Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@social.cleverlibre.org

@freemo Wait, you think healthcare is worse now than it was while overburdened with COVID? That has certainly not been my experience.

@genecowan Are you entirely certain it's a mistake?

@AskPippa I don't disagree that that's a problem. What I disagree with is forcing an unrelated third party to foot the bill.

Unfortunately, so much of the problem is self-inflicted.

@Pat To be clear, it doesn't apply to all links on the internet, though. Just links on digital platforms that point at Canadian news organization websites.

Basically, the news orgs were hemorrhaging money and decided to use what little they had left to lobby the government to help them extort Facebook.

@AskPippa So what? The traditional media still ends up getting the better side of the deal.
They know that social media drives way more traffic to them than vice-versa. If the traditional media companies think they're not getting their money's worth, they're free to pull out of social media.

Instead, they lobbied the government to force the social media companies to pay them. That's not fair play; it's legalized extortion. The social media companies don't owe the traditional newspapers a dime. If anything, they should be charging for all the free advertising they gave those companies that drove click which drove ads which drove revenue.

I'd say GTFO too if I were in the social media companies' shoes.

@Pat Pretty much, yeah. Due to pressure from old-media lobbyists.

In response, Google & Meta were just like "ok whatever, we'll just ban those links then."

https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/7/14/23794623/meta-google-canada-c-18-online-news-act-fight

@alexwild Right, but those news sites (by and large) have chosen advertisements as their revenue sources. And social media drives more people to click on the links which causes more ads to be shown, which means more profit for the traditional media.

If anything, social media should be charging the newspapers for spreading their links, not the other way around.

@reneestephen You hit the nail on the head. Social media is a forum, not a newsstand. Does it benefit from some walk-in traffic because of the newsstand out front? Sure, but that's not critical to its business model, and they've clearly done the math and realized that paying the newsstand to stay would be more expensive than losing the customers it draws in.

@AskPippa Right. So, it's not the social media companies that are profiting from the traditional media. It's the other way around. Traditional media was already getting free advertising from social media, and now they want social media to pay them for that privilege? Ludicrous.

The fact that they had to get a law in place instead of just making a deal, and the fact that Facebook chose to shut them out both clearly demonstrate which side was benefiting more from the relationship.

Traditional media don't get to cry "share on Facebook" for two decades only to demand that Facebook cough up every time someone shares.

@AskPippa Facebook doesn't post the news to their platform. The media companies do.

Ask yourself why.

@AskPippa It's worth noting that Facebook only blocked news in response to Canada's government and traditional media extorting them.

It's also worth noting how depressing it is that some folks turn to Facebook for information... but that also seems to be mostly traditional-media-hyped bullshit too.

@grumpygamer (Yeah, my post was in agreement with that argument, in case it wasn't clear)