[HN Gopher] Meta blocking news links in Canada
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Meta blocking news links in Canada
Author : mmphosis
Score : 141 points
Date : 2023-08-06 18:47 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.michaelgeist.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.michaelgeist.ca)
| mig39 wrote:
| The real problem is there's no competition in Canadian media.
|
| In Canada, "Monopoly" is often confused for a free market.
| dagaci wrote:
| Bad for the Canadian so called trolling bottom feeding viral
| "News" services, and I actually expect great for Canadians and
| their mental health and productivity -
| https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/11/strain-media-overload
| kredd wrote:
| This actually made our neighbourhood and local politics Facebook
| groups more tolerable (which is the only reason I still use it
| once a week). It was basically 24/7 ragebait articles being
| shared around anyways, since that's the only way of gathering
| large-scale engagement.
| montroser wrote:
| Okay, fine, but do you really want your government to be
| moderating your Facebook conversations about your government?
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| The government _isn 't_ moderating Facebook conversations
| about the government.
| j45 wrote:
| Especially the comment sections, felt like the first time
| people discovered trolling on internet forums.
| elemos wrote:
| The cool thing about humanity is it's almost always someone's
| first time.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > local politics Facebook group
|
| I can't even imagine why someone would voluntarily participate
| in something like that. You must be among am exceptional group
| of people. :)
| whstl wrote:
| I'm not Canadian (nor American), but I used a few back in the
| day when I had Facebook. It was actually not that bad when
| people used those groups for _local_ politics only. When it
| becomes too partisan then it 's unbearable, but moderators
| can squash that.
| jprete wrote:
| I think that requires the moderators to be willing to do
| so, both in the sense that they are inclined to strongly
| moderate the group, and in the sense that they aren't
| themselves getting an emotional high out of the ragebait.
| lolinder wrote:
| I would assume that they don't mean "local group discussing
| national politics", but "local group discussing local
| politics". Think city councils and mayors.
|
| At least where I'm at, local politics is the only sane
| politics left. It helps that in my city we don't have a party
| system at the local level, so candidates have to run on their
| own platform instead of on party affiliation.
| kredd wrote:
| Fastest way to get information regarding street closures,
| city events, infrastructure upgrades and etc. At least in my
| city 80% of the people in the group sound reasonable, so it's
| fun Saturday morning reads.
|
| Most of the toxicity comes from larger political groups, and
| yeah, agreed they are absolutely trash.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Less fake news, less engagement on platforms, less polarization.
| Why can't Canadians open their browsers and type in www.news-
| site.com if they want news? The Canadian government is obviously
| putting forward some really dumb policy, but the unintended
| consequences seem like a win-win to me. Hopefully neither side
| backs down and we'll get a juicy experiment to watch.
| j45 wrote:
| They can, and do, and used to.
|
| Social media attracted the news traffic in the beginning.
|
| Google news tried to get to know a visitors interests eagerly.
|
| Facebook wanted to find what you liked and keep you digging
| into that at the expense of having a broader vision.
|
| Maybe it's a good time for someone to roll out a media news
| aggregator that also presents it in the context of an interest
| like the media bias chart.
|
| https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Why can't Canadians open their browsers and type in www.news-
| site.com if they want news?
|
| We can, I don't see what the problem is here either. I don't
| think it will lead to less fake news and less engagement
| though. People are addicted to this horrible cesspool,
| especially older folks, nothing you can do about that
| unfortunately. That ship has sailed.
| Eumenes wrote:
| If it results in 10% reduction in engagement or fake news, I
| think its worth it. I do wonder: can you share substack,
| medium.com, or similar links? Do blogs count as news?
| rvnx wrote:
| Hacker _news_ as well
| evandale wrote:
| > Why can't Canadians open their browsers and type in www.news-
| site.com if they want news?
|
| I can do that and have no problem with it.
|
| Now can you explain why a Canadian shouldn't be able to open
| their browser and type in www.facebook.com or
| www.differentnews.com if they want news?
| LegitShady wrote:
| This only affects canadian news on those platforms. Canadian
| users can still see US news, disinformation, and polarizing
| things. All this does is block canadian news from reaching
| canadians. There are no positive benefits.
|
| This reduces the reach of canadian news, increases the reach of
| US news, and reduces income to canadian news sources from
| social media traffic. There's no win here at all. The
| legislation does the opposite of what it claims it wants to do.
| TekMol wrote:
| What would happen if Meta and Google would say "As American
| companies, we are allowed to link to those news articles. If a
| Government thinks their citizens should not see those links, it
| is up to them to block their citizens from accessing our
| servers"?
| cududa wrote:
| Errr that's not really how it works. Meta sells ads and
| conducts business in Canada. They have Canadian entity which is
| required to conduct business in Canada, and must comply with
| local laws to be permitted to conduct business there
| TekMol wrote:
| How do you mean a Canadian entity is required to conduct
| business in Canada?
|
| Are Canadians not allowed to buy from foreign companies?
| taylortbb wrote:
| Meta and Google both have Canadian offices full of Canadian
| employees, so it's not like they have a purely virtual
| presence in Canada.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| A Canadian citizen buying from a foreign company is not the
| same as the company conducting business in Canada.
|
| The citizen takes on the responsibility of making sure the
| legal process of doing business in Canada is upheld. EG,
| they cannot buy something that is illegal to own in Canada,
| and the relevant taxes and tariffs must be paid, all of
| those things.
|
| Should Canada be placing tariffs on Facebook? That would be
| interesting to see.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Are you commenting from a seastead?
| yacine_ wrote:
| Looks like you need to be o(europe) sized to bully big tech
| companies
| neom wrote:
| I thought this was a pretty interesting article on the subject:
|
| Australia made a deal to keep news on Facebook. Why couldn't
| Canada? https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-
| can...
| j45 wrote:
| Negotiations don't happen in one step.
|
| Canada is a lot closer to home, too. May happen in the other
| Americas too. I'm sure much more experienced and insightful
| folks on this might be able to comment, with or without a
| throwaway account.
| neom wrote:
| It's been interesting seeing the reactions from my friends.
| It's a split down the middle between f the government and f
| the Americans. Seem like people are increasingly unable to be
| sensible re conversations like this these days, crazy how
| polarized things have become.
|
| These street interviews the cbc conducted gave me some hope
| however: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WltKtLi65fE
| j45 wrote:
| Yeah, both are trying to get the people to do their
| bidding.
|
| And maybe that's when they'll realize that might not play
| out as anticipated.
|
| That's a great link, thanks for sharing.
|
| Big companies using the guise of safety, or fairness to
| extract advantage at the expense of an informed populace
| feels just swell.
|
| It's fun to look up how many of the "Canadian" major media
| groups are owned by the US, and to what degree, how much.
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| If they do make a deal, it should be pretty cheap now. The news
| sites will see their traffic drop off a cliff and probably feel
| pretty ready to start negotiating.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| The problem with all of these laws is the lack of integrity in
| the underlying logic. The laws are written because ad revenue is
| no longer supporting news. But the laws are written as if somehow
| this is connected to social media and search linking to news
| media content. It just isn't. You can take away all the news
| media content (as Facebook is) and you will still have no ad
| business left for news media. The ads are going where the
| eyeballs are and it's just a brutal fact that the eyeballs want
| much more than news media - they want a lot of other things that
| the news media aren't providing. So they go where they can get
| what they want.
|
| Trying to fix any complex problem without addressing the root
| cause is nearly always going to be futile. The root cause here is
| something important to society (news media) is intrinsically /
| structurally impossible to fund organically. The people who need
| it most either can't or won't pay for it (and many are in the
| "can't" bucket).
|
| Guess what, there are many things like that. We structurally
| can't fund hospitals, roads, defense either based on organic
| funding methods. When we want or need something that can't be
| funded like that, there is one party that is supposed to step up
| to the table - designed by intent for that purpose.
|
| Which is all to say that to me, a lot of what is happening here
| is theatrics because governments want to avoid doing the actual
| hard thing which is convincing taxpayers that this should be part
| of what we support through broad based support as societies.
| notatoad wrote:
| > governments want to avoid doing the actual hard thing which
| is convincing taxpayers that this should be part of what we
| support through broad based support as societies.
|
| I think it's a level beyond that, to the point that I'd just
| call it pure corruption. A government-mandated fee that a
| company has to pay isn't any different than a tax. They're
| taxing big tech, which is fine, and most people wouldn't have a
| problem with that.
|
| But then instead of booking that as revenue and deciding what
| to do with the money as part of the normal budgetary process,
| they're short-circuiting procedure to send that money to news
| companies. If the government wants to fund news companies, it
| should be done in the normal way that all the other government
| funding gets decided upon, not in a special allocation just for
| news companies that is excluded from the federal budget.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| gdevenyi wrote:
| Meanwhile, the Canadian Liberal Party is still paying Facebook
| for advertising.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Yes but the government of Canada is not. Clear distinction
| between a sitting government and a political party.
| vkou wrote:
| There is no reason for why a government cannot both advertise
| in a form of media, _and_ regulate it.
|
| There is also no reason for why a political party cannot both
| advertise in a form of media, _and_ in their governing role,
| regulate it.
| some-human wrote:
| Trying to get the billboard to pay for the ad it's displaying.
| How was that ever going to work?
| ddtaylor wrote:
| Good. Cut them off and avoid supporting these terrible attempts
| by old and entrenched actors that have failed business models.
| tekla wrote:
| Hell of a bluff to try and call, especially when a bad call
| causes you to punch yourself in the groin, hard.
| j45 wrote:
| There is likely engagement statistics available from other
| countries on how much engagement was/wasn't lost, and how it
| changed in other contries where this was started.
|
| With the erosion of local and hyper-local news in Canada and
| North America - the media that was largely being cut out is the
| national chains who are shutting down many of the local papers
| and leaving broader, more generalized coverage that is not
| regionally accurate in some cases.
|
| Hyper local media wouldn't have the $ to lobby like this. It's
| not entirely unclear how much they were consulted in a
| meaningful way.
|
| For example hearing something about the real estate industry in
| "Canada" often means Toronto, or Vancouver only, when there are
| plenty of interesting things happening in other areas contrary
| to this reporting, much like the US.
|
| Edit; Typos
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Cut off your nose to spite your face
| ehnto wrote:
| It does have precedence though. What Facebook would do when
| backed into this particular corner has played out in other
| countries.
| Transpire7487 wrote:
| As a Canadian, I'm glad that Meta is doing this. Google is going
| to be doing it soon as well from what I've heard.
|
| The irony is the government says their intent was to "protect
| Canadian media by getting big tech to pay their fair share" and
| it is backfiring spectacularly. Having the opposite effect where
| there is less traffic going to these media sites, and will have a
| big impact on their bottom line from their innability to run ads
| on their own domains and make revenue that way.
|
| Of course, this will just lead to another media bailout making
| them even more reliant on government subsidy - which the Liberal
| party will use as a wedge issue come election time because the
| opposition (which is leading and gaining in the polls right now)
| will want to defund them. Wether this would be successful as an
| election issue is yet to be seen, but there's one thing that the
| Liberal party is good at is demonizing the opposition and if
| their gravy train is on the line I'm sure e media corps will
| gladly indulge him.
|
| And of course this completely neuters independent media which is
| much more likely to actually be critical of the establishment.
| Leaving only pro establishment agencies in place to do the
| bidding of the hand that feeds them.
|
| So the big players take a hit to revenue (and get bailed out),
| and every one else gets completely wiped out.
|
| It's absolutely sinister what Justin Trudeau's government is
| doing. I used to think they were just stupid but it's scandal
| after corruption scandal after corruption scandal with him. At
| some point you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.
| evandale wrote:
| How anyone gave Trudeau the benefit of the doubt after:
|
| - [2017] Declaring 2015 to be the last FPTP election and axing
| it because a non-partisan committee didn't choose the reform
| system Trudeau wanted
|
| - [2018] Assaulting a reporter in 2000 and brushing it off:
| "I'm sorry," the editorial alleged Trudeau to have said. "If I
| had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never
| would have been so forward." and "There's a lot of
| uncertainties around this. In terms of my recollection there
| was no untoward or inappropriate action but she was in a
| professional context. Who knows where her mind was and I fully
| respect her ability to experience something differently."
|
| - [2019] Wearing black/brown face as a 29 year old in the 90s
| and early 2000s on at least 3 occasions and not being able to
| admit how many times he's done it because he can't remember
|
| If someone fell for his self proclaimed "feminist" label and
| didn't realize he's a hypocritical scumbag in 2018 I don't know
| what he can do to convince that person he's a scumbag today.
| All the evidence of his wrongdoings is out there in the open.
|
| He hasn't been caught on camera saying women let him grab them
| by the pussy but that isn't evidence he doesn't think it.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > [2019] in the early 90s and early 2000s
|
| What's the statue of limitations on this stuff?
| Tao3300 wrote:
| In the US he'd have been crucified, so I guess it's more
| forgiving in Canada.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Can you give more sources into the 2017 FPTP not happening
| event?
|
| That was one of the biggest issues I was rooting for, and
| they claimed "it wouldnt have benefit the system", which I
| mark as bullshit on the theory [1]
|
| So I was always curious about the inside baseball of why it
| failed
|
| [1] I did my Msc. thesis on game theory - not on public
| choice stuff but still I'd consider myself versed in the
| matter
| chaostheory wrote:
| * * *
| pmontra wrote:
| > Canadian media is a loser, particularly the small and
| independent media outlets that are more reliant on social media
| to develop community and build their audience.
|
| So, regulatory capture by the largest media companies?
| ta8645 wrote:
| This is likely the intended result, without caring at all if it
| generates revenue for the large media corporations.
| Consolidated media is easier to influence and manipulate.
| granzymes wrote:
| I hope Google follows through, too. The government forcing two
| companies to pay for links to news is pretty disgusting rent
| seeking by media companies.
| flangola7 wrote:
| That's an opinion to have but the Canadian people, through
| their elected representatives, have decided they disagree and
| have codified that requirement into law.
|
| The Canadian people have asked their government to pass these
| laws and Facebook doesn't want to follow them. No one is
| forcing Facebook to operate in Canada. They're welcome to leave
| at any time if they don't like it - we all know FB talks a big
| game and won't do that, but I know I'm not alone in secretly
| hoping it happens anyway. Zuck can go zuck himself.
| granzymes wrote:
| Let's be honest, the Canadian government is acting on behalf
| of the politically influential and well-connected media
| companies.
|
| And Facebook is complying with the law by removing links.
| It's just not the compliance the lobbyists were hoping for.
| alphanullmeric wrote:
| The "we voted for it so it's voluntary" people always seem to
| move goalposts when you try applying their logic in a
| scenario that doesn't benefit them. Would you like to prove
| me wrong?
| smoldesu wrote:
| > and Facebook doesn't want to follow them. No one is forcing
| Facebook to operate in Canada.
|
| OP's article seems to indicate that Facebook is already
| following these rules without issue.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| Are "links" the issue or showing a summary of the article?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Linking is the issue, despite them also complaining about the
| summaries.
| r00fus wrote:
| They did.
| gumby wrote:
| This has happened in every other places such a plan has been
| tried like Spain or Australia. What did they expect?
|
| And really, what else could goog/fb etc do -- what other company
| or person for that matter would pay someone in order to provide
| them a service? Governments tax things they want less of (e.g.
| smoking) so this should be no surprise.
| hirundo wrote:
| The article says the opposite about Australia:
| Sylvain Poisson of Hebdos Quebec confidently said "they made
| those threats in Australia and elsewhere and every time they
| back down." Chris Pedigo of the U.S.-based Digital Context Next
| assured the committee "it's important to understand what
| happens when these bills become law. In Australia, they moved
| quickly to secure deals.
|
| And apparently we've yet to hear from Google on this regarding
| Canada. But what's different? It's hard to see how Google can
| have a principled objection to Canadian but not Australian
| danegeld.
| peanuty1 wrote:
| Google has also confirmed they will be removing links to
| Canadian news.
| jsnell wrote:
| The dirty secret is that the Australian law doesn't actually
| apply to anyone. They passed the law, but left it to the
| government to define which companies are in scope. And the
| government never designated any companies to it.
|
| Basically it appears that the tech companies signing the same
| kinds of deals as elsewhere is being spun as a success of the
| legislation, even though the law does not apply to anyone, as
| a face saving measure.
| kirrent wrote:
| I've got mixed feelings about the news media bargaining
| code but I don't think the lack of designations is one of
| its problems. Only stepping in once negotiations fail seems
| to be how the law is intended to operate. 52E(3) of the
| Competition and Consumer Act 2010 says that in making the
| designation that the code applies the minister must
| consider:
|
| 1. Whether a significant bargaining power imbalance exists.
|
| 2. Whether the platform has made a significant contribution
| to the sustainability of news media.
|
| As to 1. the mere existence of the code seems to redress
| any power imbalance somewhat. As for 2. The actual deals
| Facebook and Google made in response to the law being
| enacted are confidential, but many news media companies
| said they were happy with the results so there wouldn't
| seem to be any reason to designate these organisations in
| the first place.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Details matter? Australian law may have had details to make
| negotiations happen and result in deals that are still
| commercially viable for search engines.
| tomComb wrote:
| It's weird to be cheering on Facebook, but good for them for
| standing up to this gross (and incompetent) political corruption.
|
| Our governments are constantly looking for new ways to shovel
| money to the big telecom companies (and to protect them from
| competition), and it needs to be meet more resistance. For those
| not aware, the PBO analysis showed that the primary beneficiaries
| of this bill were to be Bell, Rogers, Shaw, and some CBC.
|
| But even if that were not the case, this bill simply makes no
| sense, and could do a lot of harm.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Who is cheering on Facebook here?
|
| Facebook needs content to survive, as it does not produce
| anything itself.
|
| News agencies have THEIR content posted on Facebook, giving it
| value, not the other way around.
| gruez wrote:
| >News agencies have THEIR content posted on Facebook, giving
| it value, not the other way around.
|
| The relevant legislation isn't just taxing the platforms for
| "content", it's taxing the platforms for merely linking to
| the content.
| [deleted]
| ncann wrote:
| Google and FB can easily drive 30%+ of a news site's traffic.
| If that's not value to a news site I don't know what is.
| rvnx wrote:
| News agencies and websites have their content reproduced on
| Google Search and News. That's massive value for a search
| portal.
| warning26 wrote:
| Then ban _that_ , don't ban linking.
| rvnx wrote:
| From the perspective of the newspapers:
|
| Google is exploiting copyrighted content to make profit
| and create audience.
|
| If the search index of Google was empty, the people
| wouldn't use Google, it's that simple.
|
| So the newspapers are asking for royalties for feeding
| that search index.
| gruez wrote:
| But they could easily opt out with robots.txt. They want
| to have their cake and eat it too. They want the free
| traffic from search engines AND want google to pay them
| for the privilege of bringing them traffic.
| warning26 wrote:
| That's like demanding that Rand McNally pay a fee to each
| city they print onto their maps. Or demanding that World
| Book Encyclopedia pay a royalty fee to every entity they
| write an article about.
|
| Noting that something exists and including it in
| reference material should by no means incur royalties.
| mattstir wrote:
| Who's banning linking? The new law tried to get tech
| companies to pay to show the links with previews (similar
| to Australia and France, etc).
|
| To be clear, the bill is fundamentally broken. It would
| require Google or Facebook to pay simply when links to
| news sites are served, rather than for reproducing or
| condensing the material in the news article as a
| "preview" sort of be thing (as in other countries). The
| bill isn't banning links explicitly, but the government
| should have seen this coming.
| Transpire7487 wrote:
| Facebook posts their content, and in return the agencies can
| run ads and beg for subscriptions from the traffic that
| Facebook drives to them. They both benefit.
|
| Now nobody benefits.
| memefrog wrote:
| * * *
| j45 wrote:
| In Canada it will mean news from other places, including the US
| will likely directly or indirectly influence those feeds.
|
| UGC (User Generated Content) could remain commentary about
| these news articles when shared in, but it would require
| consumers to become creators.
| loeg wrote:
| The article states explicitly that news sources from the US
| would also be blocked.
| j45 wrote:
| Yes it does. But will Buzzfeed type commentary choosing to
| interpret an interpretation and present it as facts about
| the articles also be blocked?
|
| I remember a facebook before any articles was posted there.
|
| News articles were brought in explicitly to get the news
| crowd there, and keep them engaged.
|
| I wonder how federated news delivery could work - anyone
| use anything like this.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| great_psy wrote:
| A bit off topic, bye does anyone know why those monopolistic
| companies (bell Rogers) stocks are doing relatively poorly
| compared to even the US index?
| afterburner wrote:
| They already control all the market they'll control in
| Canada, and they won't expand outside Canada. Not a growth
| story.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Funny, for once I find myself on the side of Bell, Roger ands
| Shaw (the CBC was in my good book anyway). That normally
| wouldn't happen but if FB news feeds are exchanged by those of
| Bell, Rogers, Shaw and the CBC that could well be a net
| positive.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I don't necessarily think the government is right, but I can't
| help but feel like it might be a very good thing that people
| affected by this will have to leave the Facebook garden and
| seek out news elsewhere.
|
| I'm really quite fine with this experiment happening.
| trts wrote:
| A choice is being imposed on citizens and private companies
| by the government, for the benefit of organizations that are
| influential with the establishment.
|
| An experiment is when you have a hypothesis about something
| that could be improved or optimized, test the hypothesis with
| a subset to find evidence or observe unintended effects of
| the change, replicate the finding, scale up, or revert
| depending on the outcomes observed.
|
| A national policy by fiat is somewhat the opposite of what I
| consider an experiment to be.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >A national policy by fiat
|
| There is no such thing. This regulation is the consequence
| of a regularly passed law (Bill C-18), that passed with
| about 210 to 110 majority. If I remember public poling on
| the issue correctly, on the bill itself popular opinion was
| pretty evenly split, but the underlying principle of tech
| companies paying domestic news, had wide majority support.
|
| Framing this as something being imposed on citizens is
| disingenuous and effectively the Facebook PR line. Just
| with related media laws anywhere else it has little basis
| in reality.
| danbolt wrote:
| The Grits, Tories, and media companies in Toronto are all
| lizard people, but they're much easier for Canadians like
| me to bully via ballot box than the lizard people running
| Meta.
|
| (edit: as an aside, I just want to clarify that when I
| write "lizard people", I mean to suggest politicians and
| corporate leadership acting out of self-interest rather
| than implying a bigoted conspiracy theory. I realized this
| could come off as anti-semetic in 2023; sorry if that
| landed poorly for anyone)
| palijer wrote:
| >for the benefit of organizations that are influential with
| the establishment.
|
| Those organizations, being Canadian news organizations,
| employing Canadians, and making content for Canadian
| consumers. Aren't those the sort of organizations that
| should be able to work with the Canadian government and
| influence Canadian laws?
|
| What sorts of organizations instead of those ones should be
| able to work with the government here? I think legislation
| should have outside influence, but I think I'm missing
| something here, or making the mistake of taking things at
| face-value.
| gruez wrote:
| >Those organizations, being Canadian news organizations,
| employing Canadians, and making content for Canadian
| consumers. Aren't those the sort of organizations that
| should be able to work with the Canadian government and
| influence Canadian laws?
|
| You can make the same argument about local companies
| lobbying the government to enact tariffs to protect them
| from foreign competitors. The people being harmed are the
| same: consumers who end up with a worse product. How
| about nobody tries to influence the Canadian government
| to enact laws that distort the marketplace to their
| advantage?
| ChumpGPT wrote:
| Rogers, Bell and Telus run Canada. It's why Canadians have the
| highest mobile rates in the world. Trudeau offered to protect
| them for ever during NAFTA II and let them become Canadian
| Media Companies protecting them from any competition insuring
| Canadians will have less choice and higher rates for everything
| and basically letting Telco's control over all media, etc.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Is Canada still going forward with the law that USA streaming
| companies have to provide at least 30% domestically-sourced
| Canadian programming? I know EU and Australia did that. I
| appreciate the resistance to the continued American-ization
| of their cultures, but let's be honest here. I can only think
| of Rush, Bieber, and Kids in the Hall. Where is the rest of
| the 30% going to come from? It's going to be a lot of
| nonsense filler content that is only there to comply with
| some law.
|
| edit: actually, Apple Music might be able to cover their 30%
| quota just with Neil Young's discography.
| nvy wrote:
| > I can only think of Rush, Bieber, and Kids in the Hall.
|
| Don't forget Avril Lavigne, Drake, Gordon Lightfoot, Celine
| Dion, Joni Mitchell, deadmau5, The Weeknd, and Nelly
| Furtado.
|
| Just off the top of my head. Interestingly enough I'd never
| heard of Kids in the Hall before today. But all of those
| are or were "Big Names" in music.
|
| We have (protectionist, yes) media regulators (the CRTC)
| that are nominally arm's length from elected governments so
| it's not likely to change unless the Canadian public
| decides that this will become a major election issue. Don't
| hold your breath.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Disagree. The law ensures there are Canadian media, which can
| be used to push media to the betterment of Canadians.
|
| Many countries have protectionist laws and this isn't much
| different.
| chongli wrote:
| This is protectionist law but it's not protecting independent
| media in Canada, it's protecting big players like PostMedia,
| Bell, and Rogers. If anything this will just kill off the
| remaining small media companies in Canada, or force them to
| be bought up by the big companies.
| midasuni wrote:
| Those aren't big players on a global basis. Canada is
| concerned its culture is at risk from globalisation, and
| those concerns are not without merit.
| lolinder wrote:
| How exactly does Facebook and Google blocking links to news
| in Canada ensure that there are Canadian media? I'm having
| trouble seeing the connection from "fewer inbound links" to
| "sustainable Canadian news media".
| mattstir wrote:
| Presumably he's talking about the intent of the law, which
| seems to have been to ensure news outlets actually receive
| money for linked articles. It seems that the government
| didn't expect Google or Facebook to just stop linking to
| Canadian news instead.
|
| Canada appeared to be attempting to emulate countries like
| Australia, Spain, France, etc that have passed very similar
| laws. It seems like the tech giants were perfectly happy to
| just cut ties with Canadian media rather than make a deal
| however.
| veave wrote:
| The very idea of having to pay to link to something is
| ridiculous.
|
| Imagine if I recommended you to watch a show on Netflix
| and I had to pay to give that recommendation. It makes
| absolutely no sense.
| [deleted]
| isaacremuant wrote:
| This only protects the Draconian Canadian government. The
| same that will take your money if you protest against it.
| varenc wrote:
| But if Facebook is blocking news links in Canada, it doesn't
| seem like the law is having the desired effect.
| gruez wrote:
| >Many countries have protectionist laws and this isn't much
| different.
|
| And just like other protectionist laws, this is a dumb idea
| and is going to end up hurting consumers.
| pseudotrash wrote:
| [flagged]
| lolinder wrote:
| > not distributing outrage clickbait to boomers
|
| Meta comment in the interest of improving discussion in the
| future: this is why you're getting downvotes.
|
| I've seen plenty of comments that include everything else you
| said and get upvoted to the top, but casual negative
| stereotyping of whole generations doesn't play as well on HN
| as it does on other platforms.
| pseudotrash wrote:
| Interesting for me to reflect on this because I'm in that
| age group and most of my environment is too and they are
| absolutely my target of this comment. While I have skin in
| the game holding this position I wonder if those downvoting
| do too. How many friends did you lose to social media
| dividing you harder than I ever could, and who do you
| direct that anger to. :)
|
| never mind fake internet points or moron writers that
| optimizes content for likes or whatever their audience
| wants to hear. Schopenhauer and Taleb have already written
| plenty on the subject.
| [deleted]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> (and incompetent) political corruption.
|
| Hyperbolic and self defeating. If the corruption is incompetent
| then I guess there isn't much _effective_ corruption. Canada
| ranks well above even the US on most indexes of corruption. Not
| liking the current government is a totally different thing than
| a country being corrupt.
|
| Canada=14th, which is nothing to be embarrassed about.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
| chrisco255 wrote:
| That is a "perceptions" index. Note corruption is not
| something which can be reduced to a scalar value and analyzed
| like temperature or pressure. It's far more multivariate and
| complex than that.
|
| Even if, for the sake of argument, it was possible to do so,
| you would have to interrogate the methodology used to produce
| this value. Note the complexity in analyzing corruption by
| country. How does one investigate in detail, the governments
| of almost 200 countries? If one relies on survey results from
| members of those countries, how was the survey consistently
| conducted across language barriers, cultural barriers, and
| legal barriers?
|
| Finally, even if you believe all of those incredibly dubious
| factors were accounted for, it could be possible that being
| 14th in a world that is becoming more corrupt does not mean
| that Canada is improving in that regard.
| unpopular42 wrote:
| No way! A political index that doesn't actually reflect the
| reality, has that ever happened?
| ysavir wrote:
| Are we cheering on Facebook? It feels like a situation where
| all the foul players--the platforms, the government, and the
| media--are all losing.
|
| The article author tries to say "Individual Canadians who use
| the platforms to find links to news are losers since news links
| will be blocked from the platform" but doesn't actually support
| that with a reason as to why that's a loss. Feels like a win to
| individual Canadians to me, even if some are upset at their
| inability to easily and immediately share clickbait and
| ragebait articles. I think those are the people we're really
| cheering on.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| If the only news is clickbait and ragebait then Facebook is
| in the right. If the news is good then the Canadian
| government is in the wrong.
| ysavir wrote:
| It's not about who's in the right. It's about whether this
| law, as it plays out, acts in the best interest of the
| people.
|
| We can't let our impression of how things should play out
| be determined by asking which self-serving powerful player
| deserves the right of way in policy making.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't know where you're getting that from. I didn't
| mention asking who should get the right of way.
|
| Have you not just rephrased my "right" and "wrong" as
| "how things should play out". I'm not sure why someone
| would do that.
| ysavir wrote:
| You're right. You weren't speaking with that intent and I
| brought that context into it. My apologies there.
|
| I think I was responding to the idea that because the
| government was acting in self-serving ways, that we were
| necessarily cheering on Facebook, and that what facebook
| is doing is "standing up to...corruption", when their own
| efforts are a corruption of a different kind. The
| phrasing there made me feel like I was being made to
| choose--that I was either cheering for facebook or for
| their rivals in this situation--and I didn't feel that
| that choice was accurate. It's possible to think that
| both parties are in the wrong, even if they are on
| opposite sides here.
|
| Your follow up post reinforced that feeling as it
| maintained the idea that one party or the other was in
| the right, but that post was also a direct response to
| what I said, and not necessarily a continuation of what
| you had posted earlier. So by continuing that thread I
| reinforced my own misinterpretation.
|
| I will try to better understand my own reactions to
| people's posts in the future, and be better in responding
| in the appropriate context, not with a shift.
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| "right" and "wrong" are normative statements: quite
| literally they're statements about how things _should_
| be. IMO it 's a reasonable read of your comment
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I just find it odd that someone interested in consuming news
| would choose to do so out of a dumpster when given a plethora
| of non-dumpster options.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Because it's not a dumpster.
|
| It's a casino with flashing lights, exciting noise, and
| free cocktails.
| chaostheory wrote:
| A lot of boomers still are not comfortable enough with
| navigating the internet. Apps like Facebook are easier for
| them.
| delfinom wrote:
| Your average person never gave a shit about good content.
| That's the proof that's been visible for centuries, where
| there were newspapers, there were tabloids with giant
| click-bait headlines to make a quick buck and it always
| worked, because people don't want to read, they want just a
| headline to tell them how to feel.
|
| But those average people are the majority of "views" of
| said paper, that's why all these media outlets are
| desperate for that ad revenue. They already have subscriber
| bases that are actual real interest in reading content.
|
| Welcome to the sad reality of our world, crack open a cold
| one and laugh with the rest of us.
| roody15 wrote:
| George Carlin said "imagine how stupid the average person
| is then realize half of all people are stupider than
| that."
| dangus wrote:
| The techno-elites act like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok
| aren't at all enjoyable when they have billions of daily
| active users.
|
| This is the 2020s equivalent of saying that there can't
| possibly be legitimate news culture happening with Comedy
| Central viewers at the peak era of The Daily Show with Jon
| Stewart. It's just out of touch with the common person.
|
| By the way, Meta products are incredibly good at a UX and
| technical level. Fast loading, simple UI, and ads have a
| predictable layout where they don't bloc site elements or
| interrupt you (much unlike a typical news website).
| alistairSH wrote:
| _and ads have a predictable layout where they don't bloc
| site elements or interrupt you_
|
| Are we using the same apps? My FB and Insta feeds were a
| steaming pile of ads and influencers and other garbage. I
| stopped using both because posts from people I follow
| were buried
| andreygrehov wrote:
| [flagged]
| barbazoo wrote:
| I wonder why Meta seems to be so unwilling to participate in
| negotiations in good faith here. What's different here compared
| to Australia and Europe, the post doesn't explain that.
| notatoad wrote:
| From the CBC: australia made a deal to keep news on facebook,
| why couldn't canada?
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-can...
|
| tl;dr the government has not left any room to negotiate, and
| the law is signed.
| j45 wrote:
| Maybe the media lobbyists think people will flock to their
| news websites instead complete with paywalls.
|
| And Social thinks they will keep traffic, or the media sites
| will die.
| AgentK20 wrote:
| They did post a long writeup if you want to hear straight from
| their newsroom: https://about.fb.com/news/2023/05/metas-
| position-on-canadas-...
|
| Disclaimer: Meta employee programming games, unrelated to any
| of the ongoing discussions.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| This article goes more into depth about the differences [0]
|
| As far as I can tell the basic point is "Australia changed the
| law to something these companies could accept before it passed,
| Canada didn't"
|
| [0]https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/meta-australia-google-news-
| can...
| Xelynega wrote:
| What I'm hearing is that meta/google are threatening the
| government through public opinion on a piece of legislation
| that doesn't benefit them... How could anybody side with
| meta/google?
| gardnr wrote:
| > In fact, if Google follows suit, there will be even more
| cancelled deals, lost links, and absolutely no new revenues
| from the legislation given that those are the only companies
| subject to the law (former Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez's
| insistence that there is value in links that deserve
| compensation while simultaneously excluding Microsoft, Apple,
| Twitter and other platforms from the law amply demonstrates how
| the argument stands on shaky grounds).
|
| This law targets Facebook and Google specifically. Facebook has
| been willing to negotiate in other countries but where do you
| start when the premise is false?
| explaininjs wrote:
| The post states that in Canada the Government has ultimate
| authority over all payment negotiations, it would seem that in
| the other countries facebook and media companies can establish
| their own content licensing contracts as independent businesses
| ought to be able to.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Ought to? I trust my elected representatives to have that
| decision making power 1000x more than Zuckerberg.
| hooloovoo_zoo wrote:
| Could just be an experiment. Canada isn't terribly
| consequential to meta so why not see what happens if you don't
| back down.
| evandale wrote:
| Excuse my language but FUCK THAT.
|
| I do not consent to my FUCKING GOVERNMENT running FUCKING
| EXPERIMENTS ON THEIR FUCKING CITIZENS.
|
| Are you fucking insane?????? Or a terrible fucking troll?
|
| p.s. I take back the excuse my language. Fuck you and fuck
| your stupid comment.
| Xelynega wrote:
| Lol. They're talking about meta running an expirement where
| they're threatening the government to change legislation
| that will lead to lower revenue and run the risk of losing
| that revenue anyway by removing news permanently.
|
| The government isn't running any experiments, as always
| it's meta running the unsanctioned experiments.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The only good faith negotiating position in a shakedown is to
| offer nothing, which is exactly what FB has done here.
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| Doesn't work by design, because of Final Offer Arbitration
| baked into the solution. FB and news cartel are expected to
| enter negotiations and at the end set their respective
| "final" best offers and government gets to choose one of them
| that will take effect. Everyone knows what will happen.
|
| The only winning move is not to play.
| Xelynega wrote:
| But I thought the talking point was that "the news orga are
| benefiting from meta/google more before the law than after"
|
| If that's the case then why would media companies pursue
| deals that would lead to them getting removed from the
| site?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The Australian law got watered down to the point where it
| allowed Google and Facebook to have private negotiations with
| news companies on pricing, and come to mutually agreeable terms
| are not. The Australian landlord didn't force medicine Google
| to pay them or come to an agreement.
|
| The Canadian law is different in that it did not leave any
| choice or negotiation up to the companies
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I saw an estimate that it would have been something like a -6X
| ROI in this case. Would be a reasonable nonstarter to set a bad
| precedent (from Meta POV)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| This framework is such a stupid workaround to a tax on social
| media and separate media subsidy.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Blatant tax shakedowns because the money exists are generally
| viewed poorly by the public, so most countries try to hide
| behind a Justice rationale.
| blindriver wrote:
| Stupid, stupid, stupid politicians and media companies. I'm glad
| to see tech companies show some backbone to the sheer hubris and
| greed that they were being subjected to.
|
| There is no other way that news companies will be shared except
| via social media. I hope within weeks they are on their knees,
| begging for the law to be repealed. Too bad you can't recall
| politicians in Canada the same way you can in the US.
| mmastrac wrote:
| This is funny because I've never used Facebook for news. The only
| thing I ever found there was rage and clickbait.
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