Hacker News Reader

> Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content. On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue.

This is technically not correct. Publishers can opt out from Google Search if they want to, so one may also argue that they willingly choose to be on Google as well.

View on HN

Not to defend Facebook, but a failure to opt-out is not really the same as volunteering.

I find the argument made by Facebook to be sound. They're making a comparison between Google crawling the web and indexing content vs. a news site intentionally posting their content to Facebook.

The difference between getting your webpage crawled and explicitly posting on a public forum is significant. I read their comment as "users explicitly post contend on Facebook vs. passively having their content scraped by Google".

True, but you have to opt-out from Facebook too if an end user shares the link. Their argument only works if the news outlet shares the link.

It’s just straight up incorrect. They’re throwing google under the bus to distance themselves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com