Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-government-suspends-advertising-on-facebook-instagram

by bparsons • 3 years ago

149 198 3 years ago

I'm not sure I'd want my government spending money on ads anyway.

gruez• 3 years ago

The government needs to get out messages to its citizens. If ads on facebook is more cost effective than sending out mailers or whatever, why shouldn't they spend money on facebook ads?

onlyrealcuzzo2• 3 years ago

Who is living under a rock and not getting bombarded with political BS every second on FB but seeing FB ads from PBS?

I'm just not sure that's a good forum for governments to try to get out a message.

everybodyknows• 3 years ago

Because it selectively reaches only Facebook users. So the government can begin tailoring messages to certain demographics, for maximum "effect".

BluePen7• 3 years ago

Because our government doesn't understand technology and generally gets fleeced anytime they encounter it.

Remember the Phenix pay system? It was an IBM project that was supposed to save us 70 million a year, instead they paid IBM an additional 2+ BILLION to try and fix the broken crap they'd delivered. Never even worked, they're currently taking bids to replace it already.

80% of public servants had pay issues, many were foreclosed on because they couldn't pay their mortgages, someone even killed themselves.

And we expect the Canadian government to accurately determine ROI on digital ad spend? That's hard enough for skilled people in the space (some who have found it to have no effect altogether). Our government is simply going to be fleeced for every penny they have (and then some).

Remember, these are the same people who shut down the CRA website every night. Can't even access your tax info after hours.

stan3223• 3 years ago

Social media companies are really in business of personal data collection. Based on younger generation being so switched on about news I think 'news' are really being force fed into your social feed (rather than you fetching the news). Governments spending tax payer money with these companies are really approving this sort of unethical behavior.

bawolff4• 3 years ago

Idk, if we could bring back the heritage minutes and the canadian house hippo, I'm all for it.

vortext• 3 years ago

I don't agree with the bill, but yes, I don't want the government to spend money on Meta ads either.

chomp• 3 years ago

Facebook has decided to be unreasonable, irresponsible, and started blocking news.

Are they acting unreasonably though? There is a product, and the government rules it has a price. Isn't Facebook allowed to go, sorry, I don't like that price?

fwlr2• 3 years ago

If you analyze news as a product, it’s entirely reasonable for Facebook to refuse a price they don’t think is worth it. If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”, as it was taught to me in school - then it does start to look unreasonable. The Canadian government is simply equivocating between these two analyses as it suits them (one could ask, if access to news is so important, whether it’s irresponsible and unreasonable for a government to try to charge a fee for it).

bawolff4• 3 years ago

If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”,

I don't get it - in this analysis would my local coffee shop have to buy and provide free newspapers to me?

I'm all for access to free press being a fundamental right. Where you lose me is the part where a private corporation is supposed to subsidize the production of news for me.

mcpackieh4• 3 years ago

Even if you think newspapers are vital to democracy, that doesn't oblige other businesses to sell newspapers. These newspapers own their own distribution mechanisms (websites) that are unaffected by the decision of one third party website to part ways with them.

Okay, but facebook is really ubiquitous so that makes it different... How is this any different from... the one grocery store in town removing their newspaper rack? It's the one grocery store, everybody in town shops there so that makes it super important or something. But the newspapers are still free to mail their newspaper to everybody's front door. They still have their websites too, anybody who wants to read those newspapers can still do so.

Brian_K_White• 3 years ago

No FB fan but yeah exactly.

Yet another confusing the definitions of "what is reasonable" and "what I think".

kayodelycaon• 3 years ago

Isn't Facebook allowed to go, sorry, I don't like that price?

It really depends on the laws involved. If the government decides Facebook accepting certain terms is the cost of business, then Facebook doesn't get a say in it. Kind of like taxes. If you want to operate in a country, you're taxed accordingly. In general, you don't get to not pay a tax just because you don't want to.

Basically, if the law allows, they can. Reasonability doesn't have a lot to do with things at the upper levels of government.

JumpCrisscross2• 3 years ago

Kind of like taxes

A tax to fund a newspaper subsidy would make sense. This isn't a tax. It's mandated commerce. We usually restrict that for protecting protected classes.

ecshafer• 3 years ago

This isn't a tax though. This is mandating that company A sell company B's product, and also pay a set price, which may or may not be a fair price. Should a company be willing to happily go out of business because they are not allowed to sell at a fair market price?

This is actually a step further into absurdity since Facebook is not selling news articles, they are merely linking them. Its the equivalent of the Government telling me I need to pay Nike $5 every time I say the word Nike to someone.

jasonlotito• 3 years ago

Full disclosure, that's not the National Post saying this. That's a quote from Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez.

The way you are quoting the remark, some might assume this is the National Post saying this when it's really NP quoting someone else. This isn't to imply you are misrepresenting anything.

zpeti• 3 years ago

Oh no... bids for impressions will decrease in canada by: $0.00001.

This is just silly, this is the least of facebook's worries.

jklinger410• 3 years ago

Facebook holds all the power here. Canadian gov't ad spend is not a significant cudgel.

infamouscow• 3 years ago

Seeding control of the mainstream media narrative over this silly law is going to have hilarious implications for the future of the Canadian government.

Most importantly, it's now 10x harder to control the narrative and for the government to manufacture consent.

kneebonian2• 3 years ago

It's cedeing not seeding.

Wistar• 3 years ago

It's ceding not cedeing.

cryotopippto• 3 years ago

For this alone they will backtrack really fast.

adjav3• 3 years ago

Note: This article is by the National Post, which is owned by PostMedia, who were one of the main backers of bill C18. Just something to keep in mind.

woodruffw• 3 years ago

For those of us not from Canada[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_News_Act

dotcoma• 3 years ago

Not a Metà fan, at all, but I don’t understand why they are being called “unreasonable” and “irresponsible” for blocking news from Canadian newspapers. As they (currently) don’t have an agreement with Canadian newspapers, or perhaps don’t want one, which also seems like a legitimate position to me, the only responsible thing is not to use or link to articles from said newspapers, isn’t it?

gloryjulio• 3 years ago

Upvote this post for the context. In the oligarchy society of Canada, it's important to know who the big players are

jeffbee• 3 years ago

PostMedia is itself owned by Chatham Asset Management, an American private equity firm that also owns dozen of U.S. newspapers.

cscurmudgeon3• 3 years ago

Ah, a perfect exemplar of the kind of independent journalism free from corporate influence as stated in the bill.

Act provides that any such agreements must not allow the freedom of expression and journalistic independence enjoyed by news outlets to be undermined by corporate influence.

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c18_...

leotravis10• 3 years ago

Also in addition: PostMedia (owners of the National Post) and Nordstar (owners of the Toronto Star), are apparently in talks to merge, meaning there would be even less competition and fewer major news orgs in Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/toronto-star-nordstar-talks...

regimeld• 3 years ago

As a Canadian, I find the current government's policy on the internet to be very 1990's. I fully support Google's and Meta's decision to remove Canadian news from their platforms. This is a complete "own-goal" by the government.

dmix3• 3 years ago

Probably the biggest self-own in recent memory.

I feel bad about the journos/web teams who have to suffer as a consequence of the current gov and the rich Canadian media aristocracy who pushed this through. But I can't say it's going to immediately impact my life. I'm not a particular fan of any of the Canadian media sites besides maybe the hyper local ones like CP24. Nor would I touch the Canadian subreddits with a ten foot pole to go discuss them (some of the worst parts of Reddit).

Canadians are already obsessed with American news/politics anyway. They will just be fed slightly more of that than before on social media.

brailsafe10• 3 years ago

I feel similarly, but I do actually like CBC content usually. It's deeply ironic in my mind that one of the meme mantras of the PCs is defunding the CBC, good job literally every other voting MP except the PCs

kevincox• 3 years ago

I'm also Canadian and feel the same. I don't like Google or Meta but this is just the media trying to be greedy. If the incoming likes from Google were harmful they would have configured a robots.txt. They are just trying to lobby laws to get extra money. But they were too full of themselves to realize that they need Google and Meta at least an order of magnitude more than Google or Meta needs them.

The same thing happened in Australia and as soon as Facebook blocked links they cried uncle. Maybe if these news articles actually did research rather than focusing on clickbait headlines they would have learned about that.

defrost• 3 years ago

The same thing happened in Australia and as soon as Facebook blocked links they cried uncle.

Australia didn't blink, Google and Meta did .. after that brief shutdown of Facebook news feeds in the country, both Google and Facebook agreed to pay:

    Since the News Media Bargaining Code took effect, the tech firms had inked more than 30 deals with media outlets compensating them for content which generated clicks and advertising dollars, said the Treasury department report, published late Thursday.

    "At least some of these agreements have enabled news businesses to, in particular, employ additional journalists and make other valuable investments to assist their operations," said the report.

    "While views on the success or otherwise of the Code will invariably differ, we consider it is reasonable to conclude that the Code has been a success to date."

Australia says law making Facebook and Google pay for news has worked

https://www.reuters.com/technology/australia-says-law-making...

Australia pressured Google and Facebook to pay for journalism. Is America next?

https://www.cjr.org/business_of_news/australia-pressured-goo...

    The legislation, known as the News Media Bargaining Code, has enabled Australian news organizations to extract more than $200 million (almost $150 million US) in the year since it went into effect.

    As a result, the public Australian Broadcasting Corporation can place at least fifty new journalists in underserved parts of the country, while the McPherson Media Group, which publishes such papers as the Yarrawonga Chronicle and the Deniliquin Pastoral Times, expects tech money to fund up to 30 percent of editorial salaries.

> Maybe if these news articles actually did research rather than focusing on clickbait headlines they would have learned about that.

Perhaps if certain HN commenters did research they would not be making false statements.

stewx3• 3 years ago

The TLDR of this issue:

Canadian govt: When someone posts a link to a news article on Facebook, that is like stealing from that news publisher.

Facebook: Your logic makes no sense, but okay, we will stop doing that.

Govt: No, we don't want you to stop posting the links, we want you to pay a fee every time someone posts a link.

Facebook: No thank you.

Govt: You're bullying us and behaving irresponsibly! We won't stand for it!

jamincan• 3 years ago

Isn't the issue that Facebook/Google don't just share the link, they share the content behind the link as well?

stewx3• 3 years ago

No, the entire complaint about Facebook and Google is the links themselves. It's not anything about embedding articles (which I don't think either company does). They just show the headline and article metadata provided by the news publishers.

JumpCrisscross2• 3 years ago

Isn't the issue that Facebook/Google don't just share the link, they share the content behind the link as well

The fundamental issue is they "stole" the classified section that paid for the content. (Secondarily, they commoditized the content by owning the discussion around it.)

All that said, this is a solution that only makes sense to folks in media. The right one is a tax that funds a subsidy for news.

fooster• 3 years ago

Don't they use this? https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/snippet

bregma• 3 years ago

Yes. These advertising companies extract the excess wealth created by the labour of the news-reporting media without compensation. The people of Canada decided that this is unfair and not in their best interest. The advertising companies decided it is not in their best interest to pay the cost of leverage that resource for their wealth-extraction strategies and are going to discontinue it.

Everyone wins.

Tyr42• 3 years ago

The text of the bill includes "indexing" and "ranking" as equivalent to displaying. So even making them searchable (with just links) would cost FB/G.

Also, the thumbnail/blurb is usually in the html head tag for use like this. You can literally set it to "click through to learn more" instead of a summary and FB would respect that.

halifaxbeard2• 3 years ago

Close. Sharing it on Facebook means you’ll comment on the story on Facebook and not on the linked website hosting the comment. Facebook gets the linger time to show you more ads but the organization doing the actual reporting misses out.

intunderflow• 3 years ago

On the plus side, if Canada double down and lose it will set a strong global precedent against these rent-seeking laws.

canadiantim5• 3 years ago

The current Canadian government only knows how to down down, so that's a given.

kneebonian2• 3 years ago

“We’ve met both Google and Meta multiple times to better understand the concerns. We believe we have a path forward and we’re willing to continue talking with the platforms,” Rodriguez said. “We’re convinced what Google is asking at this moment can be done through regulations.”

This here is the most concerning part. The government is making shady back room deals with large corporations. If I had to guess the nature of the deals is "we won't enforce anything or make you pay anything if you agree to ensure that stories that paint the government in an unfavorable light don't stick around."

Even if that's not what the deal is like now that is what it is going to turn into.

adjav3• 3 years ago

Given that's exactly what ended up happening in Australia I wouldn't be surprised.

wilg• 3 years ago

Should HN pay National Post for linking to this article?

tiffanyh2• 3 years ago

Ironically, no FB users will be able to read about this from a Canadian news source.

wvenable13• 3 years ago

It's kind of weird to describe FB users as being in a cage where their browser is incapable of going anywhere else.

tiffanyh2• 3 years ago

But FB exactly wants users to stay within their "walled garden".

ipaddr4• 3 years ago

Just the members in the media cartel. Still plenty of Canadian news sources just not ones demanding payment

brailsafe10• 3 years ago

In the future whenever it actually comes into effect

jszymborski2• 3 years ago

I disagree with a lot of C-18 as-is, but I can't pretend like I'm not happy to see the fed gov't not spending ad dollars on Meta.

mitthrowaway2• 3 years ago

Me too. I think this law is ridiculous, but honestly I'm quite happy with all of its impacts. I view news link-sharing on social media as a negative for both news and social media. It drives news sites into hyping inflammatory and polarizing issues, and turns social media sites into a den of divisiveness and fearmongering. In the old days, Facebook was mostly photos, friends' statuses, event announcements, groups, and unsolicited poetry. If this is a step in that direction, then great!

And as for Google, if this helps people realize that other search engines actually exist, that's great too!

All unrelated to what the bill was actually aiming for, of course.

bobsmooth• 3 years ago

Specifically because it's meta, even though it's where a lot of people consume media? How else is the government supposed to inform people that don't watch TV or listen to radio?

jszymborski2• 3 years ago

Honestly, I'd bet that the overlap of FB's current demographics and people who listen to radio/TV is pretty high.

The gov't of Canada has ad spends on bus stops, billboards, cinemas, newspapers, Spotify... I've even seen them on mobile games. If I was Pablo, I wouldn't be very much concerned about the reach of Gov't of Canada ads.

smsm422• 3 years ago

The funniest part:

But the Liberal government’s decision does not extend to the party. Liberal Party of Canada spokesperson Parker Lund said in a statement that the party would continue to advertise on Meta-owned platforms. According to the company’s ad library, the party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month.

So: we would not deal with FB because it's evil, unless of course it could help us personally to win the elections, in which case of course we'll deal with them. Taxpayer money is another business, this is what you use for posturing.

stubybubs2• 3 years ago

Honestly, it's pretty reasonable. This is what it looks like when you really treat your party as separate from governance. They are not using public funds for their advertising.

Contrast this with the last Conservative government, which made all of its publicly funded announcements from "The Harper Government" instead of "The Government of Canada."

https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2012/06/harper-governm...

smsm422• 3 years ago

The point is not public funds. The point is, in public they behave like FB is so horrible no reasonable person can use their services, but when it comes to using the services not for public benefit, but for their personal benefit, turn out FB is not so bad after all. Evidently, using FB is beneficial for them. They are OK with benefitting themselves, but withhold same benefits from the public in the name of political posturing.

dopidopHN4• 3 years ago

I was driving thought Ontario today, I kept thinking that it was posturing as well. It’s pulling ads from the official government body, it represent maybe 1% of Meta activity in that country.

Weirdly enough the news was in loop on radio but nobody mentioned what Meta had to say. No empty statement saying it’s for the greater good.

o1y32• 3 years ago

I wonder what $15,000/month means for FB, and how much revenue FB lost from the federal government. My guess is not much, ane FB doesn't care.

grf273• 3 years ago

Isn't the issue that Google/Facebook sell ads and make money from linking to news sources? And those news sources have their costs but don't see any income?

I think about this often when I read a story on some small-town newspaper, and know that the newspaper is making nothing off of me and millions of others reading their story.

Didn't Australia implement a similar law and get Google/Facebook to pay something?

There's a similar issues with some news sites basically copying or rephrasing the content of a newspaper story. I've seen news stories by third-parties, where the story lists their source as "The New York Times"

It's tough to figure out a way to compensate the people who create the news, and the people who disseminate the news.

foogazi• 3 years ago

And those news sources have their costs but don't see any income?

Don’t those news sources have ads too ? How are they making income from local views?

babypuncher3• 3 years ago

Because very few people click through to the article, they just read the headline, summary, and comments on Facebook. Facebook is capturing most of the economic value generated by these articles.

grf273• 3 years ago

Yes they do. But the income from one story doesn't pay the cost to generate all the other stories that the paper produces. According to our local paper that just shut down, their ads couldn't compete with the ads on Google/Facebook.

So the only profitable stories are very narrow, or the click-bait type that might be picked up by Facebook, assuming that Facebook doesn't just extract and show the core of the story.

This isn't a new problem. A friend of mine used to do articles on historical issues and post them on his blog. They were good enough that there were other sites that would just copy them and change the byline to themselves. Grounds for a lawsuit, but the cost of the lawsuit and the tiny amount of damages made it impractical. Now he does the articles but tries to sell them to publishers. His income from that is now so tiny that it's no longer cost effective.

Local papers now are money-losers, and the centralization of those many papers in the hands of a few corporations seems more to provide political influence than make money from news. In our recent election, the 160 papers owned by one corporation all made the same political endorsements.

Australia's moves to charge for local news was a first, I think, and at the time there was comment that it could be the wave of the future. Google/Facebook have financial incentive to try to head off the same action in other countries.

halifaxbeard2• 3 years ago

My understanding of the core issue is people aren’t clicking through to read the article, but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline. Facebook gets ad views and user-generated content/comments, and the organization doing the reporting sees nothing of the economic value generated in this scenario. (Hacker News is specialized in audience and news orgs generally aren’t posting all their stories here)

CBC tried to head this problem off by disabling comments on all their Facebook posts so people would comment on CBC.ca.

wvenable13• 3 years ago

My issue with this, is this a problem that needs to be solved? Do we need to guarantee monetization of every human interaction?

If my friend and I go a cafe, see a newspaper headline, and have a discussion about that headline without ever opening that newspaper should the cafe have to pay for that discussion? Why should any media adjacent interaction anywhere happen without payment? If the cafe is playing music, they're paying licence fees for that. Why not everything?

throw0101c2• 3 years ago

[…] but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline.

People have been not-reading and commenting since the early days of Slashdot. See also Reddit and HN. :)

dmix3• 3 years ago

Oh god, comment threads on news sites are some of the worst things on the internet. Never well designed, properly threaded, each requires a different login, etc.

If that's the business they want to be in then they (and every other news site) completely sucks at it and there's a reason people want to talk on FB/Twitter instead beyond network effects.

mcpackieh4• 3 years ago

My understanding of the core issue is people aren’t clicking through to read the article, but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline.

If this is the meat of the matter, then how does asking Facebook to pay for links/headlines address the problem? Whether or not facebook pays for linking to news stories, the discussion on facebook remains vapid and the public isn't properly informed.

Unless the idea was to make Facebook remove the links/headlines and drive traffic back to the news websites, which is what happened.. so why are they complaining now that it has played out that way?

tensor• 3 years ago

Correct. Essentially the root of the issue is that the news sites believe that the value is in their article, but in reality for the majority of users the value is in the headline, which the news sites give away for free along with the link so that they can be indexed.

In my opinion, the answer here is for the news sites to not show any headlines for free, and require a login to access all content. Then, they are free to negotiate with google and meta and others if those companies want access to the content. It wouldn't require any new laws.

They would need to solve users being able to post links, but a link shortener of sorts forcing the user to write their own headline in the post would probably do the trick. Most people would still want to see the actual headline, and then they'd be forced to login or at least view the page.

I'm very strongly against bill c18.

mr_toad• 3 years ago

Asking for payment for citations seems like a direction we don’t want to head in.

rossjudson• 3 years ago

If you'd like to understand what Google is actually doing with the news, it's outlined here.

https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/CHPC/Brief/B...

And Jeff Elgie provides an informed view:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/village-medias-c-18-update-je...

darkclouds• 3 years ago

I think about this often when I read a story on some small-town newspaper, and know that the newspaper is making nothing off of me and millions of others reading their story.

How do you think University's and teachers feel? They teach millions of people who later go on to make lots of money off the efforts of the educational establishment and educator, although in this case I seem to remember Zuck dropped out.

Perhaps Govt taught him, if you are big enough, you can do wtf you like, so maybe he's a modern day Robin Hood like figure? Robbing from the rich to give to the poor?

jsnell• 3 years ago

Isn't the issue that Google/Facebook sell ads and make money from linking to news sources?

No. The law would apply even if Google and Facebook showed no ads on a same page as a link to a news article, and made no money from them. (And in fact, e.g. Google News does not show any ads.)

Didn't Australia implement a similar law and get Google/Facebook to pay something?

Not really, no. Australia passed a law but didn't actually make it apply to anyone. (Yes, seriously, the law is defined to apply to a set of companies that the government designates at their whim, and they've so far not designated any companies). The deals that Google/Meta made with Australian news companies are the same kinds of deals they've made in countries all over the world without such a law, including Canada.

Those Australian deals will reportedly terminate if Google/Meta are designated as being in scope of the law, so now any news company with a deal has an incentive to argue against their designation while a company without a deal will argue for. In a similar vein, the deals in Canada are apparently going to be terminated due to this law.

Animats• 3 years ago

Why was the government of Canada advertising on Facebook and Instagram anyway?

vkou3• 3 years ago

Same reason it, and other governments advertise programs, PSAs, etc, on television, YouTube, etc. It reaches eyeballs.

betaby2• 3 years ago

We have tax-backed CBC for that (+other tax supported media)

kernal• 3 years ago

Tourism.

Marsymars2• 3 years ago

This is my take. Bad law, but the government should never have been advertising there in the first place.

version_five• 3 years ago

Canadian political parties, when in power (and it's not a partisan thing, they both do it) see fit to "advertise" their party under a thin veil of pretending to advertise government programs. The example that immediately comes to mind (despite my distain for the current government) is the former government who circa 2008 had advertising everywhere for their "economic action plan" and how it was helping us. It was partisan garbage paid for by taxpayers. They all do it.

koboll• 3 years ago

"The party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month."

Oh no! Fifteen thousand dollars?! I'm sure Facebook is shaking and crying and will reverse their decision immediately.

VancouverMan• 3 years ago

I think you should re-read the article.

What you quoted seems to refer to what the Liberal Party of Canada itself was spending, and the article makes it sound like they plan to continue buying ads going forward.

Farther down in the article, it also mentions recent spending by the federal government (rather than just the Liberal Party itself), and that amount is significantly larger.

kazinator• 3 years ago

“Facebook has decided to be unreasonable, irresponsible, and started blocking news,”

I don't feature news on my website. Am I also an unreasonable, irresponsible news blocker?

ipaddr4• 3 years ago

I've never seen anyone appearing less qualified in parliament or interviews. Pablo Rodriguez isn't being roasted for his foolish responses and the Canadian media is losing credibility by taking sides. Seeing less national cartel linked media stories will do everyone good. The government not advertising on social media is positive.

brailsafe10• 3 years ago

Hmm... have you seen the environment minister's interviews? Not great.

graeme• 3 years ago

Funnily enough the current environment minister Guillebeault was the previous heritage minister who crafted this bill. It didn't get through on his term and then Rodriguez took over.

ipaddr4• 3 years ago

The Minister of Crown–Indigenous Relations Canada is another truly awful character

qqcqq• 3 years ago

There was another post that was on the front page earlier today that pretty much asked: if the [Canadian] government hates [Facebook] social media platform so much, why don't they just build their own? https://loeber.substack.com/p/10-why-is-there-no-government-...

And I agree with the author that it's sort of weird that for all the handwringing and grandstanding these governments are doing, none of them are willing to build a replacement platform for their users

crop_rotation• 3 years ago

Network effects aside, Governments can not build social media or any website competing with private markets (Even google with unlimited pockets gave up on G+). Government just trying to create a barebones micro-twitter straight from the rails tutorial will easily cost millions of dollars to the taxpayer.

zulban• 3 years ago

Some in government are capable of that. It's the leadership building the team and designing the political and business requirements that make it impossible.

snapplebobapple• 3 years ago

That should just be the default setting shouldn't it? Why are they wasting a bunch of money advertising on social media?

zsz• 3 years ago

Although I confess I haven't completely kept up with this development (meaning, what I am about to say may be entirely due to my own lack of relevant knowledge in this case), I have noticed that there are occasional references made to a similar law that was passed in Australia (last year?).

Well, I'm surprised that no one's brought up a similar case that occurred in the EU and which focused primarily on Google's news aggregation service, rather than Meta's.

One significant difference was that the publisher/holding company initiated and won the lawsuit against Google at the national level (see for example this EFF article from 2014: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop... ). From what I vaguely remember about the case, Google's ability to shut down its news service in Spain only (while keeping it running in neighboring countries) was what ultimately allowed it to demonstrate that the news aggregation service had benefitted the publishers rather than costing them revenue, because once they halted their aggregation service in Spain only, Internet traffic to the publications affected was substantially reduced. I assume the lawsuits in Australia and now Canada were initiated on a similar premise, i.e. that Google, et al. Were negatively impacting revenue, rather than bolstering it by referring additional traffic beyond what they would otherwise receive. In other words,

In the European case, what happened next was that publishers, realizing they couldn't win at the national level (actually, they couldn't reasonably win at any level, since their principal claim had already been invalidated at the national level) took it up to the EU level. They still wanted to be paid of course, regardless of the validity of their allegation, so they figured that if they could get a law (or amendment) passed at the EU Commission level, then this would be binding for all member states--and Google's only response would be to shut down their aggregation service completely in the EU, or accept the demand to play for each news article headline/summary that was hosted on their site.

The amendment that was ultimately passed was something quite byzantine as well, since it forbade any exceptions (to prevent Google from only hosting headlines that came from blogs or other, relatively unknown news services that were prepared to "forego" revenue (due to Google reducing their visitor count, as claimed), in return for the privilege of receiving tons of exposure for being hosted on Google's aggregator. The idea was (IIRC) was that there would be a pool of funds that would be disproportionately divided based on the relative portion of total traffic that each site received--which, needless to say, benefitted the big and well known publishers, while hurting the smaller ones (blogs) that didn't receive much money from this pool, but was still forced by law to participate in this scheme.

Which brings me to the final point: if the law that was passed in Canada has anything in common with the EU law (ie to force Google to pay their "fair share"), then the case against Meta/Facebook is a legal extortion racket, sanctioned by the government.

There were numerous articles, legal opinions, etc posted around that time, several by the EFF (again, based on my vague recollection).

web3-is-a-scam• 3 years ago

Nice. Less propaganda in my feed is a plus. Did they think this would somehow make me mad at Facebook? Thanks Zucc!

alphanullmeric• 3 years ago

If you believe in the force is only justified in response to force principle, what force is Facebook using against Canadian broadcasters to justify being forced to pay a ransom?

stainablesteel• 3 years ago

the retaliation is a bit... 2010s. don't they know people have moved on from this kind of thing?

if you're advertising dollars are being wasted and this is just your political song and dance, that's one thing. but if this somehow drops revenue for ottawa in the long run then google and fb will forever use this as a pitchfork to milk cash from any other city

friend_and_foe2• 3 years ago

Goodness gracious how dumb can you be? "If you want to profit off of our news articles you have to pay us some of it!" and then, predictably, these news organizations become irrelevant overnight because nobody can see their news. Now, they want to claim Facebook is blocking news? Do these people hear themselves?

As much as I dislike Meta I'm 100% in agreement with them on this. They're being shaken down for money.

Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

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