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by llm_nerd 937 days ago
The law literally only applies to Google and Meta, both of which make billions from the Canadian marketplace. Trying to cast this as some big open internet thing is not convincing.

Holding Meta as the good guys is pretty tenuous as well. Long, long before Meta had to do anything, like a crying, gnashing baby they blocked every source of news, across all of their properties, with a callout to Canadians declaring why. I pray that they stick with it, but I'm going to tell you the reality that Meta is going to make a similar deal, probably within days.

Because they make enormous sums on the Canadian market. And they have always pulled (or been pushed), aggregated and summarized news because it makes them money. The frequent claims on here that it's some incidental thing, if not some grand benevolence, is rather detached from reality.

And with every passing day more Canadians are just turning away from Meta properties because of their embargo. Again, I pray they actually stick with it and become irrelevant here (it is a toxic company that can be trusted with nothing), but they won't.

To play off what the other guy said, it's a pretty bizarre position to hold Meta as the good guys. If they have a position on something, it's an extremely good indication that that position is not a good one.

1 comments

This is a very poor argument. Laws and actions are good or bad based on their own merits and and not because of which parties support it or not. This link tax is a bad law. It's bad for the Internet. And thus it is also bad for Meta.

> And they have always pulled, aggregated and summarized news because it makes them money.

Not even accurate as news companies actively provide this content in their meta data explicitly for Meta to use. If they didn't want their content summarized they could stop it any time.

The "link" tax is a tax on mega American tech companies, and was written to target literally only two companies on the planet. It has nothing to do with the internet at large. Anyone who claims otherwise is either poorly informed, or a bad faith actor. The histrionics on this topic are not useful.

>This is a very poor argument

What do you even think the argument was? I said that Meta's position is an indicator. Don't pretend I said anything more, or strawman a counterpoint based upon nothing.

>Not even accurate

What a picking at nits. While I was talking about both companies generally, Facebook basically became the "go to" back when they absolutely did scrape news, similar to Google. Publishers started directly pushing their content there because they had basically no protections from it being pulled (you know -- "open internet" and all) and Canadians were conditioned to hit the "news" tab on Facebook as the homepage for news.

Again, my greatest hope is that Meta sticks with it. No news on FB, Threads, Instagram or elsewhere. A total embargo. That'll show em!

> The "link" tax is a tax on mega American tech companies, and was written to target literally only two companies on the planet.

And you consider that a good thing? Laws that target companies by name? Your argument is that the ends justify the means. But in this case the ends is one set of large companies (some with large American ownership) lobbying the government to force other large companies to pay them for nothing. It's a gross abuse of power. Utterly unnecessary and entirely the Canadian way. This is the kind of thing that keeps the oligarchy alive in Canada.

> Again, my greatest hope is that Meta sticks with it. No news on FB, Threads, Instagram or elsewhere. A total embargo. That'll show em!

In this we absolutely agree. I also wish Google didn't cave. Of course, they didn't really cave though, they just did a side deal so this law wouldn't apply to them. This whole thing is just stupid and wrong.

> Facebook basically became the "go to" back when they absolutely did scrape news, similar to Google.

If any of these companies violated copyright then by all means let the media companies sue them.