wvenable

Ok. So Facebook doesn't care and the media companies don't care. I guess we'll see who blinks first.

People forget that there wasn't even a mass exodus from Digg. Although we can pinpoint the exact day that Digg killed itself, it actually took a long time for everyone to eventually leave. People hedged their bets between platforms -- just as many people are doing now between Reddit and all the new alternatives.

This week on Lemmy actually feels very different from last week. There's some sort of critical mass that has been hit even if it's just some minuscule tiny fraction of the total traffic of Reddit.

Reddit basically had a monopoly -- given how quickly things are moving on Lemmy and other sites -- I think that monopoly is over. It's still a bit too chaotic here for a major mass move but there's now so much more interesting content. People will eventually figure out how to make these sites competitive now that there is so much interest.

It's at that point that things will really change.

The problem is the government has been protecting/supporting one group for a long time to the point that everything is now "too big to fail". Government continue to create investment materials that can't fail -- and anything that can't fail will create a bubble and destroy everything else. That investment in Canada was housing. Now it's like over half our GDP is housing investment. And why invest in anything else? Nothing else is as risk free.

I feel like the collapse is never going to come.

The comment section is for Internet arguments!

The destruction of the web… As if the web was social medias

Social media is just as part of the web as anything. Trying to carve out some exception for Facebook because you don't like them is not a logical argument. What about Wikipedia? Reddit? Lemmy? Digg? Google?

Go check how much time people spend on each item on their feed on Facebook and how much time they spend on average on a web page vs just on Facebook every day and tell me again how Facebook is bringing traffic to traditional media!

Please provide the receipts, then.

If people have to pay for links, how is that going to provide more traffic to traditional media? Isn't that the whole point of links... to provide traffic.

Facebook thinks people will spend just as much time on Facebook without news links. This whole law is pointless. It's trying to create a market for "links" that doesn't exist. Again, if media companies don't want to provide summaries and images to Facebook they can do that. Instead, all the major news papers in Canada put tags specifically for Facebook to use with their content. They want those links. So makes it valuable to them, not the other way around.

If all you just want to take money from Facebook and give it Canadian media companies, why not just make a law that does that.

"Is Lemmy also morally responsible to pay media companies because there is a link to this article with a summary? " If it becomes profitable for the instance’s owner then yes.

You're arguing for the destruction of the web at this point. Freely linking to content is the backbone of the whole thing.

It doesn’t because without social media you would still need to check articles on their website instead of just scanning a summary and some pictures in 5 seconds.

You're basically saying that actual journalism itself has no value -- if a 2 line summary and single picture is the entire value to someone then why is anyone paying for this? An AI can make that for free. I could be a journalist if all the value is a summary and picture. You're making such a twisted argument with this whole idea that people just read the summary, never click the article, and somehow somebody needs to make money from the article that nobody reads. Media companies provide the summary and pictures to Facebook so that they'll click on the article in the first place.

So Meta would pay for the service media companies provide then, glad we agree, don’t know why you’re arguing then.

Media companies should pay Meta for the service they provide. It's literally advertising. Media companies post this material themselves. But if media companies are providing a service that's worth paying for then they should simply withhold that service until Meta pays. That's how the free market works. Tim Hortons doesn't give out free donuts and then go to the government and force you to pay for them if you take one. No, you just buy the damn donut if it's worth buying.

The government is forcing the arrangement, the companies decided to just pull out if they had to pay their fair share.

If Meta benefited from this arrangement they'd pay. Is Lemmy also morally responsible to pay media companies because there is a link to this article with a summary?

Media companies lost traffic because of social media but they bring traffic to social media.

Media companies lost traffic because the Internet invalidates their business model. Linking is the only thing they have left -- they should be thankful for it.

You realise you’re defending companies that together make trillions yet pay next to nothing in taxes in their own country (and pay nothing in Canada)?

Just because someone is an asshole doesn't mean they're entitled to less justice. If something is wrong, it's wrong for everyone.

My employer pays taxes and I profit from it.

That's not what I mean and you know it. Your employer pays you directly for your services because it's a benefit to them. Which is basically how all commerce works.

You think an arrangement could be made by individual news agencies where the freaking government couldn’t?

No. I think the government has to force this business arrangement because it's completely backwards. Media companies benefit from linking (they'd literally have no traffic if they didn't) and they're trying to extract some value where none exists.

News agencies don’t profit because people don’t click

And stores won't profit if people don't buy stuff. And streaming services don't profit if nobody subscribes. That's life. If, as a media company, you've giving up all your value by providing summaries and images then that's your problem. If Tim Hortons can't sell any donuts because they give out a free Timbit and a shot of coffee, it is not for the government to fix that. They should just stop doing it.

I absolute hated learning cursive in school and I never write cursive now. My son has even more fine motor-control issues than I do and I'm glad he didn't have to deal with this as well.

“The computer will not take that over.”

The 1980's want their opinions back.

I actually don't disagree with the idea that some of the fundamentals that have been taught for decades were and are the right way to teach. We don't always need new ways to learn reading, writing, math, etc -- the old ways are tried and tested. But introducing something like this, which basically completely unnecessary in modern times, based on some unresearched benefits is no better.

Canada loves it's monopolies. I can't believe that Shaw deal went through -- the government literally will not allow us to have more than 3 telecommunications companies. It's ridiculous.

Does your employer pay you by paying taxes and then government distributes them to you? If there was a real business here, then an arrangement would be made between Facebook and these news organizations. Facebook wouldn't want to lose out on the profit so they'd pay news agencies for the content. But the truth this, the news agencies are profiting far more than Facebook is from this arrangement. They literally need the government to step in because there is no actual business here.

The news agencies can absolutely pull out of Facebook. They can opt out of summaries and photos. But they don't.