[bryanlarsen]

Google/Meta do more than link, though. They also grab a hero image and an excerpt. Likely fair use, but definitely getting into the grey area. I don't know how the Canadian law is worded, but it would be much more acceptable to me if Google/Meta could get out of paying if they only linked and didn't excerpt images or text.

[randomdata]

Open Graph, which all the major news organization in Canada use, was created by Meta/Facebook to ensure that the news organizations have editorial control over what is "grabbed". If the news organizations want them to have less information, all they have to do is give less information.

[bryanlarsen]

Canadian journalists could have done this without the government by adapting tactics similar to unions.

A union strikes not because they want to withhold work from their company, but because even though both the company and the union members want to work, the strike shifts the power balance.

Similarly, Canadian journalists could have gotten together to withhold links from Google & Meta until they got a better deal. They'd both be worse off during the duration of the strike, but negotiations could get a better long term deal. And in this metaphor, Meta is doing a pre-emptive lockout.

The biggest difference is that the government is helping journalists combat the defector problem.

[AlecSchueler]

It comes down to culture and what kind of onus society expects to put onto worker to create and police de facto legislation, which is prefered in some places to allowing the state to enact the same de jure.

They could have done this but now they don't have to.

[babypuncher]

I feel like that could backfire since "scabbing" would be really easy, especially for less scrupulous news organizations more strongly tied to corporate or political interests than actual news reporting.

Basically while Reuters or AP are "on strike", Drudge Report, Jacobin, or Fox News would step in and become the de facto news sources across all of social media.

[bryanlarsen]

This is what I was getting at in the last sentence of my comment. The reason it's a government action rather than a collective action is that way it prevents defections, aka scabbing.

[ipaddr]

But smaller news outlets are not part of this cartel.

[wharvle]

Devil’s advocate: “You can choose what to give us and we’ll display it… but if what you give us isn’t good enough, who knows what might happen to your links’ prominence on our site?” isn’t quite some fully-voluntary thing when Google’s the one saying that.

[Dylan16807]

"You can choose between prominence and opaqueness" seems like an okay deal in a vacuum.

I suppose the issue is more that there's too much competition for news, rather than google making the competition unfair.

[s1artibartfast]

It is about the link itself, not the image. Meta refused to negotiate, because it doesnt control what links people post.

[KennyBlanken]

Bullshit. Facebook as a matter of policy manipulates people's feeds - the chances of something appearing, in what order, etc.

People have found that certain sites, topics, and words will trigger an outright shadowban on that post - your friends never see it.

[s1artibartfast]

not sure which part you are calling bullshit. Facebook certainly controls the how much a post is circulated, but it doesnt control which links people put in their posts, or how often they post.

The idea that facebook should have to pay a fee each time a user decides to share a link to news is stupid.

[echelon]

None of this is going to matter. In ~5 years everyone will be using AI summarizes and sharing this stuff with no chain of origination.

With the rise of rage and clickbait, that might be a really good thing to disincentivize many of the bad ways that media is produced and presented.

[AlecSchueler]

The acceptable way you're hoping for is exactly how it's worded. The headline here is fearmongering.