[HN Gopher] Meta's news ban in Canada remains as Online News Act...
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Meta's news ban in Canada remains as Online News Act goes into
effect
Author : rntn
Score : 18 points
Date : 2023-12-19 18:21 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| infamouscow wrote:
| The Canadian government will repeal this law at some point in the
| future.
|
| I suspect after someone realizes they need Meta to disseminate
| the state-sponsored narrative to manufacture consent.
| IronWolve wrote:
| Canadian news sites that compete against the CBC, if they
| advertise on meta, most of the money gets paid to CBC. Thats
| not capitalism.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > Under the single deal struck between the government and Google,
| for example, up to 30% of the funds will go towards broadcasters,
| with 7% of that going to Canada's public broadcaster, the CBC.
|
| > A majority of the money will go to print and online media, with
| the amount determined by how many full-time employees they have.
|
| > The study added that local news outlets in Canada have been hit
| the hardest.
|
| I'm not surprised to see a law that favors entrenched corporate
| media at the expense of small local media. It's been that way as
| long as I can remember.
|
| I think we'd have been better off with a law that said Facebook
| needs to serve local news for X% of the (news) content. That
| would invigorate local media and, I think, be more palatable for
| Facebook.
| ygjb wrote:
| I think there are trade-offs. Small local media is vitally
| important, but the problem implicit there is that biasing
| towards small, local media also means diverting funding to
| small teams that may or may not be high quality. For every
| Indiegraf, Tyee, or even small town papers like the Flin Flon
| Reminder, there is a Rebel Media that is just a microcosm of
| everything wrong with the media.
| lainga wrote:
| Is the implied solution for the Federal government to draw up
| a list of acceptable media orgs? I think you'll get traction,
| that's very Canadian.
| ygjb wrote:
| I don't know the solution, but if there was going to be a
| committee formed to evaluate acceptable media
| organizations, I don't think the committee should be
| staffed by the government - there should be an appointed
| ombudsman who has responsibility for transparency, and it
| should be radically open.
|
| Beyond that, I would assume that there should be a method
| of identifying people who have actually studied journalism
| and it's role in society, for example, with a masters or
| doctorate in journalism and who have been actively engaged
| in the industry should be suitable.
| tharmas wrote:
| +1 for mentioning the Tyee.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| A straight pro-rata share would have seen even more of the
| money go to the large corporates.
| phyrex wrote:
| Meta doesn't curate the news sources, it's what the users
| share, so you couldn't enforce that kind of quota
| entuno wrote:
| > But it has also been met with resistance by Google and Meta -
| the only two companies big enough to be encompassed by the law.
|
| Surprised to see that Twitter isn't covered by this as well?
| Surely they meet the requirements of "companies that operate
| social media platforms or search engine websites in Canada -
| where news is often shared and disseminated - and that have a
| total global revenue of more than C$1bn in a calendar year."
| randomdata wrote:
| Also needs to have at least 20 million users in Canada. Twitter
| reportedly has fewer than 8 million users in Canada.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| Honestly.... Good. I'm upset that Google buckled, even at a lower
| dollar amount than I'm sure the government wanted.
|
| This legislation is disgustingly out of touch with the reality of
| how something as simple as linking works. My fellow Canadians
| need to feel the impact to remind them of how awful this
| government is. Luckily, it seems like the writing is already on
| the walls...
| ygjb wrote:
| > My fellow Canadians need to feel the impact to remind them of
| how awful this government is.
|
| That is a pretty general blanket statement. I don't agree with
| alot of the choices the current government has made, but I also
| don't believe there is an effective, credible alternative in
| Canada at the moment. The current front-runner's biggest claim
| to fame is that he is the last sock-puppet standing from the
| previous Harper administration, and has not yet released a
| substantial platform or initiative that should galvanize people
| besides "Trudeau bad" and "wokeness bad".
| randomdata wrote:
| _> The current front-runner 's biggest claim to fame is that
| he is the last sock-puppet standing from the previous Harper
| administration_
|
| There is no single "front runner". The front runner is
| entirely dependent on the riding. That may describe the front
| runner in one particular riding, but there are 337 others
| where that is probably not the case.
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