Bye bye google search and hello duckduckgo.  Goodbye gmail and hello any number of alternatives.  Goodbye Chrome and hello Firefox because Edge, Opera are just Chromium derivatives.

Google isn't going anywhere.  There would be too much money involved.  Just a bullying tactic that didn't work in Australia, France and won't here.  Meta also threatened to shut down service last year in Europe.  Odd Google would tip their toe in the water with this tactic even though C-11 isn't even law yet. 

paterson1 wrote:

Google isn't going anywhere.  There would be too much money involved.  Just a bullying tactic that didn't work in Australia, France and won't here.  Meta also threatened to shut down service last year in Europe.  Odd Google would tip their toe in the water with this tactic even though C-11 isn't even law yet. 

Actually, this one is over Bill C-18, the Online News Act, but it's easy to get them confused. While C-11 (the Online Streaming Act) has made it through the Senate and is working its way through the Commons one last time before it's (shudder) officially the law of the land, it's my understanding that C-18 is still at the starting gate and won't be a factor for a while if it eventually passes. 

So it looks like Google is a) testing waters and b) sending out a warning shot. Either way, it's very unlikely this government will care. 

Alex Pierson did a great (if often technically interrupted by phone glitches) interview on this issue with law professor Michael Geist on AM640 Thursday morning, and if they put it up as a podcast, it's worth a listen. 

I just listened to the Vassy Kapelos show and the Google issue was being discussed.   I couldn't believe the knowledge gaps on this topic of the host and guests.   It was as if the Australian government vs Google / Facebook challenge hadn't happened and they assumed there were no precedents.   Also, Google and Facebook are in the crosshairs of the US Congress and Senate who are seriously looking at them (with bilateral support) for antitrust legislation, so this is a good time to take them on.    A recent article in WIRED tells the story of the Australian success, with limits that our government should pay attention to.  

  Australia's Standoff Against Google and Facebook Worked—Sort Of

Last edited by SpinningWheel (February 23, 2023 3:04 pm)

RadioAaron wrote:

The bullying is coming from the news orgs, who benefit hugely from social media. The vast majority of news you see posted on Facebook is posted by the orgs themselves. They have teams dedicated to formatting it to get clicks. They pay to boost the posts. They optimize stories to rank high in Google.

That last sentence is why most major news organizations in North America now use clickbait-style headlines in their online content, and I cannot stand such headlines - a recent example from the CBC, of all organizations, is "Here's how much time Canadians spent in rush hour traffic in 2022." What a ridiculous headline... our tax dollars at work.

Forward Power wrote:

RadioAaron wrote:

The bullying is coming from the news orgs, who benefit hugely from social media. The vast majority of news you see posted on Facebook is posted by the orgs themselves. They have teams dedicated to formatting it to get clicks. They pay to boost the posts. They optimize stories to rank high in Google.

That last sentence is why most major news organizations in North America now use clickbait-style headlines in their online content, and I cannot stand such headlines - a recent example from the CBC, of all organizations, is "Here's how much time Canadians spent in rush hour traffic in 2022." What a ridiculous headline... our tax dollars at work.

And if this is passed, it will get far worse. Content creators getting directly paid when they post their own content can only end badly.

Of course, there are others who can express the absurdity of this bill far more eloquently than me.

From the G&M. (And, I don't know their official position, but if they're for it, good on them for letting a columnist speak against it)

 The premise, that the problems of the newspaper industry can be traced to search and social-media platforms like Google or Facebook “stealing” their content, is utterly false. The platforms don’t take our content. They link to it: a headline, sometimes a short snippet of text, nothing more. When users click on the links, they are taken to our sites, where they read our content. Much of the traffic on our sites, in fact, comes from social-media links, which is why we go to such lengths to encourage readers to post them – indeed, we post such links ourselves, hundreds of times a day.
So the notion that FaceGoogle should be made to pay us for the valuable service they provide us for free has things exactly backward: If anything, we should be paying them.

https://getpocket.com/read/3597737392
(he delves into C-11 too, sorry if that derails.)
edit: here's the original link for those who subscribe or who have another way around
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-what-a-tangled-web-the-trudeau-government-is-weaving/

If Coyne's too right-leaning for you, here's the left leaning non-profit OpenMedia.

 Here’s the problem: this simply isn’t true. 
First, online platforms are not stealing news content from news companies. It is news companies themselves who post their articles on online platforms the most; they voluntarily encourage the spread of their content on social platforms, and they could easily block their articles from being shared on platforms if they wished to do so.
In reality, news snippets actually drive considerable advertising revenue to news organizations, and give little in return to platforms. News snippets themselves are not full articles, just teasers for them. Snippets are bait that drives clicks, and when users click through a link to a news article, all of the ad revenue on the news website goes to that news organization. Platforms are already liable for copyright violation if they post news articles, and when they do, they almost always pay the authors. 

And...

 When similar legislation was introduced in Spain, Google News pulled out from the country, leading directly to a 14% decline in traffic to smaller news sites, and €10 million in lost revenue for local news

https://openmedia.org/article/item/the-online-news-act-a-threat-to-canadian-news

In short, legacy media giants like Postmedia and CORUS have double-talked politicians into getting them more bailouts from platforms that aren't the source of their financial problems in the first place.

It's not surprising to see the Liberals support legacy media giants over the public interest, but somewhat so that the NDP are on board. I guess they had to pick between big tech and big media and picked big media.

Or maybe I shouldn't be surprised, as the people trying to regulate social media are the same ones who post their google searches into the Facebook status update box.

 

Last edited by RadioAaron (February 23, 2023 7:41 pm)