The company plans to cut off news access on Facebook and Instagram in Canada. If Australia is any guide, the blackout likely will be short-lived, columnist Anita Ramaswamy writes.
Good for Canada. I’ve been reading a lot about the Gilded Age lately and I truly believe we’re in the Second Gilded Age. Toppling oligarchs and monopolies required governments to start calling these greedy scumbags on their bluffs and rethinking how these businesses could operate more ethically. I believe we’ve finally reached a point of reckoning with social media and tech companies more largely. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google, Amazon, and others have been reaching new levels of greed in the past few years. It’s time that we reject them and fight for something better. And where our actions fall short, we have to do everything in our power to push politicians in the direction of regulating them.
We should be breaking up these companies, or at least taxing them and billionaires directly, and then spending that money on things to better the populous as a whole.
Link taxes just prop up legacy media outlets, because those are the ones who cut a deal. The small, local news then dies an even faster death, because it’s too much hassle to track the payments to them under this onerous link tax.
This is the reason why these asinine link taxes are pushed for by massive media organizations, because they see it as a way to prop themselves up by punishing big companies for sending them traffic. The side effect is that this hurts the open internet, making everything shitty for end users. Congratulations Canada, you did it, you made Facebook pay*
*Facebook has never had to actually pay these link taxes, they starve the newspapers out a bit and then cut a backroom deal that is basically no link tax for the large publishers, and far fewer local newspapers from that country represented. This benefits the large publishers nicely, even if they aren’t getting free money for Facebook sending them traffic.
And I actually think it will be an improvement to facebook to not have any news posted there. No more disinformation articles that conform to the biases of various family members being shoved into the feed.
Don’t know if it’s enough to get me to use facebook again (let’s not get crazy) but it seems like it’ll better without “news” on there.
So that makes it easier for the government to call their bluff.
Also I think Parliament went on recess just after passing the law. So maybe there will be no news on facebook for the summer. It’ll be interesting to see whether other Canadians react as I do and think “it’s better this way”.
It will likely be worse on the disinformation front as they’ll only be blocking posts to certain media outlets, leaving everything else wide open for random blogs that didn’t check their facts.
And of those that are blocked they’ll make highly misleading stuff about how they are being censored and post the link using a picture of the link or putting spaces between the characters and so on like they do for all the other disallowed content.
But outside of misinformation I think it will be a positive change all around.
Link taxes are a terrible idea and go directly against what makes the entire fucking Internet work. I’m as fond of seeing Meta getting owned as the next guy, but this is wrong.
Link taxes are a great thing for democracy and to combat the largest corporations in history. They’re really effective and they’ve been used before. See Australia. Facebook/Meta paid and is paying.
The headline says Canada is calling the bluff. Nowhere in the article does it say where Canada actually stand in this issue. No comment about Canadas actions at all. Granted, their inaction could be perceived as “calling the bluff”. But if so, say it!
The last words of the article says “if Canada calls Meta’s bluff”. What?! Did they or didn’t they?
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Good for Canada. I’ve been reading a lot about the Gilded Age lately and I truly believe we’re in the Second Gilded Age. Toppling oligarchs and monopolies required governments to start calling these greedy scumbags on their bluffs and rethinking how these businesses could operate more ethically. I believe we’ve finally reached a point of reckoning with social media and tech companies more largely. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Google, Amazon, and others have been reaching new levels of greed in the past few years. It’s time that we reject them and fight for something better. And where our actions fall short, we have to do everything in our power to push politicians in the direction of regulating them.
We should be breaking up these companies, or at least taxing them and billionaires directly, and then spending that money on things to better the populous as a whole.
Link taxes just prop up legacy media outlets, because those are the ones who cut a deal. The small, local news then dies an even faster death, because it’s too much hassle to track the payments to them under this onerous link tax.
This is the reason why these asinine link taxes are pushed for by massive media organizations, because they see it as a way to prop themselves up by punishing big companies for sending them traffic. The side effect is that this hurts the open internet, making everything shitty for end users. Congratulations Canada, you did it, you made Facebook pay*
*Facebook has never had to actually pay these link taxes, they starve the newspapers out a bit and then cut a backroom deal that is basically no link tax for the large publishers, and far fewer local newspapers from that country represented. This benefits the large publishers nicely, even if they aren’t getting free money for Facebook sending them traffic.
Canadian here, and yeah I agree completely.
And I actually think it will be an improvement to facebook to not have any news posted there. No more disinformation articles that conform to the biases of various family members being shoved into the feed.
Don’t know if it’s enough to get me to use facebook again (let’s not get crazy) but it seems like it’ll better without “news” on there.
So that makes it easier for the government to call their bluff.
Also I think Parliament went on recess just after passing the law. So maybe there will be no news on facebook for the summer. It’ll be interesting to see whether other Canadians react as I do and think “it’s better this way”.
Faux news and Breitbart will still be there. Just not the mainstream Canadian news sources.
Not that it changes anything for me, I nuked facebook years ago.
The misinformation and disinformation is not for the informed … it’s for the ignorant and lazy
When you are aware of the blatant disinformation and never ending conspiracy theories and far out ideologies … you stay away from it all
When you are unaware or just don’t care and just enjoy living in your own deluded reality … you drown yourself in the disinformation
It will likely be worse on the disinformation front as they’ll only be blocking posts to certain media outlets, leaving everything else wide open for random blogs that didn’t check their facts.
And of those that are blocked they’ll make highly misleading stuff about how they are being censored and post the link using a picture of the link or putting spaces between the characters and so on like they do for all the other disallowed content.
But outside of misinformation I think it will be a positive change all around.
Excellent, keep it up government. Thank you to the Senate and to the house of Commons 👏👏 great job following Australia!
Link taxes are a terrible idea and go directly against what makes the entire fucking Internet work. I’m as fond of seeing Meta getting owned as the next guy, but this is wrong.
Link taxes are a great thing for democracy and to combat the largest corporations in history. They’re really effective and they’ve been used before. See Australia. Facebook/Meta paid and is paying.
🙂
I don’t get this article.
The headline says Canada is calling the bluff. Nowhere in the article does it say where Canada actually stand in this issue. No comment about Canadas actions at all. Granted, their inaction could be perceived as “calling the bluff”. But if so, say it!
The last words of the article says “if Canada calls Meta’s bluff”. What?! Did they or didn’t they?
They did. The bill Meta has a problem with was passed and is now law.