Embedding opengraph data is a clear case of fair use, and it’s sad to see all of this coming from a community that has long been against copyright.
People are now upset because since that was the status quoe for so long it got people to believe that they if they made a song, and all they saw was copyright, and copyright sues for everything and wins, and someone heard that song in the background while inventing a microwave they are entitled to all the microwaves earnings, and before if you said no thats absurd, you had to spend millions to see if the system didnt fail you.
And now people are spending millions to prove that it is absurd, and everyone is up in arms that someome called their bluff with resources.
I don't think it has. Meta has been pretty much hated on HN since the beginning. And has only gotten worse and peaked during 2020. It is not about linking information, it is about Facebook.
Disliking Facebook shouldn't have you supporting government overreach. Defending people or groups you don't like is how you know you have actual convictions.
The only reason this is getting applauded by anyone is because the enforcement target is Facebook and years of the news media using their voice to complain loudly and religiously about their business competition (social media) has primed the pump for bad laws like this.
Of course the likely end result is going to be that legitimate news will disappear from Facebook and there will only be misinformation left. I'd rather see them address the spread of misinformation instead of the spread of quality news.
The legacy consolidated news organizations getting a sweet free new revenue stream are glad that they've been able to convince so many people that big tech linking to them is actually a "stranglehold" and a problem!
And the stranglehold is not big tech over the newspapers, but big tech over the internet.
I trust neither involved side here, ever since the EU tries to push for age snifing and abolishing VPNs. At the same time US corporations ruin a LOT of the world wide web, and that continues. I don't think we need to accept this anylonger. Out with them.
The less charitable interpretation is that interest groups are just harnessing the current kneejerk reaction for anything anti-"big tech" to serve their own interests. See also: people being theoretically in favor of affordable housing, but are also against "greedy developers" and "luxury condos" so nothing gets built.
Luxury condos increase supply, driving down the price of all housing. It's economics 101.
>You're actually saying that people want affordable food, but object to building more luxury restaurants, so that nobody gets fed at all.
The point is that all the stipulations people have on top eg. "organic" makes it harder to create more supply.
Making insane laws prohibiting people to talk about facts they've seen elsewhere won't help.
That's what they're arguing about, it's literally the same thing that happened with Google news (and was negotiated) years ago.
At least on a news website I get to read just the news and can block the ads.
The pattern I noticed just now is that for every sponsored post there are exactly 2 "non-ad" posts, usually both from random pages, but occasionally 1 of those posts will be from one of my real connections. Here and there there are some reels. My feed is 98% noise I don't care about nor want to see and no combination of ad and script blocking helps. It's worse than any news site.
I agree. I click on some of the news articles I see, since they're usually local to me, but it's still noise. I didn't actually follow any of those pages so I don't know why Facebook puts them in my feed (well, I do know why: some corporate schmuck A/B tested it and found it eked out more engagement on the level).
Most folks don't want to pay for news, but how do you pay journalists so you have an informed citizenry/electorate?
So I’d say that deal is working well for both the legacy media & the Canadian government.
Because it makes them money.
It is past time that American companies are restrained from acting like boorish American tourists in other countries.
It’s been proven in other markets that removing News from the feed doesn’t decrease engagement. Meta will continue to make money, and Italian news sites will see their traffic vanish.
Turns out they’re simply not valuable in the way they used to be, and country after country is learning this
(a) the content is reproduced on the service or is otherwise placed on the service; or
(b) a link to the content is provided on the service; or
(c) an extract of the content is provided on the service.
Which quite literally means that they consider a post that only contains hyperlink (b) or a link and only a title (even just the title would fall under (c)) to be as bad as a social media site ripping off the whole article!
This was the same conflation used by the supporters of the law and pretty much every news article about it before it was passed, basically all of which dishonestly claimed that social media sites were doing (a) when they were mostly only posting a title and sentence or two synopsis (that is supplied by the news site itself in its meta tags!!)
Why ? When the alternative is to let companies to whatever makes the number go up at the expense of everyone else, regulation is the only thing to protect normal people.
If you send traffic to some e-commerce platform through an affiliate link, you are the one who gets paid. These companies are instead trying to rig the system in such a way that the affiliate would be forced to pay them. It's an absurd and desperate proposal that deserves to be rejected.
If Meta and co create their own content, they're free to do with it what the like. I need to pay google maps for a certain amount of useage etc. Why should Meta and co get an exception on content ?
This isn't what is happening. People read the summarized headline/article on meta's turf and then don't go to the source article. If meta were just posting the link, it would be fine, but that isn't what is happening here.
Meta's fix has been to try to walk away from the news. They removed the news tab in some regions.
Why are we not getting kickbacks?
Something starting from Reddit mods?
I guess the daily active users are something else though.
I'm very much in two minds about this because "news" is not a morally neutral category in itself, such as with similar laws benefiting News Corp in Australia, but it's clear that Meta/FB is a much worse unrestrained actor.
- Politicians need the news so journalists are protected.
- If news organizations get paid, they have no incentive to be AI critical.
The article says that "news are vital". So is open source, films, images, art, and the authors do not get paid by the thieves.
Meta decided to stop showing news links in Canada. [1]
Presumably, it would choose the same thing here.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/sureshsingaratnam/posts/so-meta-is-...
Lots of news organization saw their traffic drop though, and this reduced revenues. (Not judging either way, just noting some effects.)
These hypercorps and their CEOs act like giant fucking children, and rather than abide by a ruling being told to play fair, they just decide to take their ball and go home.
Good riddance. The sooner social media dies, the better off humanity will be.