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Comment by halifaxbeard | Hacker News Reader

My understanding of the core issue is people aren’t clicking through to read the article, but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline. Facebook gets ad views and user-generated content/comments, and the organization doing the reporting sees nothing of the economic value generated in this scenario. (Hacker News is specialized in audience and news orgs generally aren’t posting all their stories here)

CBC tried to head this problem off by disabling comments on all their Facebook posts so people would comment on CBC.ca.

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My issue with this, is this a problem that needs to be solved? Do we need to guarantee monetization of every human interaction?

If my friend and I go a cafe, see a newspaper headline, and have a discussion about that headline without ever opening that newspaper should the cafe have to pay for that discussion? Why should any media adjacent interaction anywhere happen without payment? If the cafe is playing music, they're paying licence fees for that. Why not everything?

This is a perfect example of how people confuse causality and responsibility. They are not the same.

Trying to monetize and compensate for every externality is absurd.

If I make coffee at home that causes a coffee shop to lose out on Revenue. Surely I'm not responsible for paying the coffee shop for the Lost Revenue.

If I do go to the coffee shop, should the coffee shop have to share their revenue with the car company because it gave me a reason to drive my car?

In this case, social media makes money because people talk about news online instead of actually read it. This doesn't make social media companies responsible for the fact that no one wants to read a news article.

Your analogy is flawed. It's like someone consuming coffee but not wanting the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed it to be compensated.

If the persons who grew the coffee beans/roasted/brewed gave the beans away without asking for compensation because they hoped to obtain ad revenue, most people wouldn't go out of their way to pay the bean producers.

Canadian news media (unlike the vast majority of US news media besides NPR and PBS) is very significantly government subsidized, so this bill is really a stealth tax on Meta and Google.

At the end of the day, the question remains : do we want local news?

Meta and Alphabet are not gonna run news room in Manitoba and Northern Ontario.

If we don’t, fine. Local news can die and be replaced by influencer I guess ?

Then if we do, who is paying for it.

In your analogy, Meta & Alphabet are installing a patio in front of the coffee shops, and offer samples of the most popular latte of the day for free and you can get as many as you want.

> Then if we do, who is paying for it.

Simple, whoever wants the news.

> In your analogy, Meta & Alphabet are installing a patio in front of the coffee shops, and offer samples of the most popular latte of the day for free and you can get as many as you want.

Nah, the right analogy is Meta/Google drive a large bus of customers (only a fraction with tickets) to the coffee shop and not everyone goes into the shop. News orgs are then asking Google to pay them for Google driving the bus.

Your analogy is flawed. It's like someone smelling the coffee but not wanting to compensate the person who grew/roasted/brewed the coffee.

Smelling is not strong enough. People get enough from headlines. I would say “free sample” like those tiny bits or minuscule shots at Whole Food.

I agree. The people giving away the samples, in this case the news media themselves, are enticing you to their articles with the headline, maybe a blurb, and maybe an image. If you take the sample and don't care for the rest, that's fine. Nobody should have to pay for that. The whole point is that it's advertising. If nobody wants the product then nobody wants the product.

Charging someone for the "free" samples is no solution.

I think it's like someone talking about coffee, because that's literally what they're doing, talking about the news.

If people were actually consuming the news and reading articles, it wouldn't be an issue.

Nobody wants to drink the nasty coffee, they just want to talk about how bad it is.

If we want to be a hyperbolic about causality, both social media and news outlets should be paying the school shooters for creating the news

Someone has to come up with that headline, the contractor in the Manitoba newsroom office is doing it.

The shooter is usually dead, should be link to the victim’s obituary comment sections instead of a local news article ?

But someone has to write those too? LLM to the rescue!

Why is asking Fangs to give an obole to local news so insulting ?

Until those articles are writing themself, they don’t.

Someone comes up with the headline, and gives it away for free. If they dont want to give it away for free, they dont have to. If they want to charge for the headline, that is fine too.

What they don't get to do is say, you must buy this headline from us, if you want it or not.

This is all beside the point because the object at issue here is links, which don't even necessarily contain content.

>Why is asking Fangs to give an obole to local news so insulting ?

It is insulting because if anything, local news should be paying FANG. They get much of their web traffic from social media and search.

They dont need the governments help to ask for money. They can simply stop letting their headlines and links be indexed. The fact is they don't want to do that because it benefits them. They could try to negotiate with GOOGLE/Meta, but GOOGLE/Meta would rather drop them than pay.

Nobody wants to pay for what they have so they have to resort to bills to force companies to buy something they would rather not have.

> If I make coffee at home that causes a coffee shop to lose out on Revenue. Surely I'm not responsible for paying the coffee shop for the Lost Revenue.

At least in the US, the federal government can punish you for it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

tl;dr Whether or not an action is interstate commerce, if it _affects_ interstate commerce in any way (broadly defined), then the federal government has jurisdiction and can punish you under their massive and capricious laws.

yeah, Wickard_v._Filburn is terrible too, but it is specific to the government's ability to regulate.

These proposals are like the Wickard_v._Filburn on steroids or the Obamacare mandate. Forcing the purchase of a product that the buyer would choose not to.

No, but if you're a government seeing your media industry shrinking because they can't make a profit to sustain themselves, meanwhile others are profiting off their work, then you want to try something, and I guess this is their attempt.

One of the other solutions proposed was taxes on media aggregators. This is similar to the taxes on entertainment aggregators currently in place that pay into a fund that supports domestic entertainers. These approaches have lots of complications.

The real threat to local news is Craigslist and Facebook marketplace. Local newspapers were mostly funded by their classifieds section. The news is merely to bring eyeballs to those ads.

When the market for classifieds disappeared, there was no longer any financial support for local news.

You could even argue that newspapers were only viable businesses because they had a monopoly over the local distribution of information. It was never the news itself that was profitable but being the local gatekeeper of that news. The Internet destroyed that entirely.

I actually don't think the Internet has been a good substitute for a local distribution of information. It's too global and too big. There's people who aren't from a neighborhood talking about it and skewing information about that neighborhood. Portland's supposed to be literally a BLM-flagged wasteland or something, y'know?

I'd really love for there to be a local newspaper that tells me a new bakery opened in town, or that the elementary school passed a new measure for students, or that there's going to be an art exhibit presented by some local artists. I want to know when there are some foster kitties looking for temporary homes, and a little articles about people who go all-out on halloween decor. The internet doesn't give this to me, not without a load of muck.

My go to solution for that was reddit.com/r/somecommunity which was local enough to have posts about lost cats and dogs.

More than once local media near me has literally just published a story that was first posted as text to Reddit.

I've tried this strategy but often r/somecommunity is either never used by people who live there/is too small to be useful, but the bigger neighborhood/city is absolutely astroturfed by people who don't live there.

I do live in a country with a disproportionately large Reddit population.

I guess you just have to get everyone together in one place -- but that place could still be on the Internet.

> I actually don't think the Internet has been a good substitute for a local distribution of information.

It started off looking very promising for that sort of thing -- but when people fled for the likes of large social media properties, that killed things dead. Facebook, Reddit, etc., are very bad at encouraging local community.

I disagree.

I'm a member if many local communities on Reddit and Facebook.

Where I live, Facebook Marketplace is _the_ place to go to buy and sell used goods. And it is absolutely hopping in my community. So much waste is averted from landfills due to the platform Facebook provides, which has good search, and a reasonable UX.

If all we had were the old school classifieds in the newspaper, I doubt nearly as much activity would happen.

HN just loves to shit on social media and lament the fall of old school local news, but I think that's just rose coloured glasses.

Through Facebook I do local second hand shopping, I discovered and am and member of several local niche sports and activity groups. And I see local news through the eyes and mouths of locals talking about it rather than what the one or two employed local journalists think.

If all you do is scroll /r/all or your Instagram feed than sure you're not getting local info, but you get what you consume.

And I say this as someone who doesn't like Meta/Facebook and would delete it in a heartbeat if there was a viable alternative, but the matter stands it _does_ support and encourage local communities and content in some places.

It might depend on the community, then. In my area, the big social media outfits are not useful in that way at all. (Except for selling stuff on Facebook, but that's not what I was talking about.)

Facebook and Reddit are the only ones I'm familiar with for this, though, and they both have the same problem -- they are dominated by a very small number of people.

> It might depend on the community.

Always. But maybe a factor is the size of the "community"? A hub city has X number of residents plus Y folks who work there plus Z folks who live in suburbs but are counted as part of the metropolis.

OTOH a small city is small, so the folks may share more in common -- and thus push out interlopers and ignore noise makers.

I live in a small city. I think the reason that social media hasn't really become central for community here is because we have a small free arts & entertainment newspaper that has served the role for longer than I've been alive. That's where everyone expects to find public announcements, events, buying/selling things, etc.

Craigslist is also very popular here. Does that count as social media?

> Craigslist is also very popular here. Does that count as social media?

I was going to make a joke about "Not since they removed the personal ads", but CL has threaded discussion forums, so it's definitely social media.

> because they had a monopoly over the local distribution of information

Not to worry, several US states still have draconian laws to keep the local newspaper in business. In NYS, when you start a LLC or corp, you have to publish an announcement in 2 papers in the state announcing it and get certificates from the paper proving it. Of course there are ever so convenient "business papers" to leech off it. Some law makers tried to change that a few years ago and queue the lobbyist outrage.

Governments pick winners and losers. For all these laws, like this Canadian law and the one you mention, there are plenty of business models that disappear without anyone doing anything about it.

I feel that if there is still a market for news then the market will figure it out. We should make laws encourage smaller players and avoid monopolies. Instead of making laws that transfer money from one giant corporation to another giant corporation. But that'll never happen because giant corporations have all the influence.

> Local newspapers were mostly funded by their classifieds section.

Local newspapers (at least in my US state) were mostly funded by their commercial ad placements, not by the classified section. Classified ad revenue and the purchase price of the paper were minority fractions of their revenue.

Most reports have classified ads at at least 1/3 of total ad revenue for newspapers. Some sources show higher but none lower.

I doubt it, esp. if you mean US newspapers; can you cite any source?

AFAIK the trend of the last 3 decades has been first Craiglist then Yahoo then FB and apps hollowed out local newspaper classified ads, especially in the US.

Here's data for 2013-2021 from US Census Service Annual Survey (SAS) for "Breakdown of Revenue by Advertising Type: Newspapers Advertising Space - Classified Advertising for Newspaper Publishers, All Establishments" [0]. Seems to show newspaper classified revenue is seriously sliding. If we only saw the numbers for local newspapers, probably even worse.

[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPCNCAEF51111ALLEST

The real threat to local news is national/international news. An organization selling a story to the entire anglosphere has an advantage over an organization trying to sell a story to just one town or country. Both stories cost about the same to write and distribute, but the story with [manufactured] international appeal has massively more earning potential. So newspapers with a focus on national news (NYTimes, WaPo) end up killing the local newspapers even in big cities like Chicago. And the same dynamic applies internationally; the organization which is best at manufacturing international interest for their stories will have an advantage over any organization that focuses on national news with national interest.

If the intention is to get Canadians to focus more on local news, making Facebook pay to link to local news is completely backwards. Facebook will (and apparently has) simply transition to showing cheap international news. Instead, Canada should be making Facebook pay when linking to foreign news, or paying Facebook when linking to local news.

I would argue many local papers could just be a monthly town newsletter. Lol.

> My issue with this, is this a problem that needs to be solved? Do we need to guarantee monetization of every human interaction?

The failure of traditional news funding models, and their replacement with clickbait, has already caused devastating damage to...well, to society in general, honestly, but certainly to anyone trying to produce a balanced, informative news service. I can't blame publishers for trying to find something to keep them out of the Buzzfeed gutter.

I don't think this idea actually helps at all. But I get why they're desperate.

In your example the cafe isn't monetizing the fact that you view the headline and comment, which inherently increases the advertising value of the cafe (i.e. more people won't come to the cafe because of the headlines and their need to comment on it) and which captures significantly more value than everyone else involved. You just read the headline, a few people buy the paper and everyone is equitable and happy.

If Meta wants to pay 100% tax on their ad revenues to fund journalism, all they have to do is say so.

This theoretical cafe is monetizing the fact that people come and hang out and have discussions and order some coffee. The place is filled with games and magazines and newspapers that anyone can open a view the advertising within. But I never bother, I just read the headlines and discuss those without ever looking inside.

> This theoretical cafe is monetizing the fact that people come and hang out and have discussions and order some coffee.

Therein lies the difference.

1. People come and hang out - can't effectively do this on Meta sites, though their VR push seems aimed at trying to fulfill this need. I would also put "read the newspaper" under this category.

2. Have discussions - for varying definitions of "discussion", this is where Facebook is heavily monetized.

3. Order some coffee - again, can't effectively do that on any Meta sites.

Given that parks exist without coffee shops, we can infer that 3 is what coffee shops are monetizing, while 1 and 2 act as an additional enticement.

The newspapers suffer because, even though YOU may only comment on the headlines, there are plenty of people who go to the coffee shop and don't think twice about buying the paper to read or do the crossword puzzle. The newspaper is able to monetize 1 and 2 and the coffeeshop monetizes 3 - everyone is equitable and happy. On Facebook, Facebook monetizes 2 and claims (without much proof) that they are providing 1 as a service to customers. No coffee is ever served - everyone but Meta is unhappy.

A newspaper doesn't monetize #1 (People come and hang out). Facebook is, first and foremost, a social media platform. People go there to learn about what other people they know are doing. So the cafe and Facebook have the most in common there. The cafe monetizes that hang out by selling you coffee and Facebook monetizes that by showing you ads.

Newspapers are very much secondary to both businesses. They enhance the experience but are not fundamental to it. They also both provide a service to those newspapers by providing a point of distribution. People might, as part of their experience in the cafe/Facebook, read the newspaper.

> People come and hang out - can't effectively do this on Meta sites,

Why not? There isn't a physical table but folks came and hung out on USENET, BBSes, etc. before Facebook came along. And folks appear to hang out on Social Media sites the same today.

I believe the problem is that the situation you describe occurs on a much bigger scale. It’s no longer you and your friend in the cafe; it’s millions of people looking at the headline on the screen.

The scale has always existed. Thousands of cafes filled with millions of people.

Even on Facebook, if I comment on a headline it's still just me making that comment. I, singular, provide some value to Facebook by being there and no value to newspaper because I didn't click though. If Facebook didn't exist, the value I bring to the newspaper by not reading it is the same.

Correct. Essentially the root of the issue is that the news sites believe that the value is in their article, but in reality for the majority of users the value is in the headline, which the news sites give away for free along with the link so that they can be indexed.

In my opinion, the answer here is for the news sites to not show any headlines for free, and require a login to access all content. Then, they are free to negotiate with google and meta and others if those companies want access to the content. It wouldn't require any new laws.

They would need to solve users being able to post links, but a link shortener of sorts forcing the user to write their own headline in the post would probably do the trick. Most people would still want to see the actual headline, and then they'd be forced to login or at least view the page.

I'm very strongly against bill c18.

> […] but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline.

People have been not-reading and commenting since the early days of Slashdot. See also Reddit and HN. :)

Asking for payment for citations seems like a direction we don’t want to head in.

> My understanding of the core issue is people aren’t clicking through to read the article, but they’re commenting on Facebook based on the headline.

If this is the meat of the matter, then how does asking Facebook to pay for links/headlines address the problem? Whether or not facebook pays for linking to news stories, the discussion on facebook remains vapid and the public isn't properly informed.

Unless the idea was to make Facebook remove the links/headlines and drive traffic back to the news websites, which is what happened.. so why are they complaining now that it has played out that way?

What's concerning to me is literally every single MP except the conservatives voted for the bill, including my local NDP rep, and not only is it's premise absurd, but they made a huge bet on it working and risked our access to public news sources. Therefore, every non-conservative member of parliament was in-favour of an idiotic bill that compromised a fairly important seri s contemporary ways to access even their own publicly funded content. If people were to be single-issue-voters at all—usually with their issue only ever representing some hypothetical tenuous outcome—now might be a more appropriate time than ever.

Oh god, comment threads on news sites are some of the worst things on the internet. Never well designed, properly threaded, each requires a different login, etc.

If that's the business they want to be in then they (and every other news site) completely sucks at it and there's a reason people want to talk on FB/Twitter instead beyond network effects.

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