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Comment by hackerbeat | Hacker News Reader

But why should FB get this content for free (including the images used)?

Because the news organizations are giving it to FB, with the intent of FB using it in a way that gets users to click on the link, and all of this is disproportionately to the benefit of the news organizations.

FB should give back more than just clicks. See YouTube.

That's fine. Now it doesn't use their content. So there's nothing for them to give. Yet we have seen articles after articles of media corporations complaining about how this is still unfair to them.

Clearly then Facebook did provide more value for them than it took, otherwise why wouldn't they just be happy by the current situation now that their links are protected from the big man?

Also YouTube isn't just a link aggregator. News media usually have their own platforms with their own ads and monetization. And they still have them! So they are completely free to monetize their assets/content. Canadian media isn't entitled to getting services from Facebook and also demanding payment while doing so.

Also, how do you know this is "disproportionately to the benefit of the news organizations"? FB also quite heavily profits from the massive engagement this kind of content generates. Content that is often very expensive to produce.

There is a very obvious value we can assign to the outbound traffic from FB to the news sites (based on their typical advertising CPM), so we know the news sites are profiting.

We can also infer that the effect is significant based on how much the news organizations are complaining about losing this free source of traffic.

On the other hand, FB is willing to block news links, which suggests they don't actually profit from them meaningfully. Nor does blocking them, or winding down the dedicated FB News product, appear to be causing any hit on their user or revenue numbers.

Now, you turn. How do you know that "FB heavily profits" from this?

They don't any more! This whole article is about how they go out of their way to prevent users from even posting links to it!

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