Canada

We should be breaking up these companies, or at least taxing them and billionaires directly, and then spending that money on things to better the populous as a whole.

Link taxes just prop up legacy media outlets, because those are the ones who cut a deal. The small, local news then dies an even faster death, because it's too much hassle to track the payments to them under this onerous link tax.

This is the reason why these asinine link taxes are pushed for by massive media organizations, because they see it as a way to prop themselves up by punishing big companies for sending them traffic. The side effect is that this hurts the open internet, making everything shitty for end users. Congratulations Canada, you did it, you made Facebook pay*

*Facebook has never had to actually pay these link taxes, they starve the newspapers out a bit and then cut a backroom deal that is basically no link tax for the large publishers, and far fewer local newspapers from that country represented. This benefits the large publishers nicely, even if they aren't getting free money for Facebook sending them traffic.