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Canadians will no longer have access to news content on Facebook and Instagram, Meta says

3 years ago by m-p{3} to c/canada

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StaggersAndJags 29 points 3 years ago

I had the same visceral reaction to this law as most old-school internet dwellers, but I've changed my tune. My view now:

Yes, it's ridiculous to charge someone money for linking to your content, but it's less ridiculous than the status quo.

We're at a point where foreign corporations are extracting most of the profit from local journalism simply by hosting links to the content, while the people who actually produce that content at considerable expense are going broke. This situation is the result of those foreign corporations building a virtual monopoly on news by out-competing / crowding out all the old places we were exposed to headlines: from newsstands to flipping through the channels to media homepages to RSS feeds.

And sure, hosting links to those news stories is mutually beneficial, except that almost no one clicks the links. The headline, teaser and photo are scraped and displayed on the third party app, and that's all anyone cares to look at. We're all to blame for not clicking, but those same tech companies are especially to blame for fostering this culture of five-second attention spans.

This law will probably not be effective in the short term, and might even backfire due to Facebook's content blackout. It's easy for them to give the middle finger to small markets like Australia and Canada.

But major players like California are considering similar laws, and you can bet Facebook will suddenly find they can pay content producers when the alternative is losing the world's fifth largest economy.

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wvenable 13 points 3 years ago

I'm going to keep with the old-school internet dweller opinion on this law.

And sure, hosting links to those news stories is mutually beneficial, except that almost no one clicks the links. The headline, teaser and photo are scraped and displayed on the third party app, and that’s all anyone cares to look at. We’re all to blame for not clicking, but those same tech companies are especially to blame for fostering this culture of five-second attention spans

News organizations have all the control in how their links are displayed. They can opt out of the teaser and photo, etc. They don't because nobody would click on the link if there wasn't a photo and teaser. Nobody would read the article at all now if there wasn't some way to find them -- this is a service provided to them. It's like charging news stands for people reading the headlines as they walk by!

Hating Facebook is one thing but siding with the corporate media monopoly that is using regulatory capture to keep their failing businesses afloat is not the solution.

The only reason foreign corporations are extracting the most profit from journalism is that the price of journalism is so low that the only way anyone can make money is aggregating it together by the millions. Why should I pay for some random person's opinion when I can just read your opinion for free. I can get real time video of situations from hundreds of people all at the same time. The market has fundamentally changed and it true Canadian tradition, a small monopoly of Canadian corporations have lobbied the government to keep them alive for another quarter. I'm not saying journalism is dead but, in the past, it was mostly profitable because of the monopoly of attention -- if you wanted to the read the news, you had maybe 2 local choices that got delivered to you in the morning. Now you're one click away from everything everywhere.

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BuoyantCitrus 6 points 3 years ago

foreign corporations are extracting most of the profit from local journalism simply by hosting links to the content,

I don't believe they are getting particularly much revenue from journalism. I think that's why their reaction to this is just to block the links being posted: it won't really affect their bottom line. A blip. Even if Cali does it, people will just post memes or screenshots of headlines or w/e.

And sure, hosting links to those news stories is mutually beneficial, except that almost no one clicks the links. The headline, teaser and photo are scraped and displayed on the third party app, and that’s all anyone cares to look at.

Indeed, few of us spend much time reading the news. Especially actual investigative journalism and not just what amounts to entertainment content. Saw an article recently saying that Canadians level of interest in news media is even going down from what was presumably a fairly low baseline (see how easy it is to get by without links?)

I think there is a silver lining to this though: it doesn't cost that much to make the kind of news that's important. It's certainly not free but you mainly need to pay a few talented and driven people enough salary to support them while they doggedly pursue the truth. You don't need a massive printing press and a delivery fleet like in past. So news doesn't need to be corporate. News doesn't need to be Reddit, news can be Lemmy.

If something is happening, those of us who pay attention should be linking to it when it's important. And should be linking to quality sources.

I live in Toronto, recently some protected lands were going to lose their protection and the circumstances around it were suspect. The most in depth journalism on the topic was this piece from a very small donor-funded org that investigates environmental issues: https://thenarwhal.ca/...

Indeed, the federal government has an excellent program that supports this model (and that very publication) -- it allows news orgs to be recognised as tax-deductible charities if they meet certain criteria, effectively amplifying the impact of those of us who think it's worth paying for news to exist:

https://www.canada.ca/...

I do value journalism, and I do think more people should care and I think we should be linking to it everywhere we think we might be able to engage our fellow citizens with what's going on around us.

I don't especially value corporate manipulation and lobbying which is what I see from things like Postmedia, which owns way too many newspapers: https://en.wikipedia.org/...

A for-profit business is seeking profit first. That necessarily distorts journalism. Especially when the business model is based on ads. I'd rather support a smaller, more focused sort of news gathering. And it's better if more of us donate, they should beholden to a large sampling of the minority of us who think it's important journalism happens and not to shareholders.

Currently I contribute to: Canadaland, The Local, The Narwhal, and The Tyee. I also pay for The Guardian because they don't have a paywall.

I'd like to support the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail but they have paywalls so I'd have to log in to read them and then they're associating my reading habits with my identity and selling it to advertisers. That business is gross. Much like what Facebook and Google do. I don't want to support that. Plus I can't link people to the paywalled news. And I think it's important to be able to do that: it's all the more important to have it there for the few people who will click through and become informed precisely because, as you said, most people won't. And I don't see pay-for-links helping; if the platforms eventually cave and start supporting that scheme, won't it just encourage vapid Buzzfeed style clickbait as they try to get as much link juice as possible?

So I want to pay not for access to the news, but for the news to exist for everyone because I believe it's important. And I think it would probably be good for society if ad-funded news died. Any other publications I should be supporting and linking to?

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someguy3 4 points 3 years ago

I think you left out CBC. As traditional companies go under I think it's important we keep CBC as a trusted news source.

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BuoyantCitrus 2 points 3 years ago

True, I do value public broadcasting and support it through my taxes so ya, CBC and TVO. I was mostly just thinking of things I had to opt into paying and brought that up in the larger context that you don't need a state or a massive corporation to produce quality journalism. And so if our state fails to extract a bailout from American tech companies to satiate our bloated media corps I'm pretty confident we'll be okay.

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someguy3 1 point 3 years ago

I'm not very optimistic about the future state of journalism. The money is gone. Anything that remains will likely be biased. It's funny that we've gone full circle back to the need for a public broadcaster, but here we are.

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SpaceCowboy 2 points 3 years ago

I don’t believe they are getting particularly much revenue from journalism. I think that’s why their reaction to this is just to block the links being posted: it won’t really affect their bottom line. A blip. Even if Cali does it, people will just post memes or screenshots of headlines or w/e.

They're ad supported, which means they make more money the longer people spend on their site. If people have to leave their site to read the news, then that's less time people are on their site which translates into less revenue.

This is a power play, plain and simple. They are doing this to put pressure on the Canadian government to back down.

This is transnational corporations trying to use their control over information to bully a democracy so they can avoid paying taxes.

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zephyreks 2 points 3 years ago

Precisely.

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tiredofsametab 3 points 3 years ago

Question: as someone who lives outside of Canada and wants to keep up with certain news and events, what do I do if this disappears from google search? I am the, apparently rare, person who will search for a topic or browse news, but actually click on the link and read things (I've been on fark.com for over 15 years now clicking on links).

Secondarily, does this have broader implications for cultural exports or tourism or anything?

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Kecessa 3 points 3 years ago

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tiredofsametab 3 points 3 years ago

I think the issue is that most people aren't going to go back to searching a variety of sites manually to see what's going on, particularly those not living in Canada whom may not be aware of this law to think about getting such a list of other media.

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ininewcrow 2 points 3 years ago

It's all the old arguments of workers rights, capitalist exploitation and socialist ideas being played all over again from the 1800s.

Millions of workers and writers produce all the content and conduct the most labour to create the content we all consume ... yet they see none or very little of the benefit of their work. All there efforts are rewarded with little to no pay to the point where they have to leave their job or go on working with very little return. the ones producing the work eventually leave the work and the next poor Joe who takes his position is then forced to work for even less.

Meanwhile ... all the work that is being produced by low paying workers is only benefiting wealthy owners who do nothing but simply claim ownership over everything.

I'm not a communist, nor do I espouse any of their totalitarian ideas of society ... but I am a democratic socialist who believes that workers and writers have to be justly compensated, honoured and respected for their work ... especially if their work directly contributes to our functioning democracy.

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terath -3 points 3 years ago

They won’t even for California. And they shouldn’t. News organizations need to figure out how to make money in this system. If all people do is read headlines then don’t put headlines out for free. Put it behind a pay gate and ask Google and Meta to pay for access.

This law is indeed ridiculous and embarrassing. It’s completely unnecessary. But the end result is the same. News sites effectively asked for Google and Meta to pay, and they declined.

That’s business. It’s unfortunate but such is life.

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Kecessa 1 point 3 years ago

Business is also operating in the confines of the laws and oops, it's not going their way this time! 🤷

Business is also paying taxes, which they don't, in Canada or the USA (where they have their headquarters)

https://www.salon.com/...

So, no, they don't need you defending them.

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BuoyantCitrus 28 points 3 years ago

Good. This law is ridiculous and I'm glad it won't give the result they intended. Being able to link to things freely is a very basic part of the web, we really shouldn't mess with that. And Facebook is a ridiculous place to get news from so it may have ancillary benefits as well in terms of maybe slightly improving public discourse and encouraging people onto other platforms with more transparency around their content weighting and data use practices.

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iAmTheTot 8 points 3 years ago

That's hopeful. The only thing I see coming from this is no actual news being linked and the woo to spread exponentially faster.

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BuoyantCitrus 3 points 3 years ago

Oof. Ya.

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AssaultPepper 1 point 3 years ago

Given what's going on with WhatsApp in India I think this will be the case.

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Kecessa 3 points 3 years ago

How is it ridiculous to ask them to share some of the profit they make from Canadian work with Canada?

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BuoyantCitrus 1 point 3 years ago

It's not, that's why I didn't say that.

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Kecessa 2 points 3 years ago

You said the law is ridiculous

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BuoyantCitrus 2 points 3 years ago

I did, because it tries to regulate merely linking to content, something I consider absurd. What I did not say is that it is "ridiculous to ask them to share some of the profit they make from Canadian work with Canada". So I responded as such. I'm not terribly interested in engaging with someone who puts words in my mouth. If you're curious for more of my thoughts on this topic, I intend to respond to the interesting comment by @StaggersAndJags@kbin.social when I have time to be more thoughtful.

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mochi 1 point 3 years ago

The amount of traffic they drive to the news sites is payment enough.

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Kecessa 9 points 3 years ago

It doesn't drive traffic to the news site though, people check the summary and move on to the next thing on their wall.

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wvenable 0 points 3 years ago

If it doesn't drive traffic then the news sites shouldn't at all be worried about sites not linking to them anymore.

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jadero 6 points 3 years ago

It doesn't, though. Facebook is grabbing more and more of the content making it less and less necessary to actually go to the news site. As a result, Facebook gets to profit from ads instead of the news site.

This is a well-intentioned but horrible law. There are a couple of things they could do instead.

Ban large scale data collection on end users without the combination of oversight and properly informed consent that happens in medical research. That still allows for some of the things that are actually beneficial to individuals and society while stripping the power to use the data for such frivolous things as ads. Doing micro-targeted ads requires a level of surveillance and data processing that is beyond the means of any company that has anything else as it's core competency. That would put ads back a few decades to when an advertiser did not choose a customer via surveillance, but chose a market based on interest (context ads). This would put the original creators and publishers of content back in charge. This would have the added benefit of increasing privacy online.

They could ban any practice that interferes with the end-to-end principal of communications. This is the principal that says "the stuff I specifically request is the stuff that is most visible." Right now, Facebook et al are poisoning feeds with "pay to promote" crap so extensively that I'm likely to see something from a bunch of right wing nut jobs at the top of my feed instead of the Marxist outlet I've actually subscribed to. Worse, I might never see the people and organizations that I explicitly follow unless those people and organizations pay up. That could have the side effect of pouring water on the dumpster fire that passes for discourse, because fringe movements would have to actually gain traction through the quality of their ideas and arguments instead of by just throwing money around.

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can 2 points 3 years ago

We're they linking or showing full content within Facebook?

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BuoyantCitrus 6 points 3 years ago

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itchy_lizard 28 points 3 years ago

Meta was never a source of news..

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cmcalgary 8 points 3 years ago

It's actually been a huge "source" unfortunately. A lot of people get their actual news from memes and copy/pasted bullshit.

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Lucz1848 22 points 3 years ago

Facebook should not be the place to look for news.

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someguy3 16 points 3 years ago

And nothing of value was lost.

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zephyreks 14 points 3 years ago

Oh no! Anyway...

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hub 7 points 3 years ago

Bring it on !

Like no one told this would happen.

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Grant_M 7 points 3 years ago

Beginning of the end for the billionaire democracy breaking tech bro club. I'm PUMPED.

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ilickfrogs 7 points 3 years ago

Oh no! Anyways.

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rad 7 points 3 years ago

Good riddance!

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cmcalgary 5 points 3 years ago

I share a bunch of local news to Facebook and this is going to be a little annoying, but, I'll deal. I'm thinking about using AI to write a short summary of the news article and then creating a blog post of my own to have that, then linking to the source? Something like that. Or I can summarize news in images? Will have to see how it's actually implemented.

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TheMightyCanuck 3 points 3 years ago

HOLY SHIT! It's Crack macs!!!

I love you ❤️

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cmcalgary 1 point 3 years ago

hiii just CM now, the old name sucked haha

Lemmy seems like a decent reddit alternative. Hopefully it takes off in a big way. Seems to be getting much more notice at least.

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TheMightyCanuck 1 point 3 years ago

My calgarian gf introduced me to the good ol days when it truly was Crack macs.

You run a pretty good fb page too

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meat_popsicle 2 points 3 years ago

Why create an AI that may or may not accurately summarize the news? Isn’t that just contributing to the disinformation and misinformation problem facing social media?

Bing GPT will tell you a 15 word sentence is actually 14 words and tell you that you can’t count. ChatGPT fabricates / hallucinates “facts” it thinks the user wants to hear. Just look at the lawyer facing disbarment for using ChatGPT for a trial - it just made up references and pretended they were real, and couldn’t be convinced otherwise.

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cmcalgary 2 points 3 years ago

Because it would be faster is all. I can do it myself of course but if I can link an article and ask it to summarize, and it does a good job of it, great. It doesn't need to be much, perhaps just extending beyond the headline a bit to provide a little more context. I can always add in my own as well.

It's not like the output would be some kind of drastically different information that I would take and share without reading it. I've always tried to only share accurate and trusted sources for news, beit MSM or subject matter experts. A source is always included. Also, I generally try to share news without an opinion attached to it but sometimes that can help.

Maybe I can attach a poll to every single article that I create a blog post for, gathering thoughts? Some kind of added value beyond a link would be cool.

The whole point is to circumvent the stupid blocking of articles being shared directly. This should actually be a really good thing for me because I'll be able to make some money from website ads too, but, I've always tried to provide the best experience possible when doing things online and having to share a middle-man approach to keep people informed sucks ass. I predict a lot of media websites will take a huge hit in traffic due to this, which means much less ad revenue. I have no idea why the government is doing this. Links to articles are not taking away anything imo. Services like Google AMP are different and those do take away from the articles, so maybe it's for stuff like that?

Testing it out, here's some examples,

I pasted in the link and said "please summarize this article up in a short paragraph"

"Taylor Swift has announced her upcoming tour this 2023 called “The Eras Tour” where she will perform her songs from past and present. The first leg of the tour has already been announced and it is described as “a journey through the musical eras of my career,” said Swift. However, Canadian cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver were conspicuously absent from the list"

"According to CTV News, Const. Elena Golysheva of the Edmonton Police Service who joined the “Freedom Convoy” in Coutts, Alta., has been allowed back with Edmonton police"

"According to Global News, Lethbridge Police are warning the public about suspected fentanyl resembling candy bear"

"According to CityNews Calgary, Dr. Esther Tailfeathers resigned from the Indigenous Wellness Core after a hiring decision involving former Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw"

"According to The Toronto Star, Canada’s federal environment and climate change ministry has stated that compostable bags “contaminate recycling streams; and they have not proven to perform better than conventional plastics when littered on land or in water”. The bags “remain a threat of harm to wildlife, are difficult to recycle and have available alternatives”"

Results

The results are kinda disappointing but I might need to come up with a better query description. A couple of them were decent. All of them were accurate.

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DucktorZee 4 points 3 years ago

You lucky batards, and yes I meant batard.

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Mereo 3 points 3 years ago

In my opinion, good. Facebook and Instagram silo people into echo Chambers.

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Chatotorix 1 point 3 years ago

If only mainstream news was how people were "informed" on Facebook... it would be only bad, not the actual terrible.

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