Meta and Alphabet may owe 4% of Canada revenue to news outlets under draft rules | Hacker News Reader

Meta and Alphabet may owe 4% of Canada revenue to news outlets under draft rules

fortune.com

19 pointscscurmudgeon21 comments

Does this have the potential to reach the point where Facebook is required to carry news content even if they don’t want to while being forced to pay for it? It feels like it might be approaching that based on this other article:

> If companies do not meet a payments threshold through voluntary deals, they may have to go through mandatory bargaining overseen by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

> Government officials in a briefing side-stepped questions about what would happen if companies blocked news on their platforms and did not participate in negotiations at all.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-says-addressin...

I think it's too valuable to Meta and Alphabet to retain the option to exit a market than comply with these restrictions.

Similar attitude to the UK Online Safety Bill.

Giving in would just start a landslide of restrictions and demands for moneym

Not so different form Germanys GEMA regime, just for news.

Facebook is required to carry news content even if they don’t want to while being forced to pay for it

That's clearly the endgame. It's a bailout for publishers.

The large publishers weren't even struggling for this to be a bailout.

This is just plain corruption.

If the government of Canadia wants to transfer wealth from Facebook and Google to Canadian news companies, why not institute a tax on advertising revenue, and a subsidy to newspapers.

A tax on linking to news is clearly just asking for news to not be linked.

This indeed is the better approach, and unfortunately the answer is that the motives, just like in Australia, are muddled by media ownership

Australia is very interesting, because Canada’s plan here is somewhat derived from what Australia did (and Meta and Alphabet did get onboard there). Here’s the slightly different timelines that make all the difference. Australia:

- parliament drafts this legislation and starts debating it (public record)

- Meta blocks Aus news for 4 days and says “we have some changes we’d like to see if we’re going to play ball”

- bill is amended, Mets gets on board

- bill is passed

Canada:

- parliament starts debating the draft of the bill

- Meta says “we’d like some changes and we’ll stop doing Canadian news if we don’t negotiate this”

- Parliament passes the bill as-is

- Meta blocks Canadian news, as promised

- Parliament goes on holidays

- Media companies are sitting there going “oh noooooo not like this” as a significant amount of their traffic disappears

When an insanely profitable multinational company says “if you do X, we will do Y” to the parliament of a country of 35-odd million people, that government has to be insane or incompetent to think “they’re bluffing. Let’s call their bluff and go on holidays”

Important note on Australia - FB only made a deal with the biggest companies, Murdochs, who was using the government to apply the pressure. Independent publishers, etc got dropped like a hot stone.

They're saying Google derives a lot of revenue from having news and linking to news. So yes. Google can exit this market and stop deriving revenue from the work the newspapers do, or they can pay the newspapers for the work they do.

Facebook, in particular, has been trying to strangle/EEE news outlets for many years now.

> Facebook, in particular, has been trying to strangle/EEE news outlets for many years now.

By this logic, won't FB banning news be beneficial for the news outlets? Why the outrage then?

Because news outlets have been deriving free traffic and revenue from Google/FB and want to rent seek on top of that.

Is Canada just trying to force Facebook out of the country? This whole debacle seems so stupid and pointless, I can't imagine what they're trying to accomplish, Canada really doesn't have the clout to strong-arm Facebook.

I doubt if either will have any interest in paying any amount since it'd open the door to every country wanting some payment.

Better to continue blocking Canada and ignore.

Seems like the fourth estate is being formalized and exercising taxation power. How likely will they be to want to anger government now, if government can cut them off?

That was always a risk with state supported media, but now that it will apply to all commercial media that appears on Facebook or Google news..

Many countries have tax funded public television. In many countries one could argue that public television (BBC,CBC,ARD,ZDF,NPR,etc) carry generally high quality programming and often hard hitting investigative features compared to private interests.

Government, as professional public service, does not have to mean executive branch and laws for separation of power exist

Your thoughts on Voice of America, Russia Today, Global Times?

You forgot Radio Free Europe. Notably none of those were operated by countries to inform their own population, so I am not sure why you would mix these into the term public television.

I am not sure why you keep changing the definition. The original point was on govt. funded news outlets.

The part about "to inform their own population" is secondary and irrelevant, especially if it is available online.

> part about "to inform their own population" is secondary and irrelevant

It’s obviously relevant. If I’m paying for your news, I probably have an agenda. If I’m paying for my own news, I probably want to be informed.

I don't know, my experience with my country's publicly funded media (which is in your list) is that they carry worthless regime propaganda while badmouthing anyone who questions prevailing orthodoxies.

https://archive.li/R516I

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