Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the talk-it-up dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side Toom1275 with a comment about Missouri’s new speech police:
Teaching kids the reality that trans people exist and are normal is no more grooming them than teaching kids that frogs exist is grooming them to become amphibians.
In second place, we’ve got a double-winning comment that also takes second place over on the funny side. It’s That One Guy responding to Meta ending its link tax deals in Australia:
Kinda giving the ‘It’s theft!’ argument lie away there…
Australian government: If you’re going to use that content then you have to pay for it otherwise that’s stealing!
Meta: Okay, we’ll stop using it then.
Australian government: Blackmail! Extortion! How dare you fiendishly try to get out of paying for content by no longer using it!?
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from T.L. about the anti-TikTok bill:
Besides the First Amendment nightmare this poses, the bill’s authors have no idea how TikTok would be able to comply with a divestiture. TikTok is too large to be bought by any single company, with a valuation of $80 billion, and the only ones based in the U.S. who could possibly afford it are Meta, Google and Musk, raising antitrust issues; it’s not clear whether a spinoff from ByteDance would suffice (they failed to realize the TikTok unit is incorporated in the U.S., Singapore and the Cayman Islands); and Chinese regulators would stymie any forced divestiture. It also raises competition concerns by eliminating a competitor to the three biggest social media companies, meaning lawmakers would have no right to complain about their market dominance because they enabled Meta, X/Twitter and YouTube/Google to hog market share.
Banning it opens the door to breaking the Internet, giving China and other autocratic countries justification to censor platforms, hurting the same U.S. companies that would benefit. China could also retaliate against our economy, pushing our companies (like Apple and GM) out. It would also risk America falls to fascism by angering young voters to not show up in November, handing the country to Trump and MAGA.
Next, it’s an anonymous comment about Peoria police advertising to new recruits by asking them to “come play Call of Duty in real life”:
This seems like a good time for a reminder that much of what cops do to our own citizens would be classified as war crimes if our soldiers did it to civilians, or even enemy combatants in some cases.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Crafty Coyote with a comment about Eminem’s upcoming deposition in a trademark dispute:
When it comes to litigation, he’s going to lose himself in the motions, the moment, he wants it, he better never let it go. He only gets one shot, to not miss his chance to blow. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.
We’ve already had our second place winner for funny above, so now on to editor’s choice, starting with Flakbait and another comment about the Peoria police recruitment ad:
Never satisfied
Some people are never satisfied. The cops finally start using truth in advertising and everyone loses their minds.
Finally, it’s an anonymous response to the phrase “typical anti-free speech conservative”:
You packed a lot of redundancy into 5 words.
That’s all for this week, folks!
Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”
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Yeah, because companies never try to leverage their suppliers by threatening to drop them, especially in situations where the supplier is far more reliant on the relationship.
The amount of credulity here is insane.
Re:
… what relationship do you think the two sides have? This is not a company threatening their ‘supplier’, this is a company deciding that they’re not interested in paying protection money any more to a bunch of parasites for something that isn’t even a big deal on their end, even if it is for the publishers.
As quoted in the article in question:
“We know that people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content – they come to connect with people and discover new opportunities, passions and interests. As we previously shared in 2023, news makes up less than 3% of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed, and is a small part of the Facebook experience for the vast majority of people.”
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Re: Re:
And you can tell the difference, how, exactly?
The fact that it’s not a big deal doesn’t mean they aren’t trying to underpay.
That’s a supplier of 3% of Facebook content (And that’s not counting stuff like users making/posting content around articles).
And the fact that it’s so skewed is precisely why Facebook has so much leverage here. If they cut it off, that’s 3% of their business, at most. It doesn’t hurt them much. It’s a much larger fraction for news. That means there’s much more pressure on news to come to the table and accept Facebook’s terms, regardless of whether they’re economically justifiable or not.
Re: Re: Re:
They’re not trying to underpay. They’re trying to not pay for something they aren’t benefitting from as much as they are providing a benefit to the publishers.
How about this. Every month, send me $100. In exchange for your $100, I will let you send traffic to my website. Does that seem like a good deal? Of course not.
So you understand the dynamic, but you think social media platforms have some kind of an obligation to pay to host content they don’t need? Should stores be forced to stock items that they don’t sell in great quantities?
And this is all predicated on the idea that social media is even the appropriate place for news.
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Re: Re: Re:2
And again, I ask, how do you know that is true? Facebook clearly generates more than 0$ from having more content on it’s site that people want to read.
That depends, am I making more than $100 in ad revenue from your content while doing so? Because then it’s a great deal, and I have no issue with it. You can’t ignore the content, and that it’s being monetized, as if this is a vacuum. It’s not.
If they’re benefitting from the content, I think they’re obligated to pay fair market value.
I don’t think they’re ditching it because they don’t want it, I think they’re using it as a negotiating tactic to get a lower price for something they want. Why pay for it if they don’t have to? They know they can afford to wait it out, until the counterparties cave and give it, because the counterparties need the Facebook much more than Facebook needs them.
If they legitimately didn’t want to host the content, I don’t think they’d need to pay. But I don’t think anyone actually believes that, and people are pretending to believe it because they dislike link taxes.
I don’t think that’s really avoidable, although that would solve a lot of problems if it could.
Re: Re: Re:3
Oh, you stepped in the doo-doo now, me bucko.
The definition of ‘fair market value’ is what the buyer is willing to pay. IOW, the buyer is always the one to set the value in a transaction. The seller can only set an initial price, and from there negotiations can take place. Never forget, lest it hurt you in the wallet, price and value not the same thing!
Contrast that with ‘purchasing power’, where a grocery store sets a price, and if you’re not willing to pay it, then you’re free to either attempt a negotiation (good luck with that) or else leave without the goods you wanted. But in cases like this, negotiation is expected, and does take place until neither side is happy with the results. That’s setting fair market value, pure and simple. The fact that Facebook walked away from the table only means that they didn’t consider Aussie news outlets to be as unhappy as they are, that’s the nuts and bolts of it.
Here’s another angle for you to chew on.
In business school, you learn early on that you don’t pay for what you don’t get. Contract law is based on this principle, and that’s where Facebook stands today, vis-a-vis Murdoch’s fully bought-and-paid-for Australian Parliament and Ministers. If you think that Facebook is trying to weasel out of some Gawd-ordained iron-clad agreement, one that supersedes any and all contract law (and international contract law at that), then you need to go back and take a remedial contract law class.
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Re: Re: Re:4
No it’s not. That’s assuming a market without distortions or market failures. To use a very common counterexample, monopsony pricing is not fair market value. (Facebook is not a true monopsony, to be crystal clear. But it’s size does lead to distortions).
FMV is the price you’d pay in a fair market. A market with distortions (in either direction) can diverge from that.
I am not saying that.
Re: Re: Re:5
No, you aren’t. You’re implying it, though, which comes to the same thing.
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Re: Re: Re:6
No, I’m not. You’re reading into something that isn’t there. And that should be clear after I explicitly pointed it out, if it wasn’t before.
Nothing of what I said requires there to be a contract/law.
Re: Re: Re:7
So why was there a law passed to create the link tax if it doesn’t require a law? And absent of any law, then a contract is required to ensure payment of the Danegeld. Stop arguing, the multiple GSWs in your feet are quite sickening.
Re: Re: Re:5
Forcing Facebook to pay for something they do not want to buy, and do not value at the price they would be forced to buy it for, is a most blatant example of market distortion.
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Re: Re: Re:6
My point is you’re assuming it’s something they do value at the price, with no justification.
Correcting underpaying for something they want to buy is not a market distortion.
If that was what was actually going on, yes, it would be.
Re: Re: Re:5
“I am not saying that.”
You have a vested interest? Sounds like there is an investment of some sort.
Re: Re: Re:5
Looks like someone not only failed in Contract Law, but also never took an Economics 101 course.
I’ve already washed my hands of you, this reply is meant for those who’ve evolved beyond turd flinging. Quite obviously when Gawd was handing out brains, you thought he said trains, whereupon you replied ‘No thanks, I’ll catch the next one”. And out the door you went, sans any grey matter whatsoever.
Lookin’ good there, loser, lookin’ reeeeal good.
Original responding AC.
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Re: Re: Re:6
I never claimed anything about Contract law, so that’s a bit of a nonsequitur.
It’s a bit ironic you mention Economics 101, because the whole point is things like market failures are a bit beyond the oversimplified Econ101 models.
ie, you have no actual coherent rebuttal for things I actually said. Glad we sorted that out.
Re: Re: Re:7
It’s still not an excuse to defend News Corp the way you have.
Re: Re: Re:6
That’s an insult to children with anencephaly.
Re: Re: Re:7
Abso-fucking-lutely. A literal brainless child is a much better person than Arianity.
Re: Re: Re:3
If Facebook got more benefit out of the news than the cost of linking to the news, they wouldn’t be shutting it down.
“In early April, we will deprecate Facebook News, a dedicated tab for news content, in the United States and Australia. As we previously announced, Facebook News was deprecated in the UK, France and Germany last year.”
You can trust them to act in their own financial interest. If they thought shutting down the news would hurt them more than keeping it, they wouldn’t shut it down.
I’m going to quote you here: “how do you know that is true?” You seem to be assuming some simplistic concept that people see all Facebook content as good and therefore more is better and they spend more time there. This can’t be true for every Facebook user. Many of them complain that there’s too much content and too much content they’re not interested in. Have you used Facebook recently? You have to scroll through placed ads, sponsored content, and random reels of influencers just to get to your friends’ and family members’ posts. Many people who keep up with the news do so outside of Facebook. Facebook isn’t a news site. If people see news and interact with it, it’s incidental, not a primary purpose.
The news is benefitting from people being on Facebook and seeing their links. People aren’t going to Facebook to check the news. It’s not a news site.
That’s an assumption you’re making.
They’re not benefitting from the content. The content of a news article is the full text of the article. A headline with a few sentences and a link is a teaser that sends users to the news site.
Facebook doesn’t generate revenue when people click on a news article linked in Facebook because they’re not charging news sites for the link as if it’s an ad unless the news site paid to place it there. How are they benefitting? “Content” isn’t equal. You’d have to prove that people go to Facebook specifically for news and generate revenue for Facebook based on that interest. Facebook makes organizations pay to promote their content. Why would they pay someone to host that content when everyone else pays them?
You’re still assuming they benefit from it. Do you use Facebook? It’s not a news site!
I didn’t think anyone actually believed that Facebook needed news links. It’s not what anyone I know uses Facebook for. The only people who are pretending to believe that Facebook benefits from news links is the people who want Facebook to pay a link tax. By your argument, Facebook should be paying users for generating content that gets other users to visit the site. That’s not a viable business model.
It’s not avoidable in the sense that users might link to news articles but Facebook has shut down or is shutting down Facebook News in multiple countries. That means it’s users, not Facebook, that are posting the links. That means Facebook is indicating that they don’t find news to be a benefit.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Not necessarily. It is entirely possible Facebook got more benefit out of it than the cost, and is doing so as a negotiating tactic. The options aren’t just “link with link tax” vs “no links”. It’s also “pull links until they repeal the link tax”, which is potentially more profit than either previous option. If it is, it’s absolutely worthwhile for Facebook to lose a bit of profit now for larger profit later.
And this is not an uncommon tactic from businesses. There are plenty of examples of where they’ve threatened to leave a country due to some tax/regulation issue, and that threat worked (and also examples where their bluff was called). And honestly? I think Facebook will probably win this battle, in the long run, for the same reasons.
I don’t think they think it would hurt them more than keeping it. But that balance includes things like negotiating power with legislatures. It can absolutely be worth it to shut it down if legislatures repeal the bill and FB can go back to paying nothing.
The fact that FB was willing to pay for news content at all is a pretty telltale sign, I think.
Similarly, the fact that it keeps the content on their in countries that don’t have this law. If the content was detrimental, FB would be removing it entirely, link tax or no link tax. The fact that links are only getting pulled in reaction to these types of laws (or threats of these laws) is a huge tell.
I think you can very reasonably argue that the current price is not worth it. I don’t think you can say it’s zero, based on that. I’d even be willing to go so far as to say we don’t know for sure, and maybe I’m overestimating (I will admit that I am highly skeptical of giant corporations by default, so I’m admittedly coming at it from that angle). But we definitely can’t confidently say it’s not worth it.
Absolutely. I’m not saying they get no benefit, I’m saying I think in a fair market, they’d be getting more than what they are currently.
And that is actually a part of the problem here. That traffic is so valuable to them, they have a strong incentive to cave and give Facebook what it wants, even if it’s ‘worth’ more. They don’t have the bargaining power to get it.
There are absolutely people who engage with news on FB, and social media more generally. They may not be going there intentionally to seek out news, but they’re still engaging with it if it’s there.
And personally, I’m not a huge FB user, but I absolutely (pre-Musk) used to consume a lot of news via Twitter and similar social media. (That said, FB is probably less news-focused than something like a Twitter)
There’s also other data to back that up. For instance (a bit old, admittedly. Although it does have some interesting info on how people passively/accidentally consume news on FB): https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2013/10/24/the-role-of-news-on-facebook/
You can certainly argue how much, but it’s not zero. And even 3% or whatever of something as big as Facebook is massive.
I don’t think it “needs” them. It’s far far bigger and broader of a content machine. But I do think it gets some nonzero benefit from it, and it wants it. It just wants it for as cheap as it can possibly get. News is just one small segment of the bigger content pie.
If it were possible, I honestly think that should happen. Sites like FB are essentially harvesting user-generated content. It’s not really practical, though.
Depending on what you mean by viable though, I would partially disagree. There are sites with user-generated content. YT, Twitch, (more recently) Twitter. It is absolutely possible to pay a share of profit to users. Although probably not on a truly micro-scale where every user gets a cut, that’s where it becomes impractical. But more generally, paying for user content is possible.
And ultimately, it kind of works out, because people keep using them anyway. And users aren’t locked in the way a for-profit enterprise is, so you don’t really have to worry they’re being coerced or whatever. You can stop posting tomorrow, not much Facebook can do about that even if it wanted to.
That’s a bit squishy, though. If you spend more time on Facebook because you talk to your friends about news, that’s still ad rev for Facebook. Facebook doesn’t care why you’re on there, or how, as long as you are.
And that’s part of what makes this tricky, because they end up accumulating that benefit even if they aren’t even actively trying to.
Re: Re: Re:5
This still assumes Facebook gets a positive benefit out of the news being there at all, which you haven’t proven.
The commonality of the tactic doesn’t prove that it benefits them though. You still need that proof.
And Facebook can pay nothing for content that doesn’t benefit it also.
That argument works if it’s 2019. The fact that they’re shutting it down shows that they haven’t determined that it benefits them enough to pay for it. Your logic must apply to the opposing facts of present day or else you’re arguing disingenuously.
You’re ignoring the third option, that the content is neither greatly beneficial nor detrimental, but neutral. Or it could be mildly beneficial but not moreso than the cost of paying for it.
It’s zero based on what Facebook is willing to pay.
If they’re bluffing, then we can confidently say they’re willing to kill it if their bluff is called.
Why would someone pay them to advertise for them for free? The content isn’t bringing people to Facebook. Facebook is bring people to the content via the links.
Because they benefit and Facebook doesn’t, or not enough for it to matter. Facebook makes ad revenue from its advertisers. News sites that don’t advertise on Facebook don’t make them revenue, so their content isn’t as valuable to Facebook.
And that is incidental. Social media doom scrollers will click on almost anything. That doesn’t mean that the content isn’t interchangeable with non-news content.
This literally supports my argument that the engagement is largely incidental.
But again, that is likely not enough to make it worthwhile for Facebook to pay for it.
Such a small segment that they’re willing to kill it rather than pay for it.
Except Facebook is the host providing a platform for people to communicate. Why would it pay people to use it when it’s offering a free service to users and access to users to advertisers? Facebook isn’t harvesting user-generated content, advertisers and users are. It’s Bored Panda trying to get articles generated from Reddit posts seen and comedians trying to get their standup clips seen and local organizations advertising their next event.
That business model always enshittifies down to paying only the top content producers the bulk of the shared profit and throwing a pittance to anyone else.
They actually want you to click on ads and sponsored content. They allow news and friends’ posts because it doesn’t hurt them to allow it. They’ve been decreasing the number of friends’ posts you see compared to sponsored content and ads in the last several years. Their enshittification is on full blast now. News isn’t going to be as profitable because the news sites aren’t making enough money to pay Facebook for competing space with the current sponsored content providers.
Re: Re: Re:3
And News sites make more than $0 from social media. Indeed, multiple studies of the effects on pulling news outlets from google have shown news media needs their articles to appear in search results more than google needs individual articles listed in search results. Pulling those links tanked news media revenues.
You seem to assume significant value to facebook in news, but ignore the value of facebook to media companies, and then conclude facebook gets more value.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Not from revenue share, though. Just from increased traffic. Which is not nothing (and for something as big as Facebook, it’s actually quite large), to be clear.
I’m not ignoring that, I just don’t think that balances out the value they’re generating. That is a positive benefit they get from facebook (and it’s a big one). That doesn’t mean it’s fair market value for what they’re generating for FB, though.
Re: Re: Re:5
Fair market value is what the market pays, not what the thief demands.
Re: Re: Re:4
It’s lile they can’t comprehend the reality that traffic = monetary value because news sites have their own ads on their own sites that pay for more views.
Only a lying piece of shit would deliberately misaracterize that as:
Re: Re: Re:3
Fair market value for a link is zero. If anything, the value is what Facebook is providing by guiding visitors.
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Re: Re: Re:4
The issue is, it’s not just links, but actual content as well.
If a news site does some reporting to report a headline, that content has value, as far as it actually keeps people on Facebook reading/interacting with said content (which generates ad rev).
Re: Re: Re:5
No, it’s not content. It’s a link, a headline, and maybe a quote. Fair use dictates no need to compensate. And all of it is controlled by the media agency, as they define what is in the card. They can also prevent facebook from posting it, if they want.
You also fail understand that the audience is where the value is. Not then content.
Re: Re: Re:2
Now that’s most astute observation made so far in this thread.
Re: Re: Re:
Sounds like you want to dictate where Facebook must spend their money. I surmise that you must be a Republican power monger.
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Re: Re: Re:2
Only when it’s using it’s size to distort the market.
Anti-monopsony stances and market regulation to rein in large companies aren’t really a Republican thing. Bad guess on your part.
Re: Re: Re:3
My apologies, but I simply refuse to engage in a battle of wits with someone who is only half-armed. Lowers my self-esteem and all that.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Well that’s clearly not true, given you’ve twice made two ad-hominem potshots that you can’t back up, and aren’t related to the topic. You might refuse to engage on the actual topic, but that’s not quite the same thing now, is it.
Re: Re: Re:5
Guy, you’re lying to yourself if you think you’ve engaged on the issue.
All you’ve done is clutch pearls like a Karen because you think we’ve forgotten that Facebook is bad.
Re: Re: Re:3
Abuse of anti-monopsony laws and market regulation to rein in companies they don’t like is a Republican thing, though. Piss poor assertion on your part.
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Re: Re: Re:4
It’s not an abuse if it’s incorrectly priced, though, is it? That is what those laws are intended to do.
It’s not being done because I don’t like Facebook. It’s because it’s not correctly priced.
Re: Re: Re:5
[Hallucinates facts not in evidence]
Re: Re: Re:3 perhaps not the most effective plan
I am not sure that requiring social media sites to give money to large companies like News Corp is really a very effective way to ``rein in large companies”. Normally if I were wanting go rein in some company, I would not go about it by requiring people to give it money.
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Re: Re: Re:4
I’m not arguing that this is a good way to do it, I’m arguing that we shouldn’t pretend that Facebook isn’t trying to underpay.
Link taxes are pretty problematic, but at the same time, there is a legitimate issue underneath it. We can recognize that link taxes are bad, without also pretending that the content isn’t worth paying for at all.
Re: Re: Re:5
Actually, they should be paid for referring traffic to news sites. This is how referrals usually work, the site having the ads get a referral fee for each click through. Why shouldn’t FB get a referral fee for driving traffic to a site? They are doing all the job?
What “legitimate issue” is that? That you and Murdoch have the opinion that FB et al should pay for driving traffic to news sites just because ads show up in a timeline? That’s opinion, not a “legitimate issue”. It has been proven that links on FB and other social media drives traffic and revenue, it has been proven that not linking to news sites tanks their revenue. You have yet to adequately explain why FB and others should pay for providing a free service that increases the revenue for a third party. You argument that “it’s not fair” is just pure handwavium with no logic or economical/business reason behind it.
As I’ve said before, the simple solution is that everyone stop linking to news sites. Most sites that did that would hardly experience a measurable drop in ad revenue while all news sites would have their ad revenue drop to a pittance and they would be forced to buy ads to drive traffic.
That you refuse to see that the obvious thing here is that large media companies want to have the whole cake and eat it too. The normal state of things is that if you provide a service you get paid for it, you aren’t supposed to be charged for providing it. And if someone tries to charge you for your service, you stop doing the service – it’s that simple.
In every other type of business, if someone tried to pull something analogous to a link tax they would be declared fucking idiots and their business would soon fold since no sane person would want to deal with them.
That you have a hate-bonder for FB and can’t reason yourself out of a wet paperbag because of it is entirely on you.
Re:
There was never a supplier relationship here.
Also, there’s nothing wrong with dropping a bad supplier for a better one, or discontinuing products due to supply chain issues created by the members of the supply chain.
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Re: Re:
Facebook posts, and benefits from, having news content on their site. That’s a supplier relationship. It’s a relatively small portion of it’s overall business, for sure.
That’s why Facebook has occasionally (voluntarily) paid news organizations in the past to license their content: https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-offers-news-outlets-millions-of-dollars-a-year-to-license-content-11565294575?mod=article_inline
Facebook is in the business of eyeballs, and news is one form of content to keep those eyeballs on Facebook and seeing ads.
There’s nothing wrong with that, if that is what is actually happening. But it’s overly credulous to assume that’s must be the reasoning, and people seem to be taking that as the assumption simply because they don’t like link taxes.
Re: Re: Re:
Why should one company pay another company if the first company does something for free that directly benefits the first company?
And why does the second company think it’s unfair that they aren’t going to get paid from something they are already directly benefitting from?
Imagine if some company had raised the same issue with yellow pages, people would have rightly called them greedy stupid little fuckers.
Demanding payment for someone referring traffic to their site for free is pure greed, nothing more.
Re: Re: Re:2
Not just that, but why should company A pay company B if company A does something for free that directly benefits company B?
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Re: Re: Re:3
Company B is also generating profit for company A, by producing content that gets monetized on company A’s site. Company A is not doing something for free that directly benefits Company B in a vacuum, it’s monetizing content that was created by Company A.
If it was just ” company A does something for free that directly benefits company B”, then they shouldn’t.
Re: Re: Re:4
Meaning both companies make money from the relationship, so why should one company have to pay extra to the other? Yet another piss poor assertion on your part.
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Re: Re: Re:5
Yes, because the amount of money they’re making from the relationship should be reasonable. Just because you’re making nonzero money doesn’t mean it is. By that logic, you’re arguing that stuff like monopsony is a-ok, as long as the supplier makes some nonzero amount.
Re: Re: Re:6
Just no. If I provide a service that I make gobs of money from, no one is entitled to that money except me. Do you even understand economy? The only relationship that matters is if there’s a contract involved, and if there isn’t, anyone demanding “I want some of your money” can just go an fuck themselves or they provide the service themselves.
But it isn’t a monopsony, you claim it is but you haven’t actually proven it is in any coherent way that makes sense. Who is the single buyer here?
Re: Re: Re:7
The social media sites et al., which are forced to purchase their right to link back from the news orgs if they want to link to news.
Re: Re: Re:8
Then it isn’t a monopsony.
Re: Re: Re:9
*whoooooosh!*
Re: Re: Re:9
Dude, if you read veeery carefully, I’m sure there’s satire in there.
Re: Re: Re:6
And the money made by the link tax isn’t reasonable, given how much they already get from advertisers after a link in some social media post directed people to the article. Your point?
Re: Re: Re:4
“You benefit, therefore I deserve it!” is entitled greed, not merit.
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Re: Re: Re:2
The content that news sites generate, generates value for both companies. In a healthy model, the news sites should capture some of that. It’s not healthy if a large aggregator can captures too much of that value because it has more negotiating power. That’s a monopsystic type market failure.
Just because the news sites get some benefit (and they do), doesn’t mean it’s benefitting a fair amount. In a healthy market, you negotiate a split. Hence the example in the above article, which shows there’s very clearly some nonzero value being generated there, although you can argue on the exact amount.
It’s not crazy to say “content creators should get paid fairly for their content on a site that monetizes that content”.
Because whether something is fair depends on how much they’re benefitting from it. If the fair market value of something is $5, and you’re only getting paid $1, that’s not fair. You’re still directly benefitting by $1, though.
The yellow pages aren’t (also) content, though. They’re ads. They’re not actually comparable. Something like news is both. Yes, they get an advertising benefit from links, but they’re also generating content that brings in eyeballs and ad rev for Facebook.
Re: Re: Re:3
How is Facebook monetizing the links to news articles?
Re: Re: Re:4
If they are, it’s only to pay the link tax.
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Re: Re: Re:4
They don’t monetize links alone directly, but they monetize the content of those articles/news. If you spend more time on Facebook reading about something, or talking to your friend about a news link they posted, that’s ad rev for Facebook.
Link taxes are an indirect proxy to measure that (not necessarily a good proxy, mind you)
Re: Re: Re:5
Just like what every other site does that have ads and links, but somehow FB is different.
Ie, you want news orgs to be paid because 3rd parties are discussing their content on places that has ads?
Hahahahahaha, omg. You want news orgs to be able to monetize 3rd party discussion since they may see ads. That’s the logical conclusion of your argument. JFC..
Re: Re: Re:5
If you spend more time on a news site reading about something, or talking to your friend about a news link they posted, that’s ad rev for the news site. Your point?
Re: Re: Re:3
Great. But you aren’t advocating for a fair market negotiation. Your entire bit is begging the question.
The laws assume Facebook gets more value than News media. This is an unproven assertion. Moreover, at no point has it been shown the value facebook gains is value News media could have captured absent facebook. Therefore, the laws which dictate that Facebook negotiate are premised not on fair market negotiation. They are premised on the assumption that Facebook is extracting value from news media in excess of the value facebook provides in return. Which would be a core issue to establish before negotiations.
Those you argue against believe the relationship is symbiotic, not parasitic – News media needs readers to share articles. Not wants. Needs. Any youtuber can tell you: If News Media needs views for ad revenue or driving consumers to a paywall or to a donation box, it is absolutely critical that its content be discoverable and readers share to wider audiences.
I adore your appropriation of the language of independent media to support the Wall Street Journal. But very explicitly, a link is not content. This is a fee for posting links, not for posting content.
Your willingness to lie is telling.
Re: Re: Re:3
The solution is of course for the aggregator not to link to news sites then, the news sites can then capture all the value for themselves.
You are aware that in any other instance were a company want more eyeballs on their content, they have to pay for that privilege. Most companies would be ecstatic to get free advertising and eyeballs. The truth is that news sites benefit immensely from social media and it’s specifically the very large news media corporations that are the proponents of link tax, like Newscorp, Springer etc. They know that if they can get the whole idea of link tax acceptable it’ll kill the smaller players on the market.
It is crazy because they aren’t actually monetizing the content, they are monetizing the interest in the content by providing links to it. I’m not sure you understand the distinction.
A very naïve and simplistic argument that doesn’t reflect reality. Who benefits most from getting 1 million views on a news article, the referrer or the news site? Compare that to getting only 10000 views on a news article because no social media want to pay for referring traffic. It all comes down to something called “contact cost” or CPM, a term used in advertising. If you aren’t familiar with the concept then you also don’t understand the economics of media and are arguing from a point of ignorance how the whole ecosystem work.
It’s directly comparable, the content of the media doesn’t actually matter. Companies bought ads in the YP, people saw those ads while looking for information. Do you think it would make sense for companies in the YP getting paid because people could use the YP to find them next to an ad? Compare that to a news aggregator who list headlines + links to news sites while simultaneously having ads on the page.
Re: Re: Re:
And what do you call a supplier who wants payment for something not worth the amount of that payment? Most of us would call that business ‘greedy’. And that’s the very definition of a bad supplier. Case closed.
(Unless of course one is a Republican, in which case they’d say “that’s just good business!)
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Re: Re: Re:2
How do you know it’s something not worth paying for, or if it’s something worth paying for but they’re trying to underpay by threatening to walk away? That happens in business negotiations all the time.
Facebook clearly makes more than $0 from that content. I think you can definitely reasonably argue that the current price is too high, but it’s also not 0, either.
To me, it seems like people are pretending to think it’s not worth paying for, just because they don’t like link taxes.
Re: Re: Re:3
Arianty: projects that everyone else is credulous.
Also Arianty: swallows the “Facebook isn’t paying what they should” corporate propaganda hook line amd sinker.
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Re: Re: Re:4
That’s not projection. There’s a bunch of comments actively claiming it, including the originally cited one.
Can you give an argument for why paying zero is the right price? Because I’m happy to hear it.
Sure, maybe I’m being a sucker, but it should be really easy to say why Facebook shouldn’t be paying for it if that’s the case. And the fact that people don’t give that argument is pretty telling (and pretty frustrating).
And I didn’t come to that argument because of News Corp or whatever. I’m very aware they’re scumbags just trying to parasite (and that is a huge problem with link taxes). Doesn’t mean Facebook can’t also be problematic.
Re: Re: Re:5
Why don’t you ask that question of your strawmam, as theu’re the only one holding such a position here.
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Re: Re: Re:6
So you do think Facebook should pay for news?
Re: Re: Re:7
“So you do think Facebook should pay for news?”
There is news on Facebook?
Wait .. you are calling that news??
LOL
Re: Re: Re:7
That a link on facebook contains news content is a lie and a strawman.
Re: Re: Re:7
..is not what anyone literate would read.
Re: Re: Re:5
How’s about the fact that Facebook News sends readers to the news websites, without which readership those sites couldn’t survive? Nice argument. At least, it would be if it wasn’t so easy to shoot down.
Re: Re: Re:5
Are you, though? Literally the last time this argument was brought up, you were asked if you would pay more than you currently do for news. You answered that you would not.
So why do we have to beggar ourselves to do something that even you won’t lower yourself to do?
Re: Re: Re:3
Links are not content. liar. liar. pants. On. fire.
The value in news is the content. What facebook shares is not even a snippet.
Re: Re: Re:3
We know it’s not worth paying for because a law had to be created to force the transfer of funds. In the few cases that it folks thought it had value, they had negotiated rates. But those didn’t appear to work out, so Facebook is shutting down.
Re: Re: Re:4
Really? 😁
Re: Re: Re:
You referred to a Wall Street Journal article, which is immediately suspect. The rest of us here know that the WSJ is nothing more than FoxNews, the dead-tree edition, and has been ever since R. Murdoch bought it.
Next time, try using something beside alternate facts… we might take you more seriously.
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Re: Re: Re:2
I don’t like the WSJ either, but it’s a verifiable factual claim, so I think it’s fine in this case. I just grabbed it because it was the first link I found. If you’d prefer alternatives, here ya go:
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/facebook-reportedly-offers-media-outlets-millions-to-license-content/
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/in-strategy-shift-facebook-seeks-to-pay-millions-to-license-news.1456425/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/08/tech/facebook-news-outlets-license-rights-content/index.html
Are those good enough?
I somehow doubt that. You could’ve easily factchecked this if you actually cared about engaging seriously, instead of trying to gotcha an irrelevant URL.
Re: Re: Re:3
Did you notice that those articles are from 2019 and referenced the Facebook News tab that is now shutting down in multiple countries or has already shut down?
As you said: “You could’ve easily factchecked this if you actually cared about engaging seriously”
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Re: Re: Re:4
Yes, I’m aware. I think it’s still relevant to show the point. There was clearly some value there. If it was zero as people are claiming, they wouldn’t have even bothered in the first place.
And I did. Which is why I specifically said in the past, in the post talking about the WSJ article. That was for exactly that reason.
I also specifically doublechecked the dates against the WSJ article, by the by.(It’s also not the first time, they’ve had several similar projects like this before, and killed them)
Re: Re: Re:5
What it shows is that Facebook tried it and then found out that it wasn’t worth what they were paying for it.
Re:
Physician, heal thyself.
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Re: Re:
It can both be true that link taxes are bad, and that Facebook is a megacorp that is perfectly happy to leverage its size to extract extra value beyond what is economically justifiable. They’re not mutually exclusive.
You don’t have to stan for Facebook to dislike/fight link taxes, and people on Techdirt wouldn’t (and don’t) apply this level of credulity to anything else Facebook does/says. And for good reason.
Re: Re: Re:
Well, where the credulity comes in is where, using that logic, my local newspaper should be paying local grocers, drugstores, furniture outlets, florists, and all the other local businesses trying to attract customers, for the privilege of hosting adverts and flyers for those businesses…
For some reason (I can’t imagine why) most of us think that’s a asininely illogical position.
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Re: Re: Re:2
(Sorry, repost, I didn’t hit reply properly the first time)
No, it wouldn’t. The local newspaper doesn’t benefit from ads, other than what it gets paid. The business model behind newspapers was make content, get attention/eyeballs (and subscriptions, it’s not a single revenue stream), and sell that attention for companies who want ads. News links are not solely adverts (although they are, partially!), they’re also content.
And there are real world examples showing why it wouldn’t, given that Facebook has voluntarily paid news sites in the past: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/in-strategy-shift-facebook-seeks-to-pay-millions-to-license-news/
That’s happened for a reason. It’s content. Facebook gets a direct benefit from said content. The more it keeps people on the site, the more ads they see.
(Yes, news sites get some of that benefit, in the form of traffic)
Probably because you’re either misunderstanding that logic, or strawmanning it. “Sites should kick back some of the ad rev to content creators that keep people on the site” is not a remotely controversial opinion, people are just mad about link taxes specifically.
Re: Re: Re:3
They do. It’s called “paying for adverts.”
Re: Re: Re:3
They do. They allow those creators to use the site for no money. What, you think people posting on websites aren’t creating content?
Re: Re: Re:
Translator note:
Is trollese for “I have no reasoned arguments to make.”
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Re: Re: Re:2
I already made an argument for it. You didn’t give an argument in reply. The only person trolling here is yourself.
Re: Re: Re:3
…projects the troll deliberately lying that Facebook gives nothing of value to news sites.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Quote me where I said Facebook gives nothing of value to news sites. You can’t, because I didn’t say that. You shouldn’t call others liars when you’re lying yourself.
I very specifically said it doesn’t pay fair market value, not that it gives nothing of value. Big distinction.
The traffic from Facebook is extremely valuable to news companies.
Re: Re: Re:5
Yes, so why do they need to pay an additional fee to news sites when those sites are already being compensated in the form of increased traffic? I’d argue that is more than fair.
Also, is Facebook posting the news links themselves, or are Facebook users posting them? Because the argument fails completely if users are posting the links. If anyone is paying a link tax at that point, it should be the party that posted the link. Can a news agency post a link on its own Facebook page and then expect Facebook to pay them the link tax? That doesn’t seem right at all.
Does Facebook benefit from news links? Sure. That’s the 3%. Might they be willing to pay a nuisance fee rather than litigate the issue? Again, sure, companies do that all the time, and that’s the whole idea behind patent trolling (for example). But there comes a point when it’s just not worth it to pay the troll anymore. Perhaps Facebook has reached that point.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Why do you think that’s more than fair, though? I would argue that they generate quite a lot more value than that. And I think there’s pretty decent evidence of that, including looking at how FB has paid news sites voluntarily in the past.
I don’t get see why Facebook should get to capture most of the value, here. And it feels like the only reason they do is because they’re so massive, that news sites are forced to go along with it, or risk being cut off entirely. That’s not a fair negotiation.
That feels like “paying in exposure”. Sure, exposure is good (especially from something as big as Facebook), but it’s not as good as actually getting paid properly.
As far as I’m aware, it’s mostly the latter. There are some Facebook products like Facebook News, but seem to be not hugely used and mostly getting discontinued.
The thing is, if you spend more time on Facebook because you’re talking to your buddy about a news article they posted, that’s still ad rev for Facebook. They don’t care why you’re on the site, as long as you’re on it.
To be clear, I’m not arguing for a link tax here. They have problems (especially in how they could potentially get gamed). I’m just saying people are being way too generous in interpreting Facebook’s actions here. I think you can think that link taxes have problems, while at the same time recognizing that Facebook probably just doesn’t want to pay, either.
Well, that’s the thing, right? 3% of something as big as Facebook is a massive amount of money. It’s small for Facebook, so they can afford to lose it, but that’s literally millions of dollars.
Possibly, but it seems very generous to me to assume that’s the case. And it feels like people are assuming that just because they don’t like link taxes, and for no other reason.
If we’re going to say that might be the case, I’d like to see an argument for why we think that’s the case.
Re: Re: Re:7
“Facebook captures most of the value” the bad-faith troll continues to assert without evidence.
…says nobody with the slightest comprehension of what the linking actually results in.
Re: Re: Re:5
You didn’t need to actually say it when you clearly implied it. Ever heard the saying “Actions speak louder than words”?
The Regal Warrington Crossing came calling. They want their IMAX projector back.
Re: Re: Re:
So tell us, what value is Facebook extracting beyond what is economically justifiable?
That’s one big disingenuous argument since it isn’t about Facebook, it’s about the sheer greediness of people and companies that want link taxes to extract money from something they are getting for free.
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Re: Re: Re:2
When you stay on Facebook reading content (like news), they generate ad revenue. That ad revenue is more than $0.
Maybe you can tell me, why do you think the appropriate price for Facebook to pay is zero?
The comment that I initially replied to specifically made the argument that FB was trying to drop it because it wasn’t economically worthwhile to FB. That comment was talking specifically about FB.
Yes, Facebook is only one example in a broader discussion over link taxes and their pros/cons. But the reason it comes up is because it agreed to pay (and is now dropping that agreement), so it’s a very useful example in the overall discussion about whether this content is worth social media companies paying for.
And the irony is, the reason FB and co don’t want this, is precisely because they’re extracting value from something they can get for free if they flex their market power, even if it’s worth paying for. Why pay for it if they don’t have to? That’s it’s own form of greediness. And the only reason people are supporting it is because they dislike link taxes.
Re: Re: Re:3
You don’t read the news on Facebook, you get a head-line and a link to the news. Plus, I specifically asked what value is Facebook extracting beyond what is economically justifiable?
Facebook could just stop providing links to news, that’ll exactly show us who is extracting value from what and what the appropriate price is.
So if someone doesn’t like link taxes and defends Facebook because of it, that someone is now a Facebook “stan”? That was the argument you put forward. Kinda fucked up if you ask me…
Anyone can place ads next to links, it’s how the whole fucking internet has been working for decades at this point. But when FB does it, “Oh my god! The sky is falling! Facebook bad! Bad Facebook!”. The moment someone has to pay for linking to another site you have started breaking the internet, period.
What you call “extracting value” isn’t, it’s actually adding value – why else do you think the proponents of link tax are demanding payment which is only possible because an intermediary, like social media, adds value. This is easily proven by looking at what happened to news-sites that social media stopped linking to, they tanked hard.
It seems you have bought Murdoch’s arguments, hook line and sinker.
No, that’s just you not understanding the bigger picture which is this: Any argument for link tax is an argument for a broken and siloed internet.
Re: Re: Re:4
Additionally, embedded snippets show what the news sites design them to. Their claim facebook/google/twitter were “stealing” the news by showing “too much” in news links are disingenuous because they’re the ones in control of that.
Re: Re: Re:3
So should Facebook users now be entitled to a share of Facebook’s revenue? Is that the argument you’re making? Maybe you can tell me, why do you think the appropriate price for Facebook to pay is zero? (Free clue: the correct answer is “yes.”)
Re: Re: Re:3
This appears to be the fundamental problem….you don’t appear understand how links work. People don’t read the news on Facebook.
Re: Re: Re: Even the haters hate it
This is obviously your first day here if you think anyone at TD stans FaceBook.
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Re: Re: Re:2
They don’t, normally. On this particular issue, yes they do, as they’re doing now. And the reason it bugs me is because I know they wouldn’t in any other situation, the only reason it happens in this case is because people don’t like link taxes.
And the reason I know that is because it’s not my first day here. I’ve already seen people make this same argument on previous TD articles about link taxes. Would you like me to go link some?
Re: Re: Re:3 Maybe you’re the one with the problem
I’d like you to go link some(where else) because all you’ve managed to do, is to start a fight with every single person in the comments.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Forgot this in the previous comment, and can’t edit, but I should also point out:
people on Techdirt wouldn’t (and don’t) apply this level of credulity to anything else Facebook does/says. And for good reason. is literally explicitly acknowledging that TD usually doesn’t stan FB. That was specifically in there to address that sort of reply
Re: Re: Re:4
Why are you still talking?
Re: Re: Re:3
…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
Re: Re: Re:3
Your argument.
Re: Re: Re:
See, there’s your problem.
You think that by us supporting a company telling the Australian news corporations to sod off, you think we stan for that company, which happens to be a company many people – Techdirt included – have disagreed with.
You’re the one who went with the whole “the credulity is insane” attempt at a mic-drop to start with.
Want to know how I underpay for news? I tell people about the highlights of what news I’ve read that day. Not on Facebook, I read articles with my paid subscription and discuss these topics with others as a point of interest. You gonna jack up the cost of my subscription fee because I helped others underpay for news, too?
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Re: Re: Re:2
No, I don’t think TD stans it in general. That’s what people on Techdirt wouldn’t (and don’t) apply this level of credulity to anything else Facebook does/says specifically addressed- that they normally disagree with FB.
It’s only on this specific issue where they stan it, and it’s specifically because people dislike link taxes. Which for some reason makes them want to defend FB, when it can be the case that link taxes are bad, and FB is also bad on this issue.
It wasn’t a mic-drop? Or at least not intended to be one.
That depends: a) are you monetizing that yourself? Because that matters a lot here. The reason FB and similar are targeted is because they’re monetizing that content. You talking to your friend doesn’t. If you’re monetizing it, I absolutely think you should be kicking some of that back.
But speaking more generally, yes, if that underpaid for news at a large enough scale to be problematic, we’d have to find ways to raise revenue elsewhere. We’re lucky that it doesn’t, and newspapers were/are able to be wildly successful in spite of that. But conceptually, it absolutely could’ve been a legitimate problem.
That said- this is already priced into newspaper pricing. They don’t have to jack it up, you’re already paying it. It just worked out anyway, so it was no big deal.
Re: Re: Re:3
You keep repeating this, but it’s false because you don’t seem to understand consistency on bit.
Re: Re: Re:3
Give it up. Your strawman is looking so battered now.
Re: Re: Re:3
Guy, you realize that people can agree with people they usually disagree with on one thing, right?
If a mass murderer gets starved in prison because of brutal conditions in there, and I agree that maybe random punishment in prisons shouldn’t be a thing, I didn’t just support his mass murder spree. Yet Techdirt agrees with Facebook this one time, maybe, and this is the hill you’re fighting tooth and nail to die on?
If it really was no big deal, you wouldn’t be losing this much shit over it.
Re: Re: Re:
I don’t stan for Facebook (I don’t even have an account), but I don’t have to to see how harmful link taxes can be, especially for smaller sites. (First the news corporations, then every other website.) The two aren’t mutually exclusive positions, ignorant link tax shill.
Re: Re:
He can’t – that’d be practicing medicine without a license.
But of course, he’d also be guilty of medical malpractice!
Re:
And that’s legal, if unethical, but that’a reality for you.
Why are you defending the actions of News Corp? You know…
THE VERY PEOPLE TRYING TO PUSH THE LINK TAXES AND THE ONES ENGAGING IN THUGGISH BEHAVIOR?
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Re: Re:
I’m not saying it’s illegal. But people are pretending it’s not unethical, and that Facebook is just an innocent party here acting in good faith, just because they don’t like link taxes.
I’m not, News Corp is also garbage, and is trying to leverage link taxes for selfish garbage reasons. I’m just pointing out that Facebook also isn’t good here. Both can be bad.
Re: Re: Re:
By saying Facebook bad, you are implicitly defending News Corp, and by extension, the Murdochs and the Republican Party.
So again, why are you defending the actual perpatrators of the link tax?
Facebook has been deficient in many, many ways, and TD has reported on the many deficiencies, from mideration, to being a vector of disinformation, to data privacy.
Yes, it’s ironic that Mike’s siding with Facebook on link taxes. But that’s only because link taxes are bad, and on this ONE particular issue, Facrbook is doing the right thing, albeit belatedly.
However, you seem to be unwilling to look at the facts.
So, all I will ask is this:
SHOILD FACEBOOK CONTINUE TO PAY NEWS CORP AND OTHER NEWS AGENCIES THE DANEGELD?
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Re: Re: Re:2
No, it’s not. There can be situations where both sides are bad guys. There isn’t always a good guy and a bad guy. They’re both bad, for different reasons, even if one is going to end up at a good result because of those bad reasons.
My issue isn’t that they’re siding with Facebook. I think you can very reasonably argue that link taxes are not worth it, so Facebook fighting link taxes is a good thing, on net.
That does not mean you have to pretend that Facebook is doing this purely because it’s not worth paying, and not because it’s flexing it’s negotiating muscle. You can just say you think it’s good that it’s flexing that muscle. That’s totally reasonable?
Re: Re: Re:3
And that’s why one should try be consistent in judging specific actions regardless who is responsible for that action.
Who flexed what muscle now? You kinda ignore that the whole thing came about because Murdoch’s pet-politicians crafted a law to extract money from social media. FB is now saying fuck that and you think they are the ones flexing?
You have really been gorging on Murdoch-media, haven’t you?
Re: Re: Re:4
I did that once, but it gave me parasitic gastroenteritis. Never again.
Re: Re: Re:3
Oh, so you’re okay with us fighting link taxes after all, and you’re okay with Facebook fighting it, but you absolutely need us to have our vocabulary policed so Facebook doesn’t look too spotless, among a community that regularly complains about Facebook being invasive… that’s what you’ve been arguing so hard for? A fucking perceived attitude problem?
Re:
Actually, this is akin to an automaker screaming about blackmail and extortion because I can’t afford to run a car anymore.
Re: Re:
Actually, it’s not so much as ‘can’t afford’ as it’s more about ‘don’t need to’. I don’t run a car anymore because I can just as easily use Uber, Lyft, a taxi, or even public transportation… and still get to my destination. The fact that the money I spend to do so now goes to different suppliers than a car manufacturer doesn’t enter into it at all. What does enter into it is that I happen to like supporting my local suppliers, that’s all.
Someone arguing honestly in good faith, the way Arianty has never done here, would not be denying the reality that the news agencies were not only being compensated fairly for links, but that the news sites got the greater benefit from the symbiotic arrangement, before link taxes corrupted it into a parasitic relationship.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/31/news-publishers-admit-they-get-value-from-search-traffic-even-as-they-demand-extra-compensation-for-it/
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/14/latest-data-canadian-media-needs-facebook-more-than-facebook-needs-canadian-media/
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Re:
The fact that news agencies got compensation for links, does not imply that that compensation was fair.
Someone arguing in good faith would be able to show why it was fair, instead of making ad hominem attacks about claims someone else never made.
It was more important to news sites than it was to Facebook. That’s not because news sites got a greater benefit, but because it was less important to Facebook, which is both a) far larger and b) diversified amongst a bunch of different types of content.
Re: Re:
Correct, so why are you arguing for news corps getting even more compensation? You accuse us of stanning for Facebook just because we’re saying how unfair the link tax is, which is a hypocritical assertion given the fact that you’re clearly stanning for Murdoch Media and the like.
News agencies’ “nobody should make money but us! stance comes from solely from the greed and entitlement of the degenerative brain disease known as copyright maximalism, nothing more.
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No, it wouldn’t. The local newspaper doesn’t benefit from ads, other than what it gets paid. The business model behind newspapers was make content, get attention/eyeballs (and subscriptions, it’s not a single revenue stream), and sell that attention for companies who want ads. News links are not solely adverts (although they are, partially!), they’re also content.
And there are real world examples showing why it wouldn’t, given that Facebook has voluntarily paid news sites in the past: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/in-strategy-shift-facebook-seeks-to-pay-millions-to-license-news/
That’s happened for a reason. It’s content. Facebook gets a direct benefit from said content. The more it keeps people on the site, the more ads they see.
(Yes, news sites get some of that benefit, in the form of traffic)
Probably because you’re either misunderstanding that logic, or strawmanning it, because link taxes suck. “Sites should kick back some of the ad rev to content creators that keep people on the site” is not a remotely controversial opinion, people are just mad about link taxes specifically.
Re:
(Yes, news sites get some of that benefit, in the form of traffic)
‘Some’ benefit, talk about loaded phrasing. There’s a reason publishers are currently and have historically lost their gorram minds when companies decide not to pay the danegeld and it’s because they know damn well that they benefit enormously from having the likes of social media and/or search engines linking to their content.
On the other side the reason companies like Meta and Google(when they still had a spine/brain) are willing to cut news out entirely is because they crunched the numbers and figured out that news companies need social media and/or search engines a hell of a lot more than social media/search engines need them, and paying the danegeld is costing them more than they get from hosting those links.
You can’t honestly have it both ways, if you want to argue that social media benefits from having links to news articles and therefore they should pay for that value then news agencies should also be obligated to pay for the value they get in the form of free traffic from social media that they would otherwise have had to pay to get.
Re:
If you think so, why do you keep wanting Facebook to not fight it so badly?
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I’m not saying Facebook shouldn’t fight it, I’m saying we shouldn’t pretend that it isn’t fighting it because it wants to underpay. That’s not mutually exclusive with link taxes sucking.
What I want is people to recognize what Facebook is doing here, and why, even if they also think link taxes are bad. Instead of pretending like Facebook is just being the reasonable good guy.
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If you’re going to plant your flag on the ‘social media benefits from having those links, therefore they should pay for them and refusing to do so is underpaying’ hill I’ll just repeat what I said in a comment right above:
You can’t honestly have it both ways, if you want to argue that social media benefits from having links to news articles and therefore they should pay for that value then news agencies should also be obligated to pay for the value they get in the form of free traffic from social media that they would otherwise have had to pay to get.
So then, what would you say the ‘fair market value’ should be for the free traffic that news agencies get from social media, keeping in mind that ‘none’ is off the table since clearly that would be them ‘underpaying’ for the financial benefit that they are getting from something that they would otherwise have to pay to get.
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Not zero, but pretty clearly less than the benefits of ad rev social media generates off of it. I think if you wanted an exact dollar amount, you’d have to work at one of those news sites to know for sure.
It’s not an easy question to ballpark beyond just really broad strokes. Basically, you’d need to know how much traffic it drives, and how that converts to eyeballs/ad rev or new subs for the news site. I don’t think we’d be able to get those numbers as the public. It’s definitely not zero, though, they’re getting some amount out of it.
To be clear here, I am very explicitly not saying it is none. For companies as big as Facebook, it’s actually quite a lot. (And the fact that it’s a lot is important, because it’s what gives Facebook leverage in these negotiations in the first place. The threat to remove links entirely only works precisely because that traffic is valuable. If it wasn’t, it’d be an empty threat)
What I’m saying is it looks very clearly lower than what they’d be compensated if they had equal negotiating power. That doesn’t have to mean none, though, there’s a huge delta between those two things.
When you looking at how they’re being compensated, the extra traffic definitely counts towards that. So yes, that goes on the side of compensation towards news sites.
How much do you think the FMV of the traffic is for the news sites, and how much do you think the FMV of what they’re providing Facebook is? I don’t really see how you can say that it just perfectly balances out.
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So you don’t actually know the economics and are just offering up platitudes that FB must pay something because it’s “unfair” if they don’t.
Do you know how many ads FB show in conjunction to external links? Is it for every link? Every tenth? What is the ration? Do you know how revenue FB gets from an ad that occurs next to a link?
Do you have any answers to the above? Do you even have the tiniest inkling of the numbers? It doesn’t matter what you think, what matters is factual knowledge, not feelz of “fairness” or somesuch nonsense.
“The traffic is valuable”…. And that should actually tell you something profound, but apparently it’s entirely lost on you.
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Not zero, but pretty clearly less than the benefits of ad rev social media generates off of it.
One side of the equation is willing to remove links entirely if keeping them requires payment.
The other side regularly loses their gorram minds whenever the removal option is even raised, never mind when it’s followed through.
The reactions of the two sides make pretty damn clear which one benefits more from the relationship before it’s turned from symbiotic to parasitic and it’s not social media.
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OK, and who generated that content, eh? I’d posit that in this case, those links are user-generated, not content created by FB.
Now, given that you made this argument, can you still blithely advocate that NewsCorp deserves to have FB pay it for the content that NewsCorp itself generated? All other considerations aside, the question remains – does NewsCorp deserve to receive cash (over and above a symbiotic) benefit?
And while I’m at it… For the record, so to speak…
It’s called a link tax because it’s government mandated. The money doesn’t flow into the government coffers, true, but the government used it’s power to mandate that two private parties will sit down and negotiate. But the kicker is, one of those two parties is now subject to penalties if it wishes to have an equitable contract. IOW, the government mandated that one side will win a lopsided (undeserved) benefit, even before the negotiations ever begin. That’s what Facebook is objecting to, even aside from the internet-debilitating fact of paying for a link by any means other that unhindered negotiation. What that law specifically ignored is that the links under consideration were user-generated content, and not content made up by the social media platform.
Damn but it’s sad that you can’t see this.
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The same goes for much of the content, if you think about it.
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This is deranged.
Thus, no surprise that the police-hating editor(s) love it.
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[Projects facts contrary to evidence]