Gregory's Server@atomicpoet Laws like this can have significant unintended consequences and tend to hurt the smaller players more than the big ones. Are there any lawyers/policy makers out there who know whether this could hamper link sharing across fediverse instances? For example, will Canadian instance owners have to pay publishers for links that point to publisher content? Is there a cutoff in terms of size of audience? If not, there probably should be. @mmasnick what do you think?
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 @atomicpoet @mmasnick will be interesting to see who/how that is determined legally. For example, if @sfba.social posts a link to a local news story are they now a publisher? Who decides? And further, if there's a risk of falling into the publisher category, does that scare away instance owners from linking to content? Oh and btw, is this limited to media cos only? What about individuals who create video, blog posts, podcasts or for that matter individuals who create interesting threads?  @mike @mmasnick Here's the text of Bill C-18: https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/third-reading @mike @mmasnick How they define "digital news intermediary": "...an online communications platform, including a search engine or social media service, that is subject to the legislative authority of Parliament and that makes news content produced by news outlets available to persons in Canada. It does not include an online communications platform that is a messaging service the primary purpose of which is to allow persons to communicate with each other privately." @atomicpoet @mmasnick hmmm. the way this is written sounds like instance owners that are publicly federated with others would have to pay. @mike @mmasnick Also, there's Application: 6 This Act applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to the following factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses: (a) the size of the intermediary or the operator; (b) whether the market for the intermediary gives the operator a strategic advantage over news businesses; and (c) whether the intermediary occupies a prominent market position. @mike @mmasnick So the other question, of course, is what is a "messaging service the primary purpose of which is to allow persons to communicate with each other privately"? More specifically, how do we define "private"? Is it a message sent between two private citizens? Or does this pertain to visibility? @atomicpoet @mike @mmasnick @Cassandra @mike @mmasnick But is that how governments define "private"? @atomicpoet @mike @mmasnick  @atomicpoet @mike @mmasnick @atomicpoet @mmasnick BTW, I would not put it past Facebook to ultimately realize that this is an awesome way to shutdown the public fediverse... they will have no problem paying this fee in exchange for shutting down all the smaller instance owners in the fediverse. Then they can claim to be open on activitypub knowing they safely suppressed the alternatives. The biggest players are expert at using laws like this to their advantage so policy makers have to think about this before they act.  @atomicpoet @mike I don't think that's an accurate representation at all. The issue is if USERS are posting links to news, then making Meta pay for... sending those sites traffic. It's not "Meta publishing news." It's their users. But then the publishers trying to charge Meta a tax for it. On top of that, those same publishers have social media teams trying to drive more people to send them traffic from social media... Their actions suggest they get value out of it today w/o payment.  > The issue is if USERS are posting links to news, then making Meta pay for... Just like journalists post on media sites and make the publishers pay for their content. This analogy is of course imperfect, but useful, I believe. Meta has editorial control (they block and manage visibility of posts), and they make money on ads around the posts, after all. Just like a media site which has editorial control over articles and makes money on ads published along them. @atomicpoet @mike @mmasnick @mosqueeto @mike @mmasnick Which is convenient for entities like Facebook that abuse their market dominant position to decimate local news. And maybe I would grant that Facebook is just a utility if they were hands-off regarding how news displays on their sites. But that's not the case. They're clearly editorializing and re-purposing news, for which they monetize for their own benefit.  Imagine GOP and MTG (or whoever your stupidest most evil natl politician is) wielding the power to decide who this affects. That's what you're asking for. News outlets need to adapt to modern economics. You can't force it the world to stay in the past successfully, but you can grease the skids for fascists by making control of media easier. |
@mike @mmasnick My own standpoint is that social media platforms need to decide whether they are a utility or a publisher.
If they're a utility, they have no business editorializing or "repurposing" news. Present the news with full transparency.
If they're a publisher, then pay up!
But as it stands, Meta is trying to be a publisher while presenting themselves as a utility.