I really don’t understand the people who (on an open source social media platform of all places!) rush to defend Meta/Facebook on bill C-18. Any action taken against Facebook’s power in society, no matter how flawed, is inherently good.
This seems relevant: My Distaste For Your Solution Does Not Mean Disregard For The Problem
Anyway, I don’t think this law would reduce Meta’s power if the company cooperated, because if Meta only falls under the law if it has power then news organizations have an incentive to make sure it keeps enough power to keep the law applicable and keep getting them paid.
I really don’t understand the people who rush to defend Meta/Facebook on bill C-18.
Because it is what is most likely to provoke a reaction? Like all internet comments, the words aren’t grounded in anything. They are crafted such that they attempt to get something back in return (a reply, a vote, etc.) If you want to learn what people really think, you need to find a way into their private journal (without them knowing, else you will influence the activity). As soon as other people become involved, the motivations change.
(on an open source social media platform of all places!)
Well, if Lemmy ever becomes popular, it too will become subject to the same law. Open source especially doesn’t like such encumberments. This surprises you, why?
No it wouldn’t become subject to the same law. A new and different law would be required. But that’s wildly hypothetical, given the differences between an open distributed system and a massive private corporation.
Also, human behaviour and social interactions are seldom quite so transactional.
Bill C-18 clearly includes Lemmy in theory, only excluding it by virtue of it not being considered dominant. That could change some day should it ever become popular.
As much as humans don’t like to admit it, human behaviour is always perfectly transactional.
Meta leaving Canada entirely would be a win in my books as we see the influence of weaponized stupidity crossing the border.
“Meta’s practices are clearly designed to discipline Canadian news companies, prevent them from participating in and accessing the advertising market, and significantly reduce their visibility to Canadians on social media channels,” the CBC said in a joint statement with the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and News Media Canada, a trade organization that represents newspapers.
Isn’t the argument for C-18 that the advertising market isn’t doing the news organizations much good anyway?
And as far as their visibility on social media channels, the news organization created this problem for themselves in the first place by encouraging people to share their work on social media; if they’d focused on making sure people know where to find them instead of posting all their work maybe their sites would be getting more traffic. They tried a business strategy, it didn’t work out, and now instead of coming up with a better strategy they’re trying to force Meta and Google to give them money and make the bad strategy work.
Canadians expect tech giants to follow the law in our country.
The law says Meta and Google have to pay to carry news; it doesn’t say they have to carry news. Maybe the law should have been written without that gaping hole?
Isn’t the argument for C-18 that the advertising market isn’t doing the news organizations much good anyway?
The officially stated reason for Bill C-18 is to give news organizations in Canada balanced negotiating power with entities like Facebook.
Which, I guess, was successful. Facebook pushed away from the bargaining table as it no longer feels like it holds dominance over it.
But now the news companies are saying that’s not good enough. They want more power than Facebook has.
I think it’s worth noting that news organizations are struggling not because less people are reading news but rather because advertising is so cheap now. When newspapers were the only advertising source they could charge high prices. Then TV came out which hurt them, but this was balanced by TV spending some money on journalism. Now with the internet the prices newspapers can charge for advertising is sooo much less than they could previously.
Anyway, I think it’s worth noting this because there’s this narrative that news organizations helped build up social media (and maybe deserve a cut). I mean really, how many people decided to make an Instagram account or Facebook account because CBC happened to have a page they could follow? Of the people I know who use Facebook or Instagram, none use it for news. This also means that utilizing social media to drive traffic may still be a good strategy - if the government hadn’t effectively blocked that.
How can CBC squander a taxpayer bailout? Aren’t they inherently taxpayer funded anyway?
Lol, what do they expect to be done about this? Is the government supposed to force Facebook to show their content, yet also pay to do it? I hate Facebook but I’m so glad they’re doing this because link taxes are fucking stupid.
Yeah, I am not Canadian so I’m sure there’s some information/nuance I don’t understand here, but from what I can tell from looking at a few articles from different sources:
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Canadian government passes a law that would require Facebook to pay and/or share ad revenue for every link out (posted by the media outlet, not by Facebook) to an external news website
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Facebook says they don’t want to do that, and will stop showing news links to comply with the law
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Canadian government says “no not like that” and now wants to force them to allow links to news outlets, which de facto forces them to pay/share revenue with those media outlets
Like I said, I’m assuming there may be something I’m missing here, so please any kind Canadians who can help fill in the blanks would be appreciated
