Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by elpool2 1022 days ago
The part you quoted and called bullshit is factually correct though. CAN has told Meta and Google that if they show links to news sites (which do drive business to those sites) then they have to pay those news sites. It’s not a characterization, it’s what has actually happened. How can you deny that?
1 comments
doctor_eval 1021 days ago
The part that’s bullshit is this:

> they have to pay the newspaper for sending business to the newspaper

That’s an opinion.

Another way to explain the situation is: they are being forced to pay for content that they’ve monetised at the newspaper’s expense.

There are several other ways to view this situation, but Ben Evans has decided to push this version, which makes it sound like big tech is being somehow generous by sending traffic in the first place.

In fact, Google and Meta in particular have been pushing news producers against the wall for years.

link
elpool2 1021 days ago
They have to pay for showing links, and those links do send traffic to news sites. That is indisputable.

You’re phrasing is just incorrect, honestly. Linking to a website is not at all taking the site’s “content”. And monetizing search results doesn’t do anything “at the newspaper’s expense”, what expense has a news site incurred by someone sharing a link to their site?

link