[neksn]

The demographics of this site have changed so much that people here are applauding… that it is now illegal to embed opengraph information on Facebook? This is deranged. And it only happens because the government is in bed with legacy media. The government being in bed with the media is awful for the common person.

Embedding opengraph data is a clear case of fair use, and it’s sad to see all of this coming from a community that has long been against copyright.

[nadermx]

Its because the rightsholders instead of treating copyright to advance the arts and sciences and acknowledging that fair use exists, instead use it to nurf creativity under guise of drowning you in a hypotheitical neuanced multi year litigation that will cost millions, if you feel your use is within your right.

People are now upset because since that was the status quoe for so long it got people to believe that they if they made a song, and all they saw was copyright, and copyright sues for everything and wins, and someone heard that song in the background while inventing a microwave they are entitled to all the microwaves earnings, and before if you said no thats absurd, you had to spend millions to see if the system didnt fail you.

And now people are spending millions to prove that it is absurd, and everyone is up in arms that someome called their bluff with resources.

[ksec]

>The demographics of this site have changed so much that people here are applauding

I don't think it has. Meta has been pretty much hated on HN since the beginning. And has only gotten worse and peaked during 2020. It is not about linking information, it is about Facebook.

[SllX]

The article is talking about a link tax, or put another way: Italy forcing a website to pay for the privilege of referring traffic to the referees who benefit from the additional traffic when their mutual users link to news sites.

The only reason this is getting applauded by anyone is because the enforcement target is Facebook and years of the news media using their voice to complain loudly and religiously about their business competition (social media) has primed the pump for bad laws like this.

[strictnein]

The commenters here used to be able to separate their disdain for Company X from the actual subject of importance.

Disliking Facebook shouldn't have you supporting government overreach. Defending people or groups you don't like is how you know you have actual convictions.

[dandellion]

The situation has changed a lot since then, so peoples attitudes have shifted accordingly.

[Manuel_D]

What's changed is that people are so focused on harming Meta that they're willing to set a precedence for a link tax.

[4g]

You can go back and view the threads on Bill C-18 and see the change in attitude

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37353770

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35134751

[keeganpoppen]

nah facebook definitely was not hated on since the beginning… if you mean “meta” specifically, then yes, i actually agree. kinda like a “prince turning his name into a symbol” jump-discontinuous moment that marked the changing of the tides.

[layer8]

Reading the article and the court ruling, it seems to me that the reference to Open Graph here is beside the point.

[stavros]

If they're only showing OpenGraph tags, then yeah, that's a bizarre ban. I can understand banning showing entire stories, which makes people not click through, but OG tags? The site can just change those.

[keeganpoppen]

yeah somehow it is a minority opinion to shout “this is obviously stupid” from the rooftops… i guess meta has gone from startup to … utility(?) over the course of the last decade, but i have yet to see anything in this equivalence class of decision that isn’t just obviously idiotic… gl to italy, i guess. wish them all the best.

[tardedmeme]

Meta was not a startup in 2016. 2006, probably. Two decades.

[mcv]

I don't think it's the demographics that have changed, but the state of the internet, and the awareness that big tech's stranglehold over our media is a problem.

Of course the likely end result is going to be that legitimate news will disappear from Facebook and there will only be misinformation left. I'd rather see them address the spread of misinformation instead of the spread of quality news.

[akersten]

> awareness that big tech's stranglehold over our media is a problem.

The legacy consolidated news organizations getting a sweet free new revenue stream are glad that they've been able to convince so many people that big tech linking to them is actually a "stranglehold" and a problem!

[shevy-java]

Well, while I am not saying this is incorrect, I also fail to see why US mega-corporations should proxy-control europeans.

I trust neither involved side here, ever since the EU tries to push for age snifing and abolishing VPNs. At the same time US corporations ruin a LOT of the world wide web, and that continues. I don't think we need to accept this anylonger. Out with them.

[mcv]

You're missing both points here. I don't think they're going to get a sweet free new revenue stream. I think they're going to get less traffic.

And the stranglehold is not big tech over the newspapers, but big tech over the internet.

[gruez]

>I don't think it's the demographics that have changed, but the state of the internet, and the awareness that big tech's stranglehold over our media is a problem.

The less charitable interpretation is that interest groups are just harnessing the current kneejerk reaction for anything anti-"big tech" to serve their own interests. See also: people being theoretically in favor of affordable housing, but are also against "greedy developers" and "luxury condos" so nothing gets built.

[anigbrowl]

Why not just build affordable housing instead of luxury condos, you're creating a weird false equivalence.

[gruez]

Because in practice that just means nothing gets built at all. It's like having a food shortage but not wanting to buy/grow more food unless it's fair trade, organic, permaculture certified, non-gmo, certified kosher/halal, and cruelty free. All of those are laudable goals, but if the combined effect is that nothing gets done, that's counterproductive.

[mcv]

But that is a choice. You could also build the affordable housing and grow the sustainable food. But then you have to decide not to let it be done by people who don't want to do that, but want to build luxury condos instead.

[anigbrowl]

That's just another false equivalent. People want affordable housing. Luxury condos are clearly Not That. Your food analogy is backwards. You're actually saying that people want affordable food, but object to building more luxury restaurants, so that nobody gets fed at all.

[gruez]

>People want affordable housing. Luxury condos are clearly Not That

Luxury condos increase supply, driving down the price of all housing. It's economics 101.

>You're actually saying that people want affordable food, but object to building more luxury restaurants, so that nobody gets fed at all.

The point is that all the stipulations people have on top eg. "organic" makes it harder to create more supply.

[lokar]

I think they should be able to show the link, and like a normal one sentence link text, but not a large snippet, images, etc

[miohtama]

They are displaying the snippet and image the website is giving them for a preview.

[riffraff]

But they're also prioritizing news sources with such snippets, which forces publishers to have them or lose traffic to competitors, because Facebook is taking advantage of a dominant position in the market.

That's what they're arguing about, it's literally the same thing that happened with Google news (and was negotiated) years ago.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Are they putting a thumb on the scale to prioritize them, or are users organically deciding that they are more interested in them? The former I agree would be concerning, but I hadn't heard of this happening before and the article doesn't seem to engage in this level of detail.

[neksn]

They only show what the website gives them through opengraph tags. If the site doesn’t want to give up that information they can remove the opengraph tags. Even still, fair use should allow Facebook to summarise the contents of the link if they wanted to (but they don’t do that).

[lokar]

Sure, but then proper monopoly laws would ban most of what meta does.

[marcosdumay]

Sue through those, then.

Making insane laws prohibiting people to talk about facts they've seen elsewhere won't help.

[nradov]

In what sense is Meta a monopoly? It seems like they have a huge amount of competition in the form of Google (YouTube), Microsoft (LinkedIn), Reddit, X, Snapchat, Telegram, TikTok, Signal, etc.

[xigoi]

A lot of often valuable content is only accessible through Facebook. If you want to see the opening hours of some businesses or photos from some event, you often need a Facebook account.

[nradov]

A lot of valuable content is only available through LinkedIn. So what?

You can create a Facebook account for free so that part isn't a problem. There's no consumer harm.

[Manuel_D]

Where does Meta have a monopoly? TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, etc. all compete with it