebook are not suitable replacements.
| mfer wrote:
| > removed local news from existence
|
| Removing local news has created a hyper focus on national
| news. People forget about their local communities where a
| ton is happening.
|
| This isn't good for local communities.
|
| We need more focus on the local. Not everything is
| national.
| charcircuit wrote:
| In the age of the internet local doesn't matter anymore.
| I'm now part of a community that spans the globe.
| edgyquant wrote:
| This is completely untrue. You still live next a
| community and their politics effect you in ways they
| don't people living hundreds of miles away. The problem
| is the internet convinces people they are apart of a
| global community and it's all that matters. We need ways
| for communities to connect with each other that are
| modern and up to date other than following a local
| Facebook page.
| foobarian wrote:
| Yeah tell that to the mob when they block roads out of
| your town and come knocking to raid your house
| MR4D wrote:
| > local news will always...
|
| "local news" and "local news _media_ " are not the same. I
| may pay attention to local news through google, facebook,
| etc, but never read the local paper or watch local TV news.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The most important factor is that on the internet local news
| media lose their geographical monopoly._
|
| The other side of that coin, however, is that everybody knows
| the national news, but the vast majority of people know nothing
| about what's happening in their own backyard.
|
| I'd estimate that at least 80% of Americans don't even know
| what days their city council meets.
| netcan wrote:
| I agree with most of this, but I suggest a 2nd look at the
| concept of free market. Free from what? Geographic locality?
| It's notable that Adam Smith's free market seems to have been
| free also of monopolies and cartels.
|
| In any case, whether an open internet would have resulted in
| newspapers' bankruptcy is speculative... even though I share
| your speculation. What actually happened was that FB & google
| achieved control over who sees what on the internet, who earns
| ad revenue and how much. That is how their business models
| actually died. It makes sense to sue, lobby, beg or otherwise
| try to get what you can from them. There is no market, just
| them.
|
| Maybe it would have happened anyway in a free market, but it
| didn't happen that way. What happened was that big tech took
| over content delivery and online advertising.
| bsedlm wrote:
| It's as close as they can get to suing the internet
| gumby wrote:
| If more than a metaphor then that is a good case for
| antitrust.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I have long said the problem with paying for news is that it is
| rarely worth paying for. When I was in grad school there was a
| program that gave us "free" copies of the NYTimes and USA Today
| (I'm sure part of our tuition paid for it but all we had to do
| was swipe our student id to open the newspaper box). I would get
| them every day and there were rarely more than one story in them
| that I would actually read.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| I suppose it is to be expected from this site that there is
| more respect for tech douchebags sitting in their climate
| controlled offices than journalists risking their lives in
| warzones.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| USA Today is deliberately written at a 10th grade reading
| level, so it's doubtful how relevant it is for university
| students.
|
| But if you found only one relevant article in the NY Times then
| either you were consuming radio/TV news, or just don't care
| about current events.
|
| Which is fine, it just means you weren't the target audience.
| tzs wrote:
| > USA Today is deliberately written at a 10th grade reading
| level, so it's doubtful how relevant it is for university
| students.
|
| A 10th grade reading level doesn't mean they only cover
| stories of interest to 10th graders or younger. It just means
| they they use a 10th grade vocabulary and sentence structure.
| Most stories in the NYT could be covered at a 10th grade
| level and still convey most of the important information.
| bluedays wrote:
| Sounds like a product designed to accommodate a wide set of
| interests for a diverse group of people. Are you sure you're
| not just boring?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| often things that are wide are not thought of as deep, and
| that there must be more misses than hits in a wide approach,
| those factors being taken into account I don't understand the
| assumption that one is boring because only hit a few times
| and not affected deeply with an approach designed to achieve
| exactly that effect.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| It's the rare product where it's good for you even when others
| consume it. Sort-of like a vaccine, but for democracy.
| harles wrote:
| Unless it's more of a horse dewormer for democracy, which I
| fear a lot of media is headed towards.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| The cynicism "the media" gets is entirely boring and mostly
| wrong. If you read one of WSJ/NYT/WashPo and never get near
| youtube, you will be well informed.
|
| But the actual problem with your statement is that it
| implies some alternative to "the media", and/or that it's
| said as if the world without the news media is somehow
| similar to the one we currently life in. There isn't and it
| wouldn't: a democracy is a regulatory system that needs the
| feedback loop just like your AC needs to get measurements
| from a thermometer to adjust its settings. Take out that
| part, and democracy is done for.
| threatofrain wrote:
| 1. News isn't worth paying for when the race-to-the-bottom has
| already occurred. How do you persuade people to buy things
| which are basically free and can be viewed even without ads?
|
| 2. For many events, it's not the writing I care about but the
| _information_. IMO Google realizes the difference and bets on
| information over writing, whereas NYT still wants to sell
| writing. All publications which are trying to stop Google from
| scraping their information are basically insisting that their
| copyrightable storytelling is being ruined by Google 's
| information extraction.
|
| 3. For _general_ news, I often don 't know what I want to know.
| This is where news aggregation is way better than individual
| outlets, at least most of the time, with exceptions going to
| specific domains like food or games. If WION gets the exclusive
| interview, then WION is where I want to go and everyone else is
| just re-reporting. News aggregation also allows you to take in
| a sense of inter-rater reliability on a per-story level. But
| this is all playing into Google's strengths.
|
| Given this, I don't understand people saying this or that
| outlet sucks; for example, does Buzzfeed News suck? Just the
| name alone makes it sound like celebrity news gossip. But then
| once and awhile Buzzfeed News gets an exclusive interview (such
| as on Palantir matters), and guess what, I want them to show up
| on my aggregators.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I would get them every day and there were rarely more than one
| story in them that I would actually read._
|
| Maybe the problem wasn't the paper.
|
| The New York Times' target audience isn't grad students. I
| don't think it's all that surprising that you weren't all that
| interested in it.
|
| As we get older, we change. We learn more. We become interested
| in more things. Depending on how long it's been since grad
| school, you may be interested in what's in the Times now.
|
| I know that I don't like the same thing I did back in grad
| school. I certainly know that I'm interested in more things
| than I was then.
|
| When I was in grad school, I couldn't stand the taste of
| tapioca. Now, I love it.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| The New York Times target audience isn't a highly educated
| young American? Maybe that's the problem, as pointed out?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I read multiple NY Times articles per day while in
| community college and university (2007-2012). I'd say there
| were multiple relevant articles every day. I think OP just
| isn't interested in current events or the opinion pages.
| Which is fine. But likely not broadly representative of
| most news consumers.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| > young
|
| No. Middle-career and beyond because you probably can't
| afford tickets to the Met gala if you're <35.
| [deleted]
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Those are $35,000. I suspect they hope to have a broader
| audience than folk who regularly drop 35k on a single
| night's event.
| Spivak wrote:
| The problem is that this doesn't address who the target
| audience for the NYT actually is. I'm young and interested in
| lots of things. Going by just the section headings, except
| for sports, I should adore getting the paper. The content is
| absolute garbage though. I come away having learned nothing
| and no more informed than if I just read the headline. It's
| not even entertaining as a consolation prize.
|
| Like I'm basically exactly the right blend of pretentious
| artsy liberal yuppie but I've found my niches other places.
| Guest42 wrote:
| Even worse on the internet when the headline obfuscates the
| info promising something that isn't there.
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