[HN Gopher] CRTC Confirms Bill C-11 Can Pressure Internet Platfo...
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CRTC Confirms Bill C-11 Can Pressure Internet Platforms to
Manipulate Algorithms
Author : walterbell
Score : 21 points
Date : 2022-06-23 14:21 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.michaelgeist.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.michaelgeist.ca)
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| This makes no sense at all.
|
| > "We want Canadians to find Canadian music. How best to do it?
| How will you do it? I don't want to manipulate your algorithm. I
| want you to manipulate it to produce a particular outcome. And
| then we will have hearings to decide what are the best ways and
| explore it."
|
| Why would you need to tweak an algorithm to nudge people toward a
| certain kind of (government approved) music?
|
| People simply... listen to the music they like! Pink Floyd and
| The Beatles sure didn't need one to become popular in their
| respective countries.
|
| > Scott's comments confirm what Rodriguez has misleadingly denied
| and Bill C-11 critics have maintained for months: the bill's
| discoverability requirements will obviously require algorithmic
| manipulation in order to prioritize Canadian content.
|
| Why do they need to do that in the first place? Here in America,
| people buy American content because they want to see it. Same in
| France. Why are Canadians not buying their own content?
| jollybean wrote:
| This is a bit glib, but that's understandable.
|
| It's not a truly 'free market' for anything, and content is no
| exception.
|
| 'Free Market' idealism overwhelmingly favours 'large open
| economies' because they'll basically gobble up smaller open
| economies next to them.
|
| Literally the only large industries that exist in open
| economies next to much larger open economies are those that are
| protected: Banking, Telecoms etc..
|
| If laws were changed such that US companies could buy Canadian
| Telcos - then even if Canadian Telcos were _way_ more efficient
| (they are not, but supposed they were), then US giants would
| eat the Canadian Telcos instantly. The deals would be signed
| literally the day the law passed.
|
| Sometimes local cultural resilience is enough, but it's not
| that common.
|
| In Italy, they don't go to Starbucks or have a lot of America
| food, because theirs is just better in every way.
|
| But in Tunisia, almost everything that Tunisians do is quickly
| getting replaced by Western products.
|
| It's weirdly easy to convince young minds in the developing
| world that 'all their stuff is stupid' next to Coke, KFC,
| McDonald's, Nike. It's almost shocking to see the inter
| generational divide in these places, with elderly people being
| of 'some culture' where the kids are almost 100% cheap copies
| of bad Western brands.
|
| Coca Cola has immense money and power to influence, lobby,
| market. There are a few specific Tunisians teas that are just
| 'local products' that don't have an industry cabal behind them.
| Eventually, they will be replaced by Coke.
|
| In Canada specifically what I have noticed is that multi-
| generational Canadians have some semblance of what Canadian
| culture is, they'll know Neil Young etc. but a lot of migrant
| kids, they don't have much of a basis. They are far more likely
| to buy into the most recent American pop culture trends aka
| Kardashians. Because Canada has high levels of migration, that
| becomes a unique problem.
|
| Distribution and creation of most content is hugely
| industrialized, people are not 'famous' because they write a
| good song, my god no - it's an industry. Getting on the talk
| shows, published articles, etc. all of that is a business.
|
| There are just so many factors that contribute to content and
| distribution they are hard to enumerate and they are mostly
| industrial, this idea of 'free choice' is barely applicable.
|
| I actually fully support CANCON rules for the same reason they
| have existed in the past.
|
| Not for most industries, but anything cultural, yes. And of
| course as long as people can actively chose to get the content
| they want as well.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Anglophone Canadians and Americans come from the same places.
| So the cultural bridge is easy to cross and the American
| culture machine is prolific.
|
| If we do nothing, Canadians will be overwhelmed by the size of
| the American industry. If we ban it out right, that would be
| lame.
|
| So what's left? They chose the easy one: force some Canadian
| content.. It works, I guess. But it would be much cooler if
| there was more money to spend on developing more Canadian
| culture.
|
| We should have nationalised all our resources, but... Here we
| are.
|
| I always think about Avro Arrow, and Blackberry. We can't have
| anything nice because we are too weak.
|
| All that said, several of my favourite childhood bands are
| Canadian! The Tea Party, Our Lady Peace, Tragically Hip, I
| Mother Earth. Yay, the 90s.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > on developing more Canadian culture.
|
| You can't really artificially grow a culture. If people want
| it, they'll seek it and pay for it.
|
| > I always think about Avro Arrow, and Blackberry. We can't
| have anything nice because we are too weak.
|
| The Arrow was a plane without a purpose (chasing after
| supersonic bombers when everyone had moved to ICBMs?).
|
| BlackBerry's failure was internal. They failed to innovate
| and keep their head start despite years of market dominance.
| By the time they rollout the Storm at the same time as the
| iPhone 3G it was clear BlackBerry was at least two years
| behind Apple, if not more. Despite being hugely profitable
| they could simply not attract talent in the same way Apple
| could (and were not competitive with comp at all). Going from
| BlackBerry to Apple was seen as a great career move, the
| reverse almost unheard of.
| triceratops wrote:
| > If we do nothing, Canadians will be overwhelmed by the size
| of the American industry
|
| I don't even follow popular music that closely, and yet I've
| found it astonishing how many popular music artists are
| Canadian. Drake, The Weeknd, Nickelback, Avril Lavigne,
| Celine Dion, Justin Bieber, Shania Twain are just the ones I
| can name off the top of my head. Canada's population is
| smaller than California so it seems like it's punching above
| its weight.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > I don't even follow popular music that closely, and yet
| I've found it astonishing how many popular music artists
| are Canadian. Drake, The Weeknd, Nickelback, Avril Lavigne,
| Celine Dion, Justin Bieber, Shania Twain are just the ones
| I can name off the top of my head. Canada's population is
| smaller than California so it seems like it's punching
| above its weight.
|
| I don't. They have special laws where broadcasters (radio,
| tv) have to air a certain amount of government approved
| programming. So no matter what sells or what people want to
| hear, the government will revoke their license if they
| don't promote these whitelisted artists. A show about
| rap/hip-hop basically has to have Drake or Bieber to be
| legal.
| jollybean wrote:
| This is completely the wrong debate. 'Algorithm or Not' it
| doesn't matter.
|
| The issue is what is public good, what should gov. be doing, what
| should they not be doing with respect to content and regulation.
|
| The concept of 'algorithm' is not important.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > We want Canadians to find Canadian music. How best to do it?
| How will you do it? I don't want to manipulate your algorithm. I
| want you to manipulate it to produce a particular outcome.
|
| So basically "I don't want to switch your Spotify playlist to
| Justin Beiber. I want _you_ to switch your playlist to Justin
| Beiber. " Lol.
|
| I think the issue here is that Canadian content creators actually
| needed the protectionist laws back when a few big media companies
| controlled everything. Those companies could make better margins
| by buying cheap US content and re-broadcasting it. There was no
| incentive to create Canadian content because getting it published
| / broadcasted would have been extremely difficult even if it was
| better content than what was being produced in the US.
|
| The internet has solved the problem of publication and
| distribution, so getting locked out of the space by a huge media
| company just doesn't happen anymore. However, that kind of
| protectionism has an ongoing, collateral effect. It created an
| industry that's reliant on participating, and being successful
| with, a subpar product and the only way they can continue to
| compete is to have the government force us to buy their stuff.
|
| Take YouTube as an example of a more even playing field. Yeah,
| they surface content, but, for all intents and purposes, they're
| not discriminating against who can or can't upload a video.
| They're not preventing you from being successful by promoting
| someone else's content. They're promoting someone else's content
| because it's better than yours.
|
| In Canada it's laissez faire (hands off) for a lot of critical
| infrastructure (communications, highways, insurance), but full on
| subsidies and support for non-essential things like
| entertainment. When people complain about government waste, stuff
| like this should be at the top of the list.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Take YouTube as an example of a more even playing field.
| Yeah, they surface content, but, for all intents and purposes,
| they're not discriminating against who can or can't upload a
| video. They're not preventing you from being successful by
| promoting someone else's content. They're promoting someone
| else's content because it's better than yours.
|
| Ironically, some of the highest paid youtubers and twitch
| streamers are Canadians (I'm thinking of Linus Tech Tip among
| other things) and they didn't any help at all from these
| government subsidies.
| jollybean wrote:
| Your argument is missing the 'power' part of the argument.
|
| The internet makes it easy to 'put something on youtube' but
| that's pedantic.
|
| The issue is distribution power, which large companies still
| have via advertising, relationships, placements etc..
|
| Every time you see an actor on TV, like a talk show - it's a
| form of marketing.
|
| They are there at the behest of the studio to 'sell' a film,
| book or whatever.
|
| Those shows are often owned by the same networks.
|
| Those are systems of incredible power.
|
| Theoretically, someone on YouTube could make something viral
| that reaches the whole world, that's great, but it's not how
| the world works, and especially not for anything professionally
| produced.
|
| It's a tricky subject and I'm not sure anyone is talking about
| it in the right way.
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(page generated 2022-06-23 23:02 UTC)