[benjaminl]

Towards the end of the post we find out why they want to block news links from Facebook and Google, they are setting up a competing platform.

“That’s why we’re building Forth, a news-first platform that pays journalists for their work and offers the audience concise updates with context -- from the reporters they trust. All revenue generated on Forth is shared with our news partners.

We only allow trusted and credible journalists (vetted by our editorial team) to publish to the platform. It's a one-stop shop for accurate information about what's happening right now.”

[AaronNewcomer]

Yeah. The premise of this article is just silly when the vast majority of news reports are covered by many many websites all vying for more traffic to their web properties.

[MattGaiser]

Is there any news organization that has deliberately removed themselves from Google that you (or anyone else) know of? As you can de-index your site if this is a problem for you. I am just not aware of any organization that has done it.

[ocdtrekkie]

The problem with monopolies is that no matter how harmful they are, you can't afford to separate from them.

The very fact that news publishers aren't doing this despite the raw deal they're getting from Google is conclusive proof that the law must intervene against Google and Facebook.

[AaronNewcomer]

There are so many websites I visit because they were linked somewhere. I’m sure if Google stopped listing these websites I would never purposely visit la times or Washington post. Or especially local affiliate websites when there is some breaking news somewhere local. Who would know to go there?

I can only imagine it would be even more of a death blow to any news website that is local rather than national and not a top news source that people know by name enough to type in.