Fuck Meta. Just tell people to go to TRUSTED news sites. Either their local radio or television stations, or the CBC.
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Not even just fees, they want Meta/Google and the news sites to come to a payment agreement after the fact with the government as the arbitrator. Only an idiot would make that deal, especially since it woild open the floodgates for every country on Earth to demand the same.
it would open the floodgates for every country on Earth to demand the same
This floodgate was opened by Australia, Canada is just early in succession but the same strategy is already on every powerful government’s radar since 2021.
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Just host their own Mastodon instance.
It’s not that they don’t have services available to notify people, it’s just that people don’t use those services. Even if they do use those services, they don’t check them hourly like some may check Facebook.
Even if they hosted a mastodon instance, less people would probably see that than the services they already maintain. It’s just not mainstream enough yet.
Honestly I would be happy if most of their comms where available under several Mastodon accounts I could subscribe to. No account needed even!
I’d really like to understand this in a different light than I currently see it in…
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People post stuff made by other sites on facebook, sometimes even the creators of the stuff. Facebook never posts these things on their own. Facebook makes money on ads on it’s site, this covers hosting, employees, coding…
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People read stuff on Facebook, instead of creator’s site, and don’t view creator’s ads.
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Creators want compensation, legislation forces it from Facebook.
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Facebook disallows OTHERS from posting the stuff, so that they aren’t liable to creators for what those people (who are sometimes the same creators complaining) are doing. (Duh?)
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The creators, now unpaid and standing to earn, posts this negatively everywhere and amplifies it on their platforms.
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Canada is pissed?
Obviously if clicking through is desired, legislate that they can only show the link and title. Forcing companies to pay for what users post… Very obviously would end up with disallowed posting.
Pretty much spot on, just missing one thing. The way the law is written is that it also disallows direct links (these would forward individuals to news sites and generate add revenue).
Whomever came up with this law just does not understand the internet is built on links.
Media companies were complaining about social sites summarizing news content, therefore users would not have to go directly to a news site (lost revenue for media companies). Instead social sites were generating ad revenue themselves with more “active” users.
Media companies were complaining about social sites summarizing news content
Which is funny as Facebook gave editorial control over what is shown on Facebook to publishers many years ago using what they call the Open Graph protocol. All of the major news sites in Canada appear to be already using Open Graph – literally telling Facebook exactly what they want shown when someone links to their content, including the summary of their choosing.
It seems media company spokespeople need to spend more time talking to their fellow employees and less time talking to politicians. But, I know, it’s a better story to tell your friends that you got to have dinner with Justin Trudeau. Sharing that you stopped by Bob Smith’s desk in the software department doesn’t have quite the same ring.
That’s kind of right although I somewhat disagree with #2. It’s not so much that Facebook is causing people to not visit news organizations websites that’s hurting news organizations, but more so that there are so many ways to advertise to consumers now (largely through Facebook & Google) that the news organizations are struggling to get advertisers to pay them top $ to advertise with them like they used to. Basically, even if Facebook had banned news from day 1 of its existence and consumers had never expected to find it on Facebook, the fact that advertising has become cheaper would itself hurt news organizations that relied on advertising revenue.
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Can somebody please tell me if I understand this correctly? So the liberal government had a bill passed that disallows social media companies from sharing news articles, then Trudeau blasts the social media company for not sharing news articles.
They passed a law that said big companies have to PAY to post links to articles.
On the surface it was to go after places like Google News that would summarize an article, link to it for attribution, but people would rarely visit the original article fueling the advertisements that funded the media.
However to nobody’s surprise, the government cocked up the legislation for the problem. They made a law that required the to pay for links, so the big companies just went… Ok, no links, no bill.
Obviously they didn’t think this through, they wanted money to flow from Google/FB to Canadian media for a real problem, but in the effort to seek a way to tap the money for taxes, over legislated without understanding the problem and ended up with no links, no taxes.
This is pretty much what went wrong. It’s a legit problem when google presents a search result by parsing through an article, providing their own summary, and prevents a click. You can even see this on non news searches. You might search for something like what’s the largest river in eastern Europe, and it’ll return a result from a webpage half way down the webpage and show it as an excerpt (totally made up example). Now I don’t need to visit the website, preventing ad revenue.
When you simply post a link on something like Meta, the news organizations themselves are providing the summary you see when you post it. If they’re so damned worried about people not clicking links because their provided summary prevents you from reading the article, that isn’t Google or Meta’s fault. Change the snippet, or don’t provide one.
It’s insane that the media groups are now trying to say it’s anti competitive for meta to not allow people to post news articles now and are trying to force them to allow it. You must allow people to post links, and you must pay us if they do. It’s crazy talk.
I’m big on the hate Meta bandwagon and I despise using their service and rarely touch it, but this is all our governments fault. This didn’t have to turn out like this.
So the liberal government
Which other government would it be? It’s okay to just say The Government when they’re the elected ones … unless this is less a question and more Question Period?
“The librul gubment”
Apparently Meta would have to pay for any news shared. If it’s so important to the government I’m not sure why they don’t just foot the bill or make an exception. Why can’t they offer the wildfire news and tell Meta ok no need to pay for news from our government website?
Edit: never mind I see in the article that users can already access info from a gov site.
Jeez I’m not one to bash Trudeau but if he really thinks this outcome was inconceivable maybe the guy isn’t so bright after all.
I hate the flags, the lifted pickups, the freedom stickers and anti-vax bullshit, but I finally have to agree, fuck Trudeau. Depending on Facebook to SAVE THE LIVES OF YOUR CITIZENS is absolutely ignorant.
It’s obviously hyperbole
Politicians passing shitty laws ate my face!
-Trudeau probably
I’m not one to bash Trudeau
So that was a lie, or I’m just very lucky to see it twice in an hour
Damn well go buy a lottery ticket then
That’s how you respond after getting called out for lying?
I’m lying because some guy on the internet says so? Get fucked loser, lmao.
Let’s call this for what it is, the Canadian government tried to force a shitty deal on corporations and failed. This was always a likely possibility and they had no backup plan other than to make a big deal of it publicly. If Canadians are in the dark it’s on them.
Did it fail? Defeat only comes when they rollback regulation without extracting some cash from Meta & Google. Until then, the arm wrestling is on.
There’s no arm wrestle going on, tech refused to play and left the Canadian government standing there with their pants down and no backup plan. I don’t know how you could call that anything other than a failure.
I don’t know how you could call that anything other than a failure.
I just told you, defeat comes if/when they rollback legislation without getting anything in return. Meta is holding the audience hostage, while Canadian politicians and local media constantly attack Facebook aiming for reputational harm. Same happened in Australia and eventually Meta folded and local media won.
I’m not betting money that things will go the same way here because the political landscape and the legislation are different. Still, it’s pretty clear that the current situation of public arm-wrestling was very expected by anyone who has been paying attention to similar legislation elsewhere. It is noteworthy that the ban was already over in a few days in Australia, so the fight already looks different this time.
Also, if they do rollback the law under the condition that Meta has to negotiate deals with media companies directly, that’s still a win. The goal here is to extract money from them, and it’s still quite feasible that this will happen in the next few weeks, so it’s not a failure yet.
The same thing didn’t happen in Australia, they came to an agreement. The Canadian government dropped legislation that gave news sites free reign to request whatever they want with the government as the arbitrator. Nobody would take that deal. This was a political stunt, plain and simple.
This isn’t an arm wrestle, because nobody is trying to win, but the Canadian government is sure as hell trying to make the Canadian people the losers here.
We aren’t being factual because this is just arguing about a framing. In my framing, it’s too soon to call it failure. In your framing, it already failed. I think you do have a point there, our negotiations broke down earlier. I just think it’s still salvageable.
I do think it’s pretty strange to think that the government is literally not trying to win and the goal is to fuck with people. Sounds like conspiracy theory thinking. People of power don’t generally go about fucking things up without personal gains in sight.
I never said the goal is to fuck with people, I said it’s a political stunt. Go argue with your strawman elsewhere.
but the Canadian government is sure as hell trying to make the Canadian people the losers here
I really can’t interpret this in any other way, but I guess it goes to show how framing is hard to argue about
Is there not a proper emergency broadcast system over there?
I get them in Ontario. Every radio, television, smart phone, etc is supposed to go off when an emergency alert is broadcast. I could have sworn it was supposed be be for way more places in Canada than just Ontario.
I’ve had it go off for a tornado warning, an amber alert (missing child), an alert for an armed and dangerous suspect (guy killed a cop and ran), and we’ve even had a fun nuclear one that pretty much said “There is not an emergency happening at the nuclear plant. Everything is fine”. (That was a neat way to wake up)
If they don’t have things in place for an alert service to work properly there, they should really change that. Facebook would mean diddly squat if the internet somehow went out or became inaccessible. Minutes can count.
yeah we have that, I think je was referring to people’s general search on social media for recent news updates rather than actual government alerts
Fuck off. You literally have a national broadcaster and our tax money at your disposal. Not defending Facebook but this is pure misdirection and blame shifting by a government that doesn’t give a shit but gets their feelings hurt when its citizens call them out for it. You’re the one who fucked us over and the fact that so many Canadians relied on Facebook of all places to learn whether they might burn to death tomorrow is a total disgrace on your part.
And double fuck the gaslighting bullshit when the REASON Facebook and others dropped actual news is because the government told them they’d have to pay for linking news articles.
Honestly, fuck both the government for being complacent for too long and letting Facebook get into this position at the expense of the media, and Facebook for being a privacy hellhole siphoning everything it can.
It 100% reeks of politics.
My dream is a follow up article titles “Trudeau denounces his own stupid policy.”
Lawmakers who scold for profit corps for focusing on making profits without breaking any law should instead propose a new law or legal framework so we can evaluate weather it would achieve a desirable outcome in changing the behaviour of these entities.
