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‘Disaster’: warning for democracy as experts condemn Meta over Canada news ban
(www.theguardian.com)
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I am no fan of Meta.
But..
This is maybe 10% meta's fault, but 90% the government's.
The law they passed was completely ridiculous in that it would force meta and others to pay Canadian news companies for each link posted. A concept that anyone with an understanding of either the internet or economics could have told you would lead to the situation we are in now.
Any business would react the same way and the have publicly been saying this is what they would do since the law was in the planning/proposal phase. Experts have likewise predicted this. But the government here seemed to think that nobody would dare defy the 'mighty' Canadian government. The fact is we have a smaller population than California alone, and it's not worth it for meta or other companies to comply with this law.
It's almost like the feds here watched the "Canada wants some of that internet money" episode of South Park and thought "great idea!!"
Reminder that Canadian media actually lobbied for this. They spent like two years calling Zuckerberg a thief for displaying news articles on Facebook.
This isn't the result of the government just doing a random thing. They did what they were asked to do by the media outlets.
The media outlets aren't going to get what they want, but this still seems like a potentially good thing for users. After all, it's not just Canadian media sites that are being black listed.
Agreed! The media in Canada asked for this, expecting a big payday and now they are getting screwed (fewer eyeballs means less money from advertising) with themselves to blame.
News companies are now free from pleasing a billionaires gamed algorithm and can find better ways to market themselves. Starting a Fediverse server would be a good way to begin.