Facebook To End News Access in Canada Over Incoming Law on Paying Publishers (reuters.com) 43
Meta plans to end access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada once a parliament-approved legislation requiring internet giants to pay news publishers comes into effect, the company said on Thursday. From a report: The legislation, known as the Online News Act, was approved by the Senate upper chamber earlier on Thursday and will become law after receiving royal assent from the governor general, a formality. The legislation was proposed after complaints from Canada's media industry, which wants tighter regulation of tech companies to prevent them from elbowing news businesses out of the online advertising market.
"Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act taking effect," Meta said in a statement. Facebook had telegraphed such a move for weeks, saying news has no economic value to the company and that its users do not use the platform for news. The act outlines rules to force platforms such as Facebook and Alphabet's Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content, a step similar to a groundbreaking law passed in Australia in 2021.
"Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act taking effect," Meta said in a statement. Facebook had telegraphed such a move for weeks, saying news has no economic value to the company and that its users do not use the platform for news. The act outlines rules to force platforms such as Facebook and Alphabet's Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content, a step similar to a groundbreaking law passed in Australia in 2021.
Dupes of dupes that dupe in the dupe. (Score:2, Informative)
At this point I wonder if the dupes are part of some algorithm. There's some logic to it that says, "Duplicates of this amount make for many more comments about duplicates. Duplicates past that amount make users give up and stop posting altogether." Then they test it by cranking it up and down and re-adjusting the threshold based on post reaction.
Hi algorithm! How are you today? Hope you're a better overlord than the current bunch. They seem like a bunch of backwards assholes.
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It's not like Slashdot has millions of new posts a week; a human paying any kind of attention should notice.
Millions of new submissions though (Score:1)
Well, not really, but on days when the spam-rejector isn't working right it seems like there are a million spam-submissions in less than a day.
That said, "Firehose" has been pretty clean lately. I think it's been a week since I saw a bunch of spam submissions more than a few hours old.
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a human paying any kind of attention should notice
You just found the critical flaw.
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CowboyNeil dupes my stories.
Who TF... (Score:2)
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Enough people get their news from Facebook that this is good news for news.
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That actually depends on what the alternative turns out to be.
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Not really: Facebook is to news what Discovery Channel is to documentaries: any other outfit is a better source.
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You're not really challenging me to find a worse source, are you? I mean there is a Weekly World News of 'news' sites somewhere. Also, FB/Google is (as demonstrated by this article) susceptible to government pressure, whereas whack a mole sites won't be. I actually wonder what the Canadian government expects to do about them. I had theorized about a Great Firewall ala China, but that doesn't seem realistic.
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Hmm...sounds like a good enough reason for news to be removed from FB, eh?
Make people look for more reliable sources that aren't filtered through the interest of a big tech corp...that often has a major slant on world view and events.
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You'd be surprised how many people exclusively read their newsfeeds on social media and get their news that way. To them what appears on their feeds is the definitive canon of what happened in the world. They don't know that there are companies that produce the information they're reading, that there are people on location reporting it, or anything.
So yes, Facebook etc. getting rid of it is good news, because what's left behind are basically all the misinformation
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People who are only interested in sitting in an echo chamber. "the algorithm" will choose your news for you, and in an era of "alternate facts" that means you're getting a curated stream of bias-confirming crap right to your eyeballs every time you open Facebook.
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The biggest coup in this story.... (Score:2)
The biggest coup in this story is that Facebook managed to get it made into a story. Two or three times on Slashdot - I've lost track. Otherwise no one here would notice.
Feel free to take all your toys and go home and pout. We'll just continue to go, you know, to actual news outlets for news stories.
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Greed pays off for once. Though, not by much.
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When Little PeePee was Harper's attack chihuahua, he did more to undermine freedom of expression than Trudeau has done during his entire time in government.
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Ce n'est pas vrai, exactement. En Quebec, on parle francais. Je suis Torontonian. Je parle un petit peut de francais, mais je le parle tres mal.
And in the end (Score:3)
Canada will be better off.
As a Canadian... (Score:2)
I am not displeased. Only good can come of this.
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(the first is a paper famous for publishing articles about subjects like Elvis' baby with a grey alien, while the second is the leading newspaper in Canada)
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People notice when they're posting articles from "News of the World" instead of the "Globe and Mail", and skip onwards.
I bet you they won't.
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I think there's value in having the bottom drop out in quality. Reputation matters, broadly. Not to the types who watch Alex Jones, but there's no hope for them anyway. Everyone else could benefit from it being understood that everything on FB is BS. It has to get worse before it gets better.
That said, I'm really not sure if or how Bookface differentiates the news it feeds to victims directly, from news that is being reposted by users. Do they have a separate section of the site that's strictly for approved
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That's a lot of what Silicon Valley does these days; insert themselves between companies & their customers/public. Those companies that actually provide value get a big slice of their revenues rudely taken
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The tech companies do have characteristics of middlemen, but it goes beyond that. It's interesting that this occurs in conjunction with everything moving to a subscription (rent) model. Instead of tech companies actually selling technology, they want to sell you access to a service. A service economy, where the service workers don't even get a token payment, they're contributing to these sites for free. That goes for end-users as well as news agencies.
Perhaps the reason these companies have become the bigge
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I smell a lie (Score:2)
...saying news has no economic value to the company and that its users do not use the platform for news
If news has no economic value to Facebook, why do the include it?
It seems to me one of Facebook's success metrics has to do with how much time a suc... er, 'account holder', spends on the platform. If people are staying on Facebook longer because they're not leaving to get their news, they're receiving more FB ad impressions.
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Wusses (Score:2)
If Facebook was serious about this, they would cease allowing access to members from IP addresses located in Canada altogether.
Then wait for the shitstorm to hit Parliament.... watch them backpedal inside of a year.
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Better to interrupt the supply periodical so they don't lose the addiction e.g. block Canadian access alternate days or alternate hours and redirect to a lobbying effort site.
Oh No s ! (Score:2)
you chose poorly (Score:1)