Google will pull news links in Canada in response to new law - eviltoast
  • CoderKat@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Honestly, I don’t know what the lawmakers expected. The bill is dumb. It’d be perfectly fine to require payment for copying a substantial amount of a new article (eg, if they want to prevent google from offering a public cache that gets around paywalls). But the bill outright requires paying to link to Canadian news sites in search results. That’s outright madness.

    Y’all can hate google and meta all you want. That’s totally fine. I encourage you to use competing search engines (it’s bad that Google has a near monopoly). But this bill is a bad bill.

    The folks on this site might know about alternatives, but the average person doesn’t. When the average person can’t find Canadian news sites on Google, they’re not going to switch to duck duck go or whatever. They’re going to just use a non Canadian site. This bill is going to hurt Canadian news companies and it’s disappointing to see people cheering it on because you’re happier to see Google and meta hurt than you are sorry to see Canadian news sites hurt…

    • PenguinTD@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      yeah the scraping content is the issue, not the linking. So this bill is pretty stupidly formed. They can simple require google/meta only provide line, title and max 250 letters abstract/trimmed first paragraph(excluding space and punctuation.)

      They(Canadian medias) want the traffic to their site so they can display sponsor ads or sell subscriptions.

  • CostcoFanboy@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    The amount of people that don’t understand how important a news propagator like Google is is mind-blowing. Access to information is a right. This beats this right down to a pulp.

    “HURR DURR GOOGLE BAD HUE HUE GOOD RIDDANCE HUE HUE I’M LE INTELLECTUAL”

    Really sad. This fucked every news org. Hard. Except the big ones that own everything.

    • dkbg@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Why should Google have control over the propagation of news? Everyone can still go to the individual news organisations’ website…yes Google consolidated everything into one portal, but maybe it’s time to go back to something less centralised, which isn’t under the control of a single corporate entity, i.e. the way the web was originally intended to work.

      • Baggins [he/him]@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        Same reason you’re using Lemmy and don’t just go to browse every single individual website on the internet.

        • dkbg@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          So then we need a non-corporate portal for news. Centralising the power of information distribution with massive companies that are driven solely by profit is not the way.

          • CostcoFanboy@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yeah, I can’t wait to trust the feds that can’t even work out their stupid CRA website with being a source of reliable news aggregation. Just last year I SAW someone else’s tax reports on my account.

            If you want to go on full /r/communism about Google, there’s a subreddit for that. But giving the finger to Canadians and internet freedom just because you hate Google is wack. City Nouvelles is not getting a dime from this bill.

            Google doesn’t control the news as you tried to imply in another comment. That’s ridiculous. People that use Google made the choice to use Google for their news. Just like you chose Lemmy, some choose Meta, others choose Reddit, MSN, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

            All this does is kill independent news sources and cutting choices from Canadians for the profit of the few rich corps in Canada. It’s a pure money grab.

            • dkbg@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              Who said anything about the government stepping in to take over? I certainly didn’t say that. Something like Lemmy (and the Fediverse in general) isn’t government controlled, in fact it isn’t controlled by any one entity, which is one of its strengths. If you’re looking for a possible alternative to corporate or government control of media, you’re using one right now.

              The problem is that Google has become a defacto default for most people. That didn’t happen just because people “decided” to start using it, the decision was made for them because Google has a great deal of money and power and can use that influence to essentially make the decision for people.

              • CostcoFanboy@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                I’m convinced you’re trolling or genuinely really dumb.

                I’m off, enjoy your monologue rants.

                • dkbg@lemmy.ca
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Strange reaction, no need for the personal attack. Enjoy your day.

  • GenericUser@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    This a calculated move, but on the part of the Federal government, not google. It’s not about CanCon or newspapers and news sites/networks being paid for their linked content, it’s about slowly eliminating access to information that the federal government doesn’t control