We appear to be standing our ground!
Not my preferred choice of source but NatPo has more detail than some of the alternatives I saw. It includes some numbers as well as comments about the difference between Meta’s and Google’s approaches. Hint: they’re not the same, so there’s already cracks in the effort to make an example out of Canada.
Except their costs are exorbitant and eat the majority of the pie based solely on infrastructure and not the actual content creation. And there’s a palpable difference between “advertising your number in a phone book” and “having another company eat the majority of the profit on content you create.” Google and Facebook are not unlike Reddit; they don’t create value except by facilitating access to that value. Absolutely, they should earn something for that facilitation, but not the amount they’re currently earning.
“having another company eat the majority of the profit on content you create.” If they are summarizing and users don’t need to click sure, but linking is a whole another level. If the media outlet can’t survive with people ACTUALLY viewing the content on their site there is something wrong with the media outlets business.
So you have one company funding another to top them off to 60% of their costs covered?
So if 70% of a sites traffic is coming from people actually clicking through Google and Facebook what are we solving for?
Long and short I would be very OK with the law demanding compensation for summaries but NOT for linking… Linking is fundamental to discovering content and is essentially the phone book problem.
FB and Google DON’T get much value out of just a link… Hence why they are SO willing to just turn it off.
Taking FB and Google out of the picture and assuming the internet had no search…
How would anyone find these media outlets? A list? ok if a list why would that list want to include news sites if it had to pay to include them?
Do you use an ad blocker? Do you go to news sites ? If so maybe YOU are the reason they are going out of business?
Google and Meta are absolutely getting a shit ton of value from the linking. Those links, that content, is keeping users eyeballs on the platforms longer and hitting ads on the platforms, next to that content. The user opens Facebook, they see an article summary and pic from NatPo, they scroll, they see another one, they scroll, they hit a sponsored post, Meta makes money, NatPo gets nothing. Meta extracted value from the content… cough… link. If you still think the platforms don’t get significant value from links, consider how much ads Google would be able to sell if Google search contained no links to anything compared to now.
The percentage numbers for funding are currently meaningless. They’re the start of a negotiation process. What’s going to show up when all is said and done is unknown yet. Just like the knee-jerk reaction from the platforms isn’t the end result but their initial negotiation move.
Do you think news just didn’t exist before Google/Meta?
I don’t like the change, but it’ll probably help maintain journalism quality
We used to pay for news papers to get the news, or listen to TV and the Radio with Ads and the CBC was well funded and respected.
I am not sure pumping more money in will help with that. I think some form of accountability for the style (Neutral and balanced) / facts / quality of corrections needs to be tied to money.
It’s not pumping more money so much as it is changing the mechanism of delivery. If you’re not dependent on click through rates and etc. you can afford less editorialized content
That’s a great fucking point - this status quo is driving the rage baiting to a different level!