Meta's Canada News Ban Fails To Dent Facebook Usage - Slashdot

Meta's Canada News Ban Fails To Dent Facebook Usage

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• I'm usually not on Meta's side on any issue. But in this case, the law is absolutely absurd. It's absurd in principle (why should anyone be required to pay for giving someone else free traffic?) but what people don't understand is the insanely broad nature and scope of the law.

  • -The law does not distinguish between Canadian news sources and global/foreign news sources.
  • - It does not distinguish between small independent news outlets and major ones.
  • - According to the strict letter of the law, and Meta's reasonable response, even a news outlet having their own page and voluntarily sharing those links to their own content requires payment from Meta.

  To put this into perspective, my wife and I are planning a vacation to Walt Disney World in 6 months and even a Facebook page called "Disney World Updates" is subject to the ban. That's how broadly scoped it is.

  And while I certainly wouldn't trust Facebook itself for news sources, I did follow a local independent news outlet's page as a convenient way to get updates on local events in my city. I can't see their posts or their page anymore. That wasn't "the algorithm" feeding me Global Affairs news from CNN or NBC... that was very local stuff that I looked to find out about summer festivals and things. Do I need Facebook for that? No. But it's no one's business if that's the tool I chose, nor can I think of any justification for The Online News Act. It's one of the most ill-conceived and ill-written laws I have ever heard of.

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  • Re: Maybe it's for the best

    Curious, does the scope even extend to newspapers putting their content on YouTube, and then fecebook users linking that YouTube video?

  • • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @11:58AM (#63806092)

      From what I'd read about the issue the problem was how Meta, and the other tech companies, were doing it. Apparently when you followed the link to the article using the built in browser it would replace any advertisement shown with their own ad content, or would inject ads if there wasn't any, effectively profiting off of someone else's work without license.

      While you no doubt read exactly that, it isn't a reflection of reality.
      There was no ad hijacking going on here.

      Facebook was reproducing news summaries on their own website, which facebook users read by nature of being on facebook already.
      Most of those users do not click the links to the original articles.

      It is literally identical to Slashdot in that regard. People come to slashdot to read the summary and most never click any of the links to the articles.
      Note how slashdot does have ads too! It may be nothing more than a counter on your adblocker, but the point is the ads are there.
      Slashdot is not ad hijacking anymore than facebook was like you claim.

      The law was meant to compensate Canadian news agencies where this was happening as they were losing the revenue for any ads they might have had on their sites. Rather than maintain an ever changing list of Canadian news organizations, then tracking which ones were linked and figuring out who they needed to pay, Meta simply decided to "comply" by going scorched earth and block the ability to share / link all news items within Canada.

      That claim is arguable at best. Never believe what a government says a law was "meant to" do. Look at what the law *DOES*
      There is no maintaining a list or paying sources. This is a fee paid to the government, regardless of your use of Canadian news.

      Under this law Slashdot has racked up a huge bill. No, they haven't linked to any Canadian news sources, nor is that required.
      *WE* are discussing the news, here in the comments, with no links at all. That is the only legal requirement.
      Slashdot just has no reason to care as they don't operate in Canada and so can safely ignore it.

      THAT is why Facebook had to ban even the mention of Canadan news by their users.

      • Re:

        In fact, Slashdot is probably worse - the “summaries” that Facebook displays are generated by the external site being linked to in the first place, through the use of meta tags.

        The news sotes themselves tell Facebook what title, image, summary and other information to display - Facebook then displays it whenever someone pastes that link into a post or comment.

        So if the news sites are complaining that Facebook is giving away their content, its only because they are enabling it - they can reduce o

    • Your entire premise is just not true. Facebook did not high jack anything. It didn't replace ads. It did exactly what all other news aggregators do. Allowed for a news agency to themselves link to stories and share them with users of Facebook.

      If you clicked the links, it would bring you to the news agency's website, where they could serve up their own ads to generate revenue.

      The reality is this : most news has become stale, agency drivel, and most often just wrong on most topics. People's faith in news is gone. And people just don't click the links anymore, give a glance at the headline and then just roll their eyes.

      That's why Facebook hasn't seen a user drop from doing this. People just don't care about news. The law just robbed news agencies of a few free clicks they could get. Literally the law has harmed those it sought to "protect" because of misunderstandings about the tech like you just said you "read about". They were warned, they ignored actual knowledgeable folks, and probably relied on the same "experts" that have sunk trust in News so low.

      • Re:

        That is precisely what most laws do, same with government agencies. They hurt people, for example minimum wage law supposedly helps someone. In reality it prevents certain *jobs* from existing and prevent certain people at the very bottom of the economic ladder from taking their first step. The existence of the Federal reserve prevents price stability, theough the mandate is price stability (and employment for some reason). The Fef manufactures inflation, which hurts price stability and hurts the econom

        • Re:

          Well that's what minimum wage was supposed to be, a very low wage for someone starting out. The problem is that companies start to hire everyone at this wage and it gets very difficult for low skilled workers to find anything else.

  • Re:

    The one the government down here in Brazil is trying to approve is even more insane.

    It's being modeled after the Canadian and Australian one, while also "fixing" their shortcomings. How are they fixing it, you ask? Well, they're wording the law such that social media sites must pay for links to news sources and are forbidden from blocking news sharing. It also establishes that the bigger a news source is, the more it's paid compared to smaller news sources, so as to best protect huge incumber media conglome

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  • Re:

    Because it wasn't free traffic. It was rendered in the Facebook page, with their ads, creating load on the news providers servers and providing nothing in exchange while generating revenue for Facebook.

    The law is accomplishing its goals whether Facebook pays or not. If they don't pay, it will increase traffic to the news sites and generate ad revenue there. If they do end up paying, then the news sites get fair remuneration for their content.

    The interesting metric isn't whether or not Facebook is losing

    • Re:

      > Because it wasn't free traffic. It was rendered in the Facebook page, with their ads, creating load on the news providers servers and providing nothing in exchange while generating revenue for Facebook.

      "Rendered", you mean a quick embed preview which every site does. Also "providing nothing", except you know, an opportunity to reach eyeballs and could click. If you want to argue clickrate, do so. But don't pretend there's no value to having a link to your website on more popular websites. That's ju

  • Re:

    It comes down to a difference of opinion over when fair use applies to copyrighted material.

    An individual showing their friend a headline and byline is definitely fair use. A friend showing 100 of their friends a snippet from a newspaper, with only minimal comment and original work surrounding it, is starting to look questionable. It gets even murkier if they are profiting from it in some way, such as how Twitter now shares ad revenue with some users.

    And what of the company providing the platform for all th

    • Re:

      > Fair use wouldn't protect a company that simply copy/pasted chunks of articles from other newspapers

      Ironic considering a lot of of news companies simply republished what the AP or Reuters vomits out.

      • Re:

        AP gets paid though.

• That's pretty much why it didn't affect usage

  Facebook's lock in comes from being an actual social media network, e.g. a place to connect with people, often to do things in the real world. The news stuff was just there to get a little extra engagement for almost zero cost.

• Re:

  I hear that Canadian PM Justine Trousseau still reads FB, looking for hookers, now that the divorce has been announced.

  After all, a guy/gal still has certain needs.

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  • Re:

    JT don't need to pay, he's a thirst trap for a lot of ladies.

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