this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023

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Canada says Google will pay $74 million annually to Canadian news industry under new online law (www.independent.co.uk)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Canada says Google will pay $74 million annually to Canadian news industry under new online law::Canada’s government says it has reached a deal with Google for the company to contribute $100 million Canadian dollars annually to the country’s news industry

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Obligatory fuck Facebook.

But reminder that laws like this would require link aggregator sites like Lemmy (or instance owners more specifically), to pay money simply for hosting links to news sites. Terrible law imo.

I think it's reasonable to require fees for rehosting an article or pictures on your web page, but charging just to have a url link is totally antithetical to the structure of the internet. If anything those links drive traffic to news websites, where they are free to host advertisements or require subscriptions.

Edit: as below this particular law won't affect lemmy servers. I still disagree with the idea that posting a hyperlink alone to a website should cost money.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The Canadian law in question has specific provisions in it that would pass any lemmy instance by.

— Companies impacted by the Online News Act must have global annual revenue of $1 billion or more, “operate in a search engine or social-media market distributing and providing access to news content in Canada,” and have 20 million or more Canadian average monthly unique visitors or average monthly active users.

source (archive)

That's literally half the country, by the way.

There was never any chance this law was going to impact any lemmy instances.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

The astroturf is strong with these people.

The only groups affected by this law are the obscenely wealthy. It amounts to whining about having to pay more fair share. There are dozens of ways to see that happen; perhaps this isn’t the most efficient, but you won’t see me crying for Google, Meta, Twitter, or any other social media giant.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

True, thank you for pointing that out. I still disagree with the idea that you should have to pay to link to another web site. If they're rehosting content from that website, like an article summary or picture, than absolutely. A link alone makes no sense, that's driving traffic to that website. In any other business you'd be paying for referrals/finder fees for new customers, not the other way around.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I fully agree. The goal of most websites is to get linked by Google, the argument that Google should then have to pay for giving the websites what they want anyways is weird.

I also don't feel like the argument that it's ok just because it targets wealthy companies changes whether the actual law makes sense or not.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem is not link aggregation, it’s the fact that most of those covered by it actively attempt to keep you from visiting the site. Google for instance, usually throws the main hook of articles into a summary, or moves you to an amp page which isn’t actually beneficial to the news site as they get no revenue for it. Similarly, Facebook is taking active steps to keep you on site and never visiting the news site in question.

So it’s not “just hosting a link” as you are putting it, it’s “hosting a link, while actively going to great lengths to never actually let the end user go to the site.”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

AMP is something web sites opt into by building an AMP version of their site. The fact that you're saying an AMP page is diverting traffic from a site makes me think you're not qualified to talk about this stuff.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

AMP is something websites opt into, absolutely. However opting out has a major potential to hurt your placement on search results. AMP is also limited in what kinda of ad formats it can serve. Want to take a guess at which work best? Google Adsense. Most other forms of advertisement just aren’t compatible, which can directly effect ad revenue.

Edit: Just realized I previously said “no revenue” which is incorrect because it can still produce revenue. So while “no revenue” is absolutely possible, it isn’t guaranteed. That’s what I get for using generalizations though.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

It’s about time Canada got some of that internet money that it so rightly deserve.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Pennies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

What gets defined as the "news industry" and who gets to define it? We already have too much foreign owned corporate news media in this country so how much of that money will just go right into the hands of the propagandists to tip the scales further in their favour?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Canada's government said Wednesday it reached a deal with Google for the company to contribute $100 million Canadian dollars annually to the country's news industry to comply with a new Canadian law requiring tech companies to pay publishers for their content.

Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta already has been blocking Canadian news since earlier this year.

“Google has agreed to properly support journalists, including local journalism,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

If there is a better deal struck elsewhere in the world, Canada reserves the right to reopen the regulation,” St-Onge said at a news conference.

“With newsrooms cutting positions or closing entirely, the health of the Canadian news industry has never been more at risk,” she said in Wednesday’s statement.

Earlier this year, Canada’s government said it would stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram, in response to Meta’s stance.

The original article contains 483 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is bad news for everyone who is using the internet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What a well thought out reply, I really appreciated the effort you went to when explaining why and how instead of just saying something sensationalist as a statement.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Sometimes it's a hit, and sometimes it's a miss.