Governments are terrible at legislating in the tech and information space. It almost always results in terrible laws that don’t even come close to doing what they intended.
I don’t like facebook and i certainly don’t give a shit if they lose money but you can’t force them to buy news articles and deliver them to non-paying users.
Yes the government can force them because theyre the government. Thats how governments work. If youve bought into the propaganda that governments have no right to regulate facebook then I guess facebook is the ultimate authority to rule the world? Perhaps we should hand the military over to zuckerberg? Zuck as unelected dictator president? Governments have authority and a duty to control corporations within their borders no matter what their ceo’s have convinced you through the media outlets they have bought up. Yes, governments have ultimate power and authority on planet earth not “business”.
Issue is Canada can’t force them to do business there. If they continue introducing flawed legislation that is awful at doing what it’s supposed to do, then Meta’s just gonna get tf outta there. Canada aren’t big enough to have that much of a dent on their income, so it’s just not worth it.
Sure, Canada can regulate Meta/FB, but they can’t force them to offer the service in the country. If Meta wants to completely cease operations in Canada they’d be perfectly within their “rights”.
Meta hasn’t chosen to cease operations there, and realistically they aren’t going to do it, unless they’re willing to take a massive hit in stock value that would result from taking out a rich country from the revenue stream.
But they have ceased serving news from canadian outlets, in compliance with the local laws. There’s no way the government can force them to pay out for news links if they won’t serve them at all
That’s the traditional model, but I don’t think it applies anymore. We seem to be living in a post-nation state era. People are fully reliant on the top dozen or so companies, so those companies have tremendous power over government. Some governments are only just now realizing that fact and are trying to push back, but it’s way too late.
I think it’s a little easier and less complicated than that.
The government wants to give money, specifically Facebook’s money, to the publishing industry. The industry lobbying the government.
The government has the ability to tax Facebook directly. That’s well established. But the government has a trouble giving money to the publishing industry. That would be a subsidy. People have trouble paying subsidies to failing businesses. From the government. Usually. It’s anyway it’s a very difficult discussion to have in public.
So the government and the publishers got together and are trying to force Facebook to pay the publishers and not the government.
Facebook gracefully said no, they don’t want to pay the publishers.
So now if the government forces them to use the publisher data, they can’t logically also force them to pay a fee to use the thing they’re forced to use… The government could always tax Facebook… But the goal isn’t to tax it’s to give money to publishers…
I think this demonstrates we are not in a post-government age, this particular lobbying attempt to keep the horse and buggy industry irrelevant isn’t working as planned, it’s backfiring in a funny way.
Not really emergency notifications but news, which tbh isn’t as important in this case because non-Canadian news orgs aren’t affected and are covering it too. So there isn’t an immediate risk I don’t think.
As for the main point: The problem is that a subset of the population ONLY gets information through one platform. The only way to reach them is through that platform, and not reaching them means excess costs when you have to rescue/treat/otherwise deal with the fallout. It’s also the government’s job to inform people and keep them safe.
At the same time, the companies need to be regulated by the government. Can’t just let them have free reign because they seized control
how is that unreasonable? build your own network get it to 3 billion people on it and then tell me what you think if the government take it from you. Or even better go and live in CUBA, CHINA, RUSSIA Or NORTH COREA that where that type of thought belongs.
People with no skills, don’t build a social media such as Facebook, I don’t like the dude at all but I can’t fail to recognize his achievement. I dare you become a programmer and build your own idea may be you can capture that lightning you are talking about.
I really don’t know that, but even then steeling an idea and taking it to where Facebook is right now is not easy feat to do, and again I don’t even like the dude but can’t deny his accomplishments.
from your mouth to the outside yes you will live in cuba, is not that hard to move there and yet you still outside cuba. I visited the country long time ago and from what I heard no much have change. I don’t know where you from don’t care either but unless you are from a 3rd world country you won’t last a month in cuba.
If it is not hard to move there, why is it hard to move there? You shouldn’t speak on things you know nothing on. Your comments are nothing but silly and foolish
I meant it in a sarcastic way the way that anyone that has not live in a country with that kind of political system, adapt to unless they are in some kind of mission but not to move and live the rest of their live, there are reason why people from Cuba AND the likes cuba try to get out of there in masses. But anyway reply to me when you move there.
I’m perfectly fine with shitting on Meta/Facebook/Instagram for gestures broadly at the last 10+ years, but Canada instituted a link tax for news. They added a fee to a fundamental part of the Internet: linking to something. I can’t blame Meta for refusing to play that game.
Lol they didn’t “ban” news, they refused to pay to make the news relevant. Canada basically banned news sharing on the internet. They can repeal the stupid law.
I don’t agree with the solution the government came up with, but the problem still exists and I don’t understand it well enough to come up with an alternative solution.
Making news is expensive, and good quality news (not mucked up by corporate interests) needs a way to fund that work. We don’t want news to be an outlet for corporations investing in a mouthpiece. So traditionally this was done through advertising.
Now people barely ever click through to the websites so the advertising doesn’t work. Meanwhile the places where people ARE seeing the news do have ads. The content is produced by one party, and the profit goes to another.
The problem exists and needs a solution, but I don’t know what it might be. Australia brought in a similar law successfully and Facebook/Google came to a deal. Canada might also be able to do that?
The other long term solution IMO is to make the platforms obsolete with things like Mastodon and Lemmy. That might take some time though
There ARE other downsides to this law, outside of the hissy fit Facebook is throwing.
For example, smaller independent news companies don’t have the bargaining power to come to a fair agreement with Facebook, like the larger organizations can. A solution to that might be to have some standard rates set up, but again, don’t know enough about it
The solution is for people who care about the news to start paying some small amount of money to support responsible news. Look at NPR or PBS but fuck paying corporate news outlets to bait me with outrage porn.
If people aren’t clicking through to read the details, the investigative journalism no matter how good is ineffective. So if the summarization one or two sentences is enough for most people then they don’t need more in-depth reporting
Well, I think the government at the core has a small point, network effects drive these sites, and the news being there draws people to them, which draws news to be there. But they frame it as one sided, and the fact is the news benefits from being on Facebook way more than Facebook benefits from people sharing news. People are on Facebook, the news is irrelevant if people can’t share it with each other in their lives, but Facebook doesnt become irrelevant without it. The government stepped out of line here and are doing anything and everything in their power to avoid admitting it, even resorting to propaganda. This is a shakedown for a failing industry that the government needs to continue to exist for it to control public narrative, that’s tye long and short of it.
Personally I’m of the opinion that all news is propaganda, and so I consume none of it. The fact that every news organization is parroting the government line about Facebook being a meanie and blocking the news tells me who controls the news and/or where power lies. If something’s important enough for me to need to know it, someone in my life will tell me. So I’d disagree with you that this needs a solution.
I do like your other long term solution, I don’t use Facebook either.
OTTAWA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta (META.O) lift a “reckless” ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country.
Some people fleeing wildfires in the remote northern town of Yellowknife have complained to domestic media that the ban prevented them from sharing important data about the fires.
“Meta’s reckless choice to block news … is hurting access to vital information on Facebook and Instagram,” Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said in a social media post.
Chris Bittle, a legislator for the ruling Liberal Party, complained on Thursday that “Meta’s actions to block news are reckless and irresponsible.”
In response, a Meta spokesperson said by email that the company had activated the “Safety Check” feature on Facebook that allows users to spread the word that they are safe in the wake of a natural disaster or a crisis.
Canadians can use Facebook and Instagram to access content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations, the spokesperson added.
The original article contains 314 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 44%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
With the current wave very quickly picking up steam, chances are we will be through the worst of it by the time vaccines are available / taken by those still willing to go through with it.
I think I am 4-5 shots deep at this point, and have had a natural infection once. It was horrible where I fully lose my taste for a number of weeks.
Then as taste / smell began to return some things were “wrong.”
It took months for coffee to return to normal.
If I had to live like that… well, let’s say those months had very unwelcome new dark thoughts that took me by surprise.
“Regarding the dangerous and aggressive actions we recently witnessed by the People’s Republic of China in support of its illegal maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea, we … strongly oppose any attempt to unilaterally change the status quo in the Indo-Pacific waters,” the statement said.
their people are starting to get paid a bit better than other more easily exploited people in some other countries
That is hopefully the good part of the story, but a growing number of Chinese don’t find work at all, especially the youth. The government even refuses to release the unemployment data.
reuters.com
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