from the pick-a-lane,-guys dept
This is just so painfully obnoxious. The legacy news media, spurred on by a welfare system that pretend free market supporter Rupert Murdoch dreamed up and convinced governments to implement, whereby the government would force internet companies, which had innovated and created new business models that worked, to suddenly be required to pay for sending traffic to legacy news media organizations which failed to innovate. It’s extreme corporate welfare, egged on by a guy who pretends to be against all kinds of welfare.
Canada is the latest country that was convinced to go down this very stupid route, and even as everyone explained (repeatedly) to the Canadian government how this would flop, they still went forward with it. In response Meta and Google (the two targets the Canadian government were trying to extort with this new law) announced that they would no longer allow any news links in Canada. Meta has already begun phasing out links to news in Canada.
The legacy media, which promoted this without the slightest bit of critical analysis (after all they were going to get paid, so why spend any time exploring the downside to such a tax?) is now losing its remaining braincells over this. A bunch of legacy Canadian media orgs are demanding a regulatory investigation of Meta over this move.
CBC/Radio-Canada has joined other news publishers and broadcasters in requesting that Canada’s Competition Bureau investigate Meta’s decision to block news content on its digital platforms in Canada, describing the social media giant’s decision as “anticompetitive.”
Let’s just review this more clearly for the slow folks who work in Canadian media (and the Canadian government):
- Media whines that Meta and Google are unfair, because they’re making money on the internet while the media is not. They often claim that Google and Meta are “stealing” from them when all they’ve actually done is provide a better vehicle for advertisers.
- In particular, the media complains that these companies are “making money from our content,” never once considering that news is a very, very, very tiny part of both Meta and Google’s business (Google doesn’t even try to monetize it in much of the world), and the thing that both companies do is PROVIDE LINKS TO THOSE MEDIA ORGS. These are the same orgs that, I guarantee you, have people on staff whose job it is to try to get more traffic. And here, Google and Meta are giving them a ton of traffic for free and the media orgs are somehow complaining that all that traffic is unfair.
- They convince politicians to pass a law requiring the big internet companies to pay for links, even though that goes against the fundamental concept of an open web. If these media orgs don’t want traffic from Google or Meta, they can easily block it. The problem is that they want that traffic AND they want to get paid for it, which has the whole equation backwards.
- The law that they demanded gets passed and Meta and Google start blocking links exactly as they promised they would do, and which makes perfect economic sense as the money they’d have to pay far outweighs the value of posting news links.
- The legacy media orgs… whine that this is anticompetitive.
So… according to these media orgs, Meta and Google linking to news is anticompetitive. But also not linking to news is anticompetitive.
Of course, when you put it that way, you realize this has fuck all to do with links or competition. It’s just straight up corruption. Meta and Google have large bank accounts. The media orgs have smaller bank accounts. The only fair thing, according to these legacy media orgs, is that Meta and Google should be forced to give them money. I mean, this is just pathetic:
“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.
“Meta’s anticompetitive conduct, which has attracted the attention of regulators around the world, will strengthen its already dominant position in advertising and social media distribution and harm Canadian journalism,” the statement read.
“The applicants ask the Competition Bureau to use its investigative and prosecutorial tools to protect competition and prohibit Meta from continuing to block Canadians’ access to news content.”
So, linking to them in the first place was anticompetitive because it helped Meta get more advertising, and now not linking to them is anticompetitive because it helps Meta get more advertising, and holy shit how does anyone take these media orgs seriously any more?
Canadian politicians supporting this nonsense sound even worse:
“Facebook … would rather block their users from accessing good quality and local news instead of paying their fair share to news organizations,” Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said in a statement Tuesday.
Again this is so out of touch that Canada should feel embarrassed that it has an elected official this clueless. The “fair share” to pay to send someone free traffic is zero. Zilch. Nada. There is no world in which anyone should ever have to pay to send someone free traffic on the internet. When you charge for such nonsense the only logical business move is to block all such links.
It’s got nothing to do with competition at all. It has to do with greedy media owners who are looking for a handout from the government, by asking them to tax internet companies on the media orgs’ behalf.
Filed Under: c-18, competition, corporate welfare, handout, link tax, welfare
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/22/canadian-media-orgs-said-that-meta-linking-to-news-was-anticompetitive-now-they-say-not-linking-to-news-is-anticompetitive/
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