At the end of the day, they're a private company who are looking to make a profit, not an emergency broadcast system.
But the free marketeers have such a grip on public policy here in North America that the governments aren't able to take the appropriate regulatory action: Either nationalize them and make them a utility or break up the monopoly so you don't have a behemoth with so much power over a critical function like communication.
I love the first order effects. I love the second order effects. I love the weird edge cases.
Then some power hungry sociopath comes into the room and belches "serve me" and vomits a rule onto the ground. It's clear they haven't thought about this any further than simply wanting the masses to bow down to them. Do they even know what rules are?
While I am definitely sympathetic towards anyone who's business model is impacted by Facebook, and I think that the honorable thing for Facebook to do here is take the hit and let sharing of forest fire news, ultimately this is exactly what Canada (a sovereign country ruled by the people) wanted.
This isn't some weird third order emergent property of their rule. They demanded something from Facebook and now they're getting it. If that makes them sad (to get exactly what they asked for) then it's kind of a personal issue.
I'm not a fan of Facebook but I totally support their position and what's even crazier now is that the CBC and others who pushed this are now asking the Canadian Gov to sue Facebook because of this.
It's typical behavior of a Gov/Society that is protectionist.They cheered when Trudeau and Freeland made all the Telcos Canadian media companies to protect them from competition (American). Canadians typically cut their nose off to spite their face, there is a long list of everything from dairy, eggs, duty free allowances when crossing the border, etc that they vehemently supported during NAFTA II (because America sucks) that they now complain about. All I can say is enjoy the cost of your mobile rates, food prices, 1.80 CAD a liter for fuel.
Just saying...
God forbid a corporate entity can't just run amok in a country and do whatever it wants.
The Canadian government disagrees. They think Facebook stands to have significant financial gain for the privilege of their users sharing Canadian news sites, to the point where Facebook has to pay a fee for that privilege.
You can't simultaneously say "Facebook is a public place, people should be allowed to post whatever they want" and also "Facebook should have to pay a fee if they want their users to be able to post whatever they want."
I don't disagree with you, they aren't 'just' a private company. But through that optic the CA govts policy makes even less sense.
> There have been 52 registered meetings with Ministers, MPs, and senior officials or roughly one meeting every four days since election day nearly 8 months ago. This represents an astonishing level of access and may help explain why the concerns of independent media and the broader public are missing from the bill. [1]
[1]: https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2022/04/how-did-news-media-canad...
News media wants to get paid for the content they pay to create.
Who’s rent seeking again?
In this instance, if I understand correctly, Facebook is supposed to pay news companies whenever someone posts a link to their news site. That's ridiculous. Hacker News also falls under this law, so does X, Reddit, Mastodon,... Since when it became ok to charge for your users sharing links on your "link sharing" website?
> So... What exactly does Canada want?
> We want ... more ... moneh.
[dramatic pause]
> Yeah, more moneh!
> More money from where?
> How-how 'bout the Internet! The internet makes lots of moneh. So give us some of that moneh!
> Yeah, give us internet moneh!
The implication that Meta doesn’t see the value of lobbying is hilarious. You can read their policy for “Meta Political Engagement”[1] and see that they are already quite invested and savvy in this area.
The Canadian government should find ways to produce public information about the fires, and find ways to distribute that.
I am all for punishing Facebook in many ways. But if they want to use Facebook to publish public service info, don’t make demands that Facebook allow sharing articles from commercial news agencies. Make a deal with Facebook to have Facebook distribute government official information about the fires to peoples Facebook feeds.
The law that Meta is complying with hasn't even passed yet. This is a clinch found in that upcoming law, so you'd hope that Meta would be willing to work around it if the ones implementing the law are willing to.
Current Reuters headline:
Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing
As far as I understand it, Canada made it illegal to link to Canadian news without payment?
Is it allowed for Canadian newspapers to "sell" the right to link to their news for a price of 0?
It's easy to shoot that idea down, harder though to suggest an alternative that solves the problem of creating a public space not controlled by corporate/monied interests.
We’re in a “stupid, arbitrary rule” situation and users are finding workarounds.
Canada’s law seems dumb to me. Yes, news companies make less money because of Facebook, but it’s users communicating. Should the postal service pay the newspapers if people start mailing people letters with newspaper clippings?
> Yes, news companies make less money because of Facebook
Seems to me they don’t just “make less money”, it’s more like they “stop existing”.
Some countries have SMSes from the government and/or officials going around with loudspeakers. Maybe Canada has all of that and more. If not, I can hardly blame Facebook for the lack of coordination at state level.
Is it just embedding an article?
Hyperlinks?
What?
They can't be doing it with hyperlinks surely, or else that would break the web.
Edit: it does apparently include links. But links go the newspapers website, who presumably can monetise how they like, so why would that be an issue?!?
But links? If I search Google for news, are Google supposed to pay for displaying links to news websites?
Oh dear. The hypocrisy.
If the publishers don't want their photo, headline, and first sentence or two appearing without payment as a rich preview on Facebook, well ok. I think it's a stretch, but I can at least see their perspective. It's worth noting that publishers are already in control of that preview with Open Graph tags.
However, if they want to get paid for an unadorned <a> tag, that completely goes against the spirit of hypertext.
Content from news publications can't be viewed in Canada in response to Canadian government legislation.
https://www.terracestandard.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/3...
If there are additional costs involved in distribution then the government should provide reasonable subsidies.
Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing
Excuse my Canadian French.
Why do people even need to read articles on a forest fire.
It's a...large fire. In the forest.
If a fire is getting close to my home, I want to learn this information from the appropriate authorities, including what actions need to be taken. Not from some journalist.
If a Canadian outfit wanted to host news and other media from the US, you know it wouldn't happen without payments in kind to the American news or media outlet.
> Amazing what greed can do. They want to make money from the news, yet they don't want to pay the news sources for letting them feed off of it.
The Canadian government has said that a law is going to come into effect that will ban a company like Facebook from allowing news links unless the news provider is compensated. Meta has started to put changes into effect to comply with the rules of the land. The Canadian government is now demanding that an arbitrary exemption is being made. How is a company meant to build systems with such whiplash reactionary legal framework?
> If a Canadian outfit wanted to host news and other media from the US, you know it wouldn't happen without payments in kind to the American news or media outlet. > (Downvoting doesn't make it untrue. Same for the other posts this user is downvoting.)
You are postulating.
Public safety? As soon as you codify it into the law it is no longer arbitrary. Maybe arbitrarily enforced (down the road) but that is a different battle.
The law change has both its support and detractors here, so wholesale downvoting without even commenting is counter to any real discussion. So I do appreciate your input for sure. I agree with your statement on Meta complying with what they were told to do, and not wanting to entertain an about-face when shortcomings in the law (before it is even passed!) show up.
We also have Canadian Content Laws here that have an impact on how Canadian media is handled within our own borders. I would expect people who don't like that law to also not like this one - they both complicate things more than they were presumably meant to.
The truth is of course they're making far too much money to give a shit and would rather obey and make slightly less money instead of leaving and making zero.
I dunno, I was just stating the obvious, because someone had to do it. All sides should cut the crap and abuse (FB, Canada, news publishers).
1. Defines a negotiation framework between news creators and online sharing sites. So not a specific fee, just forcing sites to come the table. Which means flat rates (not per share) or percentage based arrangements (like spotify does with artists) are totally possible.
2. only applies when there is a significant power imbalance between the news creator and sharing site. This bit i think means it wouldn’t apply to hn or a mastodon instance. Twitter i’d guess it would apply to. reddit idk, they’re smaller than you’d think.
Facebook has over 3 billion users. Nearly 40% of Earth's population. Many of whom communicate more actively through it than they do with telephones, mail, or any of the other forms of communication that we treat as public utilities. It absolutely fits the bill.
Even it if were, there's also another practical wrinkle with using the concept of "public safety" when it comes to "news". Would the definition, for example, include "fake news"?
A company can also decide that it is too risky to automatically detect whether a news article complies with the law (e.g. IF public_safety THEN allow_share) and so it is more practical to just have a simple exclusion for sharing news.
But I think it's not naive to believe that new laws might have unintended consequences that need to be addressed in amendments or follow-up laws. A generous view of what is happening now is exactly that: a wild fire revealed an unintended consequence.
Why though is the only alternative to let the corporations Do As Thou Wilt?
> Why though is the only alternative to let the corporations Do As Thou Wilt?
Is that what is happening here? That's not my read.
Seems like the loss of local news has become more like a dying societal model.
I know "protectionist" is a word that is supposed to have negative connotations. Maybe though I missed how the government is acting against the interests of the Canadian people.
no, i wont consider posting the article to be work.
> rent seeking is wanting to be paid for no new work
which if it weren’t information about disasters, most people wouldn’t care about too much.
posting or hosting, once the article is written, it’s all rent seeking.
That almost makes sense in a non-digitized world. I.e. It’s not rent seeking to sell newspapers, because each newspaper costs money and takes work to make - but in a digitized world, you’re essentially saying any profiting off content is “rent seeking”. Like if I make a video course teaching a skill and I try to sell it, that’s rent seeking? Seems like that waters the concept of rent seeking down to the point of uselessness.
What I mean is that the postal service provides a server, people mailing letters. Facebook’s service is people messaging each other.
If people started sending links to each other in the mail and it kills newspapers, should the postal service pay?
People message all sorts of stuff on Facebook. And it frequently causes companies to make less money and/or stop existing. That doesn’t mean Facebook should pay those companies to keep existing.
Ok now imagine the gov passes a law saying “if you insert junkmail into a letter containing a newspaper clipping, you have to pay a fee to the newspaper”.
Where’s the problem? Either they stop inserting ads, or they pay.
As for “make less money” vs “stop existing” - having journalism exist is in the publics interest. If one business threatens to cause another to go out of business we might not care, but in this case the business is theoretically socially important.
Well, one pretty big problem is that nothing analogous to "stop inserting" ads is an option provided by the law as passed in reality. You've made it up to make the law sound better than it is. That you had to resort to such fibbing seems like a pretty good indicator on how flawed the bill is.
Does the government actually do that?
I am sure that corporations are not much interested in serving the public good however.
> The goal is to support news businesses to negotiate and receive fair compensation when third parties with a dominant market position monetize their news content
https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c18_...
It’s possible there isn’t a loophole where they can just demonetize news, I haven't read the law back to front, but the law only exists because of their monetization of news.
To be clear the law, as understand it, doesn’t set out a schedule of fees or anything like that - it merely sets up an enforced bargaining between companies like fb and news producers. So even if there’s no demonetization loophole, an agreement like “no monetizing shared news” is very much a possible arrangement under the law. They’d have to come to the bargaining table first tho
The law does not mention monetization of the news content as a requirement. It does in fact not mention monetization at all.
It is true that the law sets up enforced bargaining, but in a way that effectively precludes any outcome where Meta does not pay money.
If Meta links to any news content from any eligible news company, they must negotiate with everyone. If anyone they are negotiating with is unhappy with the result, they can take it to binding arbitration, and the law forces the arbitration committee to reject any offer that does not "contribute to the sustainability" of Canadian media. Any final offer from Meta that does not involve then paying a sum that is obviously enough would be rejected and automatically cause the opposite final offer to be accepted, no matter how unreasonable. (This is not symmetrical; the news company does not need to suggest a deal that's obviously not too bad).
The arbitration panel would incidentally also be forced to reject any offer that is based on a revenue share of ads shown for news content. (Since that would allow Meta to control the amount paid.)
Given this, why would any Canadian news company agree to a deal that allows non-monetized linking for free? As long as Meta plays the game with even one company, any of them can force Meta to both share their content and also be paid for it, whether Meta profits from it or not
Idk what point you’re trying to make, but at issue here is that journalism is being starved to death by sites like facebook that suck up all the profits and attention but don’t provide any of the service that journalism provided. That’s bad for canadians. This law may be the wrong way to fix this problem, but to talk about rules and principals and analogies without considering the actual consequences is pathological.
We’ve got no sharing news on facebook here now. If nothing is done, this is essentially where we’ll be in a handful of years anyway.
No, journalism is being starved by digital peer to peer communication. Facebook is the thing. People being able to say “hey, did you see this?” instead of needing to read a newspaper.
And of course, the real problem is that newspapers sold their own ads that no one cares about any more (classified).
I think newspapers dying is a problem and would like them not to. But taxing or forcing Facebook to do something is not a solution and it won’t affect the future of newspapers.
if you wish to carry this further from the initial point, you do so without me.
So it’s rent seeking for the original creator to post it for free and sell ads against it?
And what’s with this “original creator” language? Does that only apply to the author, or can the company that paid the author to create it sell it without being rent-seekers?
My point is: you called fb and news producers both rent seekers, and i don’t believe they both are unless you use a overly broad to the point of useless definition of rent-seeking.
It is a rent that secures the production aspect, but we could also have patronage models that fund the creation separately. If your game is kickstarted or you get a monthly donation to produce a video there is no need to profit from creating artificial scarcity in the distribution.
