I have to admit, I'm openly wondering what's stopping someone like me from re-uploading the app onto my own site and pairing it with something like an MD5 hash to ensure its authenticity, then publishing instructions on how to sideload the app onto an Android phone. After all, my site isn't actually an app store by any means.
Way back in the day when I was still going to university, there were many fellow students who had the impression that they were going to inherently be getting ahead in life simply because of their post secondary education. It didn't matter what they were studying, they were going to be the "leaders of tomorrow" and nothing was going to stop them once they hit graduation.
I basically pointed out that there is nothing to back up their wild ideas of being rich millionaires and highly paid executives at the time. The jobs that existed at that day were crummy, entry level, dead end jobs. The few good positions out there were being given to people who were close to executives and higher up members of that organization. I had plenty of data to support the idea that I was entering into a pretty brutal world where you had little to no shot.
There were a few that knew that this sort of thing was going to hit them sometime after graduation, so I wasn't exactly alone in realizing what a shit show I was in for once the gown and cap had been worn, but most honestly believed that the world was their oyster and they were destined for greatness. I strongly suspect that reality hit 99% of them sometime after graduation when they routinely got turned down for even "middle of the road" positions.
When I hear that my "cynical" take on bad job prospects no matter what is becoming the norm for students these days, a part of me is relieved to know that younger generations have wisened up since my university days. They at least know what they are in for once their education paths have reached the traditional end. At the very least, it's possible for them to plan accordingly instead of naively running out into the world and shouting "I'm here, throw money at me now!" without a second plan like most fellow students in my day did.
The days of honestly believing "get an education, automatically get a high paying job right away" appear to be over. Depressing? Sure. Realistic? Yes.
Can't say I'm surprised. Bell has been on quite a roll of bad behaviour over the last several months alone. They managed to scam the federal government out of $40 million, then proceeded to hand that money directly to shareholders in the form of increased dividend. They told the government the money would be used to save journalism jobs only to fire 10% of its workforce. It was a move so dirty, even the government got pissed off at Bell. They hauled them into committee to explain themselves and Bell just sat there and gave non-stop non-answers and wasted every MPs time in an effort to play games.
Keep in mind that all that happened after they started begging the provinces for money and filed paperwork with the CRTC to get out of paying their fair share for the system.
It's almost as if Bell is on a mission to piss off as many people as possible and counting up the angry messages they get afterwards and working on scoring a personal best for most hated telecom company in Canada. It really makes me wonder if they are run by people who are related to Comcast executives at this point.
I feel bad for Mike and all the staff at TechDirt to have to go through this. In Canada, we (not just my site, but all publications that produce news content) went through all of this last year and it was extremely stressful. No one knew for sure who would get the boot from Meta and who wouldn't. In a way, it was like drawing lots for every news website. If you were lucky, you drew a paper that said you could continue your career. If you were unlucky, you drew the lot that said your career, and the careers of everyone working for you, are finished over night.
Even after going through the logic of how the Online News Act worked and the logic pointed to my site being safe (as I do focus 'on a particular topic' and I only work for myself), it was stressful because if the platform thought otherwise, you were done and there was no "appealing" to anyone to straighten something like that out. I was just sitting here hoping Meta would get my classification right.
It's a kind of situation I don't wish on anyone else out there. Now that it's entirely possible that TechDirt (not a sure thing, but not impossible, either) could go through this with Google, I'm feeling really bad for everyone here. Best case scenario if TechDirt gets delisted is that a chunk of revenue vanishes overnight (and I think TechDirt is at least better positioned to take such a hit than a site like mine).
Hopefully, the US link tax doesn't come down to that. If it does, Meta, at least, is probably dropping news links if the law stupidly moves ahead and gets passed, so this could very well hurt sites like TechDirt (I don't know the specific wording of the CJPA to know for sure or not as of yet) anyway.
Well, best of luck moving forward navigating this whole mess. I can tell you from experience it isn't pleasant by any means and I wished you all didn't have to go through this. At the very least, I'll be an interested party watching this all unfold.
A major problem I personally see is that, in the midst of all of this, outlets that are actually trying to do a reasonably good job end up getting drowned out by the noise in the process. I know Mike Masnick, Michael Geist, and myself have experienced this first hand (very likely others in the process). Whenever an article gets published critical of a particular political party's effort, we get cast as someone working on the other side of the political aisle. Then when one of us notes problems on the other side of the political aisle, we get cast as someone shilling for the other party instead. Rarely does the substance of our arguments get accounted for in all of this. Instead, it's trying to paint us as a partisan for one party or another.
In the process of all of this, people such as myself get de-legitimized, making it harder for people to support an actual neutral fact-based source. So, it's harder to get anyone to subscribe or support someone like myself. Further, companies are less likely to support such an outlet because people like us aren't there to help pad their corporate profits. With things like well-funded fake newspapers and large media companies choosing to not do their job, it makes it all the harder to stand out as a smaller and more honest outlet.
I used to think that if you started a website and regularly produced high quality original news articles on a regular basis, it was possible to at least get your foot in the door of profitability so you could hire more journalists and grow your business. With 11 years of effort, I've learned the hard way that producing good quality content gets you nowhere other than getting that nice warm fuzzy feeling that you're doing good work and doing your part to better the media ecosystem at large. That really only applies to websites that have started up well before the 2010's such as Techdirt. At that point, you are able to ride the momentum of your past success to carry on what you are doing. Start a website after 2010 and you'll learn that the days of high quality content production equating to success are LONG gone. In its place are those who are just gaming the system via throwing vast quantities of money at "marketing", SEO tricks/hacking, and design among other things (and even design is becoming questionable as being advantageous these days).
All this lines up with the rise of actual fake news outlets. When the internet at large has become little more than a pay to win system, only those with large chunks of money to throw around can succeed. It really doesn't become rocket science to figure out why bullshit artists pushing a partisan agenda end up succeeding so often these days while legitimate news sources go under or shut down and get added to the boulevard of broken dreams.
The SOPA fight is something I had hoped I would never have to live through again. Profoundly disappointed to find out that it could be coming back for another round.
I have a lot of other stuff going on in Canada to report on as it is, but you don't have to tell me twice about the importance of fighting against something like SOPA. This is not something to screw around with. Raising awareness on my end as best I can: https://www.freezenet.ca/mpa-pushing-to-bring-internet-killing-bill-sopa-back/
Ready to join the battle wherever I can.
I've been following the developments of link taxes pretty closely. In fact, I did a writeup on it today talking about the panic rising among Australian publishers and how the Australian government could cause even more damage if it chose to double down on its behaviour (namely, things could get so out of hand that Meta blocks Australian altogether).
There's been enormous damage already caused by link taxes in Canada. Not too long ago, I was detailing out another newspaper that has been around for 124 years announced that it was going under. Meta dropping news links was likely a contributing factor.
Even the large players were not safe from the damaging implications of their own greed. The CBC, for instance, was forced to admit that Meta dropping news links had negatively impacted their reach. Their sites traffic, in some areas, was growing, but that growth was hampered by Meta's news link drop.
Australian publishers, meanwhile, are about to share the same fate as Canadian publishers. Once those deals expire, those news links are very likely going "bye-bye" and Australian publishers are probably going to push a massive advertising campaign to encourage readers to download their app or follow them on unaffected platforms (or go directly to their website and bookmark their page). It will lead to a temporary rise in their readership, but it's unlikely that such an effort will be sustainable. Even worse is that they'll likely continue to torpedo their reputation by publishing conspiracy theories about how Facebook is somehow going to turn into a hive of disinformation without their presence (that didn't happen in Canada and it won't likely happen in Australia).
It bears repeating just how self-inflicted this situation is. Had the media not gone on a psychotic rampage, demanding payments for linking to them, their declining presence would've actually continued for the next several years. Instead, they chose to kick themselves off of platforms at a much faster rate because they were greedy and self-centred.
The evidence is in: link taxes are a bad idea and are a sure fire method of unleashing a considerable amount of harm on the media. As long as other governments don't learn this lesson, we'll continue to see history repeat itself over and over again. That is: link taxes pass, links to news content gets dropped on platforms, news businesses get hurt or outright go out of business entirely (this with the possibility of the largest players getting bailed out by the government).
We've already had a demonstration of what repealing Section 230 does. That was SESTA/FOSTA and the results were numerous websites shutting down immediately.
The war on innovation continues, I see.
It's infuriating to witness a bi-partisan effort to undo decades of innovation and economic progress like this, but it's not something that is exclusive to the US.
In Canada, we have the same sort of thing where the Conservative party thinks that we must have mass internet censorship implemented because there might be some icky adult content somewhere along the line. The Liberal party wants mass internet censorship because someone might get offended by a troll somewhere along the line. Compounding problems is the fact that the other parties are just smiling and going along with both efforts because if the larger parties are for mass censorship, then it must be good to support it.
The large media companies are cheering this all on, going so far as to call anyone supporting free speech is little more than extremists trying to get more Donald Trumps in this world (I wish I was joking: https://www.freezenet.ca/canadian-mainstream-media-finally-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud-they-hate-free-speech/ )
I view the efforts to repeal Section 230 as nothing different than the censorship efforts in Canada. Stamping out free speech on the internet has been a top priority for politicians for years. The media is on board with this because they legitimately think that by doing away with the internet, they'll get their monopoly of audiences back like in the 60's and 70's (it won't work).
Speech has legitimately become the new piracy. Government is working hard to stamp it out. Whether that is through litigation, filtering technology, Deep Packet Inspection, or whatever else they'll come up with, they don't care. If the internet is gone, they can go back to business as usual. By removing the financial incentives to use the internet, they think that the internet can be defeated somehow.
The problem here is, of course, the fact that removing the financial incentives for businesses to start up online won't make the internet magically go away. All it does is offer incentives for other countries to fill the voids left behind (i.e. being a web hosting company, offering VPN services, etc.). Further, it pushes all the economic benefits out of the country (and there's TONNES of that). It means America misses out on all of the benefits that come with having a free and open internet.
Evidence of this came from the file-sharing world where shutting down the likes of Morpheus, Napster, etc. meant that the opportunities went elsewhere (The Pirate Bay and several others out there). It wasn't until the record labels finally decided to begrudgingly embrace the internet that the money finally came back to North America through services like Spotify and Apple Music, but that transition was very rocky for several years.
I'm convinced history will repeat itself in the event that speech is outlawed on the internet. People like talking and the internet made it easy to do that. People will find other outlets for that and whatever country plays host to that will rake in hundreds of millions as a result. The internet has anti-censorship technology built into the system and people will take full advantage of that should we get to that point. Only then will it become apparent that by shutting down legal protections for speech will the realization set in that politician's only closed the door to the economic benefits of allowing speech to thrive. By that point, the damage will already be done and it will take years to regain that foothold back - if at all.
It was a good thing that a lot of the internet regulation was sent to the trash with this one. Before the bill was tabled, I legitimately thought my website was finished. That was thanks to provisions from the 2021 version which said that you have 24 hours to respond to any anonymous complaint or risk a $10 million+ fine. No website in Canada would've survived that (at least, not for long).
When the bill was tabled, I was massively relieved to find that provisions like that had been removed.
From my neck of the woods up here in Canada, a huge chunk of the concerns revolve around the potential for secret police investigations, the sweeping powers of the Digital Safety Commission which includes the ability to hold secret hearings as well as the power to make court rulings on top of it all (instead of taking complaints to a real court system) and the sweeping changes to the criminal code (buried towards the end of the bill for those looking into this).
This bill has a LOT of nuance (not surprising given that it's over 100 pages long) and it can be a tricky read. For example, an "operator" is actually a reference to a social media service, not a regular person running any website.
I did a 3 part write-up on this a while back (recently restored) and here is part 3 if anyone is interested: https://www.freezenet.ca/the-online-harms-bill-bill-c-63-conclusions-and-thoughts/
I think what is confusing some people in all of this is the fact that a lot of us are reading through the bill, saying that there was a lot of improvements, but there are still areas of concern in the bill that slips outside of the area of internet policy (like the Criminal Code, for instance). Some people take that to meaning people like us say it's fixed and all better or that the government did nothing to actually address any concerns when, in fact, a lot of opinions from observers revolve somewhere between the two extremes.
Then there are those who take things WAY off course and say the bill will jail people for saying stupid things on the internet (there's provisions in the bill that scope out such speech specifically).
The tricky thing for me, personally, is that I'm not an expert in the Criminal Code of Canada. I know very little about the Human Rights Tribunal and the nitty gritty of the Human Rights Act, so analyzing this legislation became a pretty tricky one - especially thanks to the internet related issues being dealt with already. At the very least, I realized that legal experts from civil rights organizations would probably be better suited to analyzing something like this instead. I may know a lot of things, but my knowledge is by no means inclusive of everything related to law.
He's not the only one, either. Mr. Dingbat, Kevin O'Leary said he wanted to buy it as well: https://www.inc.com/melissa-angell/kevin-oleary-wants-to-buy-tiktok-make-it-part-of-mr-wonderfuls-empire.html
I have my doubts he'll end up with it, but if he does, I fully expect him to Musk up that platform.
Probably a case of Meta realizing the short term payoff wasn't worth the cost of admission here.
When Meta and Google signed those deals in Australia, I remember both of us scratching our heads over why both platforms would do this. The best theory that I remember at the time was that they did this in an effort to raise the price of entering either the search or social media markets for potential competitors. This would lock out any competition for both Meta and Google because it would cost tens, if not, hundreds of millions just to enter the market. A new competitor would be unlikely to enter into the market with that kind of entry fee.
This was, of course, short term thinking because the idea that a link tax would never spread beyond Australia was insanely laughable. Everyone was going to want their pound of flesh here and that's exactly what happened since: several countries passing equally (or worse) link tax laws because the platforms decided that this was the new normal (even though it's a completely backwards thought process).
As a result, the cost of doing business kept going up by the hundreds of millions for both Meta and Google. Sooner or later, the math was always going to catch up to them as they realize that there is a cost limit to go along with this anti-competitive power play move. With Meta, at least, that cost limit was reached and now they are trying to undo the mess they created as long term consequences became too much for the short term gain they thought they could get out of this.
I agree that these moves being made now aren't being made with the integrity of the open internet in mind. I personally think it's because the costs became excessive when other countries started trying to to pull the same stunts as Australia did. Meta just decided that maybe there are better, more cost effective, ways of maintaining their market dominance.
I like the learning material these cautionary tales provide.
I'll just jot some notes down...
If my news website starts getting big, don't do what Vice, Messenger, or Sports Illustrated did.
There, I think that's a good start!
I don't personally use Meta platforms, FYI.
I set up a presence for my website to automatically share articles published to Facebook, but otherwise, I use Mastodon, YouTube, Fark, and, occasionally, Twitter for a couple of very specific accounts I follow. Set out an account on Bluesky, but I've been busy with a bunch of other things.
Good job on your presumption, though. ;)
There are real social issues out there that need to be addressed. Whether it is environmental issues, poverty, affordable housing, and other issues. Just giving a blanket ban on a platform that is supposed to be open to any topic seems like a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You ban literally anything that can be seen as "political", you cut down on a LOT of what can be discussed.
I mean, obviously, this is a private property we're talking about. Meta can do whatever it pleases. Still doesn't detract me from also saying that this is a bad idea.
I'm not saying the bill is problem free, but I have spent the last few days analyzing this bill line by line. I have to say, it is a marked improvement over the 2021 version. I published a wrapup post on the legislation here: https://www.freezenet.ca/the-online-harms-bill-bill-c-63-conclusions-and-thoughts/
The short of it is this:
ISP level site blocking: Gone.
Scoping in every website: Gone. (it really is only social media websites this targets)
Vague definition of "harmful content" that can be interpreted to mean anything: Gone.
$10 million fines for small websites: Gone.
24 hour time windows for responses from websites over a simple complaint: Gone.
A lot of what made the 2021 version of this bill atrocious is gone. Could the bill be amended later on to include some of these REALLY bad ideas? Sure. Still, as it stands, it's shockingly not terrible.
And for those asking/wondering, Canada DOES have privacy laws, and they require informed consent before people can be surveilled, so the fact these machines don’t have a notice on them informing customers about the tech installed on them, makes it a clear violation of privacy law.
This is correct, but there is a huge catch to all of this. Canada's privacy laws aren't really enforceable. There's no provision that can get a company fined for breaking these laws.
The only thing that can happen is a strongly worded letter from a privacy commissioner or two. This can come from a provincial or federal level. If the company responds by tossing that letter in the shredder, the commissioners job is done as they don't have any more legal tools they can use in that role.
This leaves private citizens. They can legally make an attempt to file a lawsuit against the people behind the vending machine, but they have to prove in court damages. Hiring a lawyer and going through the process is a huge financial deterrent in the end for people who have been surveilled. In all likelihood, the companies might get a written scolding before they go back to whatever it is they want to do after.
Canada has needed real privacy reform for nearly a decade now and we aren't getting it any time soon, unfortunately. Too much profit to be had maintaining the system of surveillance capitalism.
I already knew this was not how I plan on running a website, but Vice offered a great reminder that the primary financial focus of a business is not to furnish executives with the biggest salaries. Anything north of $200,000 per year is obviously excessive. Unless the company can easily shoulder it, there are better places to spend that money.
If my website was that big and I had a choice between making $640,000 per year or putting a vast majority of that money into paying for a bigger staff to produce and promote high quality content, I'd choose the latter. To me, that doesn't even seem like a serious question. You have to think towards the future and investing in your workforce is huge in that regard.
Look, I’m getting exhausted trying to follow every attempt around the country (coming from both Democrats and Republicans) to pass obviously, blatantly, unconstitutional bills to “protect the children on social media,” that make it clear that their authors have no idea (1) how the 1st Amendment works, (2) how social media works, or (3) how children work.
Honestly, credit where credit is due: it's impressive you are able to keep up with as much as you have in the first place. I speak from experience given that I'm currently following only three bills at the federal level in Canada. Between the hearings, getting through the legalese stuff as best I can, figuring out where people are coming from in all of this, and pointing out why some of them are very very wrong, I feel that alone completely buries me most of the time (though, in fairness to myself, I also have a day job to contend with on top of it all).
You, on the other hand, get to contend with multiple states pushing these bad laws as well as the federal level laws, the court cases that ensue, the hearings involved, etc. It honestly feels like you have (at least) an order of magnitude more to follow than I do. I'm just saying I'm impressed with you being able to keep up with it all and I don't blame you for being tired from it.
I have to admit, I'm openly wondering what's stopping someone like me from re-uploading the app onto my own site and pairing it with something like an MD5 hash to ensure its authenticity, then publishing instructions on how to sideload the app onto an Android phone. After all, my site isn't actually an app store by any means.
Way back in the day when I was still going to university, there were many fellow students who had the impression that they were going to inherently be getting ahead in life simply because of their post secondary education. It didn't matter what they were studying, they were going to be the "leaders of tomorrow" and nothing was going to stop them once they hit graduation. I basically pointed out that there is nothing to back up their wild ideas of being rich millionaires and highly paid executives at the time. The jobs that existed at that day were crummy, entry level, dead end jobs. The few good positions out there were being given to people who were close to executives and higher up members of that organization. I had plenty of data to support the idea that I was entering into a pretty brutal world where you had little to no shot. There were a few that knew that this sort of thing was going to hit them sometime after graduation, so I wasn't exactly alone in realizing what a shit show I was in for once the gown and cap had been worn, but most honestly believed that the world was their oyster and they were destined for greatness. I strongly suspect that reality hit 99% of them sometime after graduation when they routinely got turned down for even "middle of the road" positions. When I hear that my "cynical" take on bad job prospects no matter what is becoming the norm for students these days, a part of me is relieved to know that younger generations have wisened up since my university days. They at least know what they are in for once their education paths have reached the traditional end. At the very least, it's possible for them to plan accordingly instead of naively running out into the world and shouting "I'm here, throw money at me now!" without a second plan like most fellow students in my day did. The days of honestly believing "get an education, automatically get a high paying job right away" appear to be over. Depressing? Sure. Realistic? Yes.
Can't say I'm surprised. Bell has been on quite a roll of bad behaviour over the last several months alone. They managed to scam the federal government out of $40 million, then proceeded to hand that money directly to shareholders in the form of increased dividend. They told the government the money would be used to save journalism jobs only to fire 10% of its workforce. It was a move so dirty, even the government got pissed off at Bell. They hauled them into committee to explain themselves and Bell just sat there and gave non-stop non-answers and wasted every MPs time in an effort to play games. Keep in mind that all that happened after they started begging the provinces for money and filed paperwork with the CRTC to get out of paying their fair share for the system. It's almost as if Bell is on a mission to piss off as many people as possible and counting up the angry messages they get afterwards and working on scoring a personal best for most hated telecom company in Canada. It really makes me wonder if they are run by people who are related to Comcast executives at this point.
I feel bad for Mike and all the staff at TechDirt to have to go through this. In Canada, we (not just my site, but all publications that produce news content) went through all of this last year and it was extremely stressful. No one knew for sure who would get the boot from Meta and who wouldn't. In a way, it was like drawing lots for every news website. If you were lucky, you drew a paper that said you could continue your career. If you were unlucky, you drew the lot that said your career, and the careers of everyone working for you, are finished over night. Even after going through the logic of how the Online News Act worked and the logic pointed to my site being safe (as I do focus 'on a particular topic' and I only work for myself), it was stressful because if the platform thought otherwise, you were done and there was no "appealing" to anyone to straighten something like that out. I was just sitting here hoping Meta would get my classification right. It's a kind of situation I don't wish on anyone else out there. Now that it's entirely possible that TechDirt (not a sure thing, but not impossible, either) could go through this with Google, I'm feeling really bad for everyone here. Best case scenario if TechDirt gets delisted is that a chunk of revenue vanishes overnight (and I think TechDirt is at least better positioned to take such a hit than a site like mine). Hopefully, the US link tax doesn't come down to that. If it does, Meta, at least, is probably dropping news links if the law stupidly moves ahead and gets passed, so this could very well hurt sites like TechDirt (I don't know the specific wording of the CJPA to know for sure or not as of yet) anyway. Well, best of luck moving forward navigating this whole mess. I can tell you from experience it isn't pleasant by any means and I wished you all didn't have to go through this. At the very least, I'll be an interested party watching this all unfold.
A major problem I personally see is that, in the midst of all of this, outlets that are actually trying to do a reasonably good job end up getting drowned out by the noise in the process. I know Mike Masnick, Michael Geist, and myself have experienced this first hand (very likely others in the process). Whenever an article gets published critical of a particular political party's effort, we get cast as someone working on the other side of the political aisle. Then when one of us notes problems on the other side of the political aisle, we get cast as someone shilling for the other party instead. Rarely does the substance of our arguments get accounted for in all of this. Instead, it's trying to paint us as a partisan for one party or another. In the process of all of this, people such as myself get de-legitimized, making it harder for people to support an actual neutral fact-based source. So, it's harder to get anyone to subscribe or support someone like myself. Further, companies are less likely to support such an outlet because people like us aren't there to help pad their corporate profits. With things like well-funded fake newspapers and large media companies choosing to not do their job, it makes it all the harder to stand out as a smaller and more honest outlet. I used to think that if you started a website and regularly produced high quality original news articles on a regular basis, it was possible to at least get your foot in the door of profitability so you could hire more journalists and grow your business. With 11 years of effort, I've learned the hard way that producing good quality content gets you nowhere other than getting that nice warm fuzzy feeling that you're doing good work and doing your part to better the media ecosystem at large. That really only applies to websites that have started up well before the 2010's such as Techdirt. At that point, you are able to ride the momentum of your past success to carry on what you are doing. Start a website after 2010 and you'll learn that the days of high quality content production equating to success are LONG gone. In its place are those who are just gaming the system via throwing vast quantities of money at "marketing", SEO tricks/hacking, and design among other things (and even design is becoming questionable as being advantageous these days). All this lines up with the rise of actual fake news outlets. When the internet at large has become little more than a pay to win system, only those with large chunks of money to throw around can succeed. It really doesn't become rocket science to figure out why bullshit artists pushing a partisan agenda end up succeeding so often these days while legitimate news sources go under or shut down and get added to the boulevard of broken dreams.
The SOPA fight is something I had hoped I would never have to live through again. Profoundly disappointed to find out that it could be coming back for another round. I have a lot of other stuff going on in Canada to report on as it is, but you don't have to tell me twice about the importance of fighting against something like SOPA. This is not something to screw around with. Raising awareness on my end as best I can: https://www.freezenet.ca/mpa-pushing-to-bring-internet-killing-bill-sopa-back/ Ready to join the battle wherever I can.
I've been following the developments of link taxes pretty closely. In fact, I did a writeup on it today talking about the panic rising among Australian publishers and how the Australian government could cause even more damage if it chose to double down on its behaviour (namely, things could get so out of hand that Meta blocks Australian altogether). There's been enormous damage already caused by link taxes in Canada. Not too long ago, I was detailing out another newspaper that has been around for 124 years announced that it was going under. Meta dropping news links was likely a contributing factor. Even the large players were not safe from the damaging implications of their own greed. The CBC, for instance, was forced to admit that Meta dropping news links had negatively impacted their reach. Their sites traffic, in some areas, was growing, but that growth was hampered by Meta's news link drop. Australian publishers, meanwhile, are about to share the same fate as Canadian publishers. Once those deals expire, those news links are very likely going "bye-bye" and Australian publishers are probably going to push a massive advertising campaign to encourage readers to download their app or follow them on unaffected platforms (or go directly to their website and bookmark their page). It will lead to a temporary rise in their readership, but it's unlikely that such an effort will be sustainable. Even worse is that they'll likely continue to torpedo their reputation by publishing conspiracy theories about how Facebook is somehow going to turn into a hive of disinformation without their presence (that didn't happen in Canada and it won't likely happen in Australia). It bears repeating just how self-inflicted this situation is. Had the media not gone on a psychotic rampage, demanding payments for linking to them, their declining presence would've actually continued for the next several years. Instead, they chose to kick themselves off of platforms at a much faster rate because they were greedy and self-centred. The evidence is in: link taxes are a bad idea and are a sure fire method of unleashing a considerable amount of harm on the media. As long as other governments don't learn this lesson, we'll continue to see history repeat itself over and over again. That is: link taxes pass, links to news content gets dropped on platforms, news businesses get hurt or outright go out of business entirely (this with the possibility of the largest players getting bailed out by the government).
We've already had a demonstration of what repealing Section 230 does. That was SESTA/FOSTA and the results were numerous websites shutting down immediately.
The war on innovation continues, I see. It's infuriating to witness a bi-partisan effort to undo decades of innovation and economic progress like this, but it's not something that is exclusive to the US. In Canada, we have the same sort of thing where the Conservative party thinks that we must have mass internet censorship implemented because there might be some icky adult content somewhere along the line. The Liberal party wants mass internet censorship because someone might get offended by a troll somewhere along the line. Compounding problems is the fact that the other parties are just smiling and going along with both efforts because if the larger parties are for mass censorship, then it must be good to support it. The large media companies are cheering this all on, going so far as to call anyone supporting free speech is little more than extremists trying to get more Donald Trumps in this world (I wish I was joking: https://www.freezenet.ca/canadian-mainstream-media-finally-says-the-quiet-part-out-loud-they-hate-free-speech/ ) I view the efforts to repeal Section 230 as nothing different than the censorship efforts in Canada. Stamping out free speech on the internet has been a top priority for politicians for years. The media is on board with this because they legitimately think that by doing away with the internet, they'll get their monopoly of audiences back like in the 60's and 70's (it won't work). Speech has legitimately become the new piracy. Government is working hard to stamp it out. Whether that is through litigation, filtering technology, Deep Packet Inspection, or whatever else they'll come up with, they don't care. If the internet is gone, they can go back to business as usual. By removing the financial incentives to use the internet, they think that the internet can be defeated somehow. The problem here is, of course, the fact that removing the financial incentives for businesses to start up online won't make the internet magically go away. All it does is offer incentives for other countries to fill the voids left behind (i.e. being a web hosting company, offering VPN services, etc.). Further, it pushes all the economic benefits out of the country (and there's TONNES of that). It means America misses out on all of the benefits that come with having a free and open internet. Evidence of this came from the file-sharing world where shutting down the likes of Morpheus, Napster, etc. meant that the opportunities went elsewhere (The Pirate Bay and several others out there). It wasn't until the record labels finally decided to begrudgingly embrace the internet that the money finally came back to North America through services like Spotify and Apple Music, but that transition was very rocky for several years. I'm convinced history will repeat itself in the event that speech is outlawed on the internet. People like talking and the internet made it easy to do that. People will find other outlets for that and whatever country plays host to that will rake in hundreds of millions as a result. The internet has anti-censorship technology built into the system and people will take full advantage of that should we get to that point. Only then will it become apparent that by shutting down legal protections for speech will the realization set in that politician's only closed the door to the economic benefits of allowing speech to thrive. By that point, the damage will already be done and it will take years to regain that foothold back - if at all.
It was a good thing that a lot of the internet regulation was sent to the trash with this one. Before the bill was tabled, I legitimately thought my website was finished. That was thanks to provisions from the 2021 version which said that you have 24 hours to respond to any anonymous complaint or risk a $10 million+ fine. No website in Canada would've survived that (at least, not for long). When the bill was tabled, I was massively relieved to find that provisions like that had been removed. From my neck of the woods up here in Canada, a huge chunk of the concerns revolve around the potential for secret police investigations, the sweeping powers of the Digital Safety Commission which includes the ability to hold secret hearings as well as the power to make court rulings on top of it all (instead of taking complaints to a real court system) and the sweeping changes to the criminal code (buried towards the end of the bill for those looking into this). This bill has a LOT of nuance (not surprising given that it's over 100 pages long) and it can be a tricky read. For example, an "operator" is actually a reference to a social media service, not a regular person running any website. I did a 3 part write-up on this a while back (recently restored) and here is part 3 if anyone is interested: https://www.freezenet.ca/the-online-harms-bill-bill-c-63-conclusions-and-thoughts/ I think what is confusing some people in all of this is the fact that a lot of us are reading through the bill, saying that there was a lot of improvements, but there are still areas of concern in the bill that slips outside of the area of internet policy (like the Criminal Code, for instance). Some people take that to meaning people like us say it's fixed and all better or that the government did nothing to actually address any concerns when, in fact, a lot of opinions from observers revolve somewhere between the two extremes. Then there are those who take things WAY off course and say the bill will jail people for saying stupid things on the internet (there's provisions in the bill that scope out such speech specifically). The tricky thing for me, personally, is that I'm not an expert in the Criminal Code of Canada. I know very little about the Human Rights Tribunal and the nitty gritty of the Human Rights Act, so analyzing this legislation became a pretty tricky one - especially thanks to the internet related issues being dealt with already. At the very least, I realized that legal experts from civil rights organizations would probably be better suited to analyzing something like this instead. I may know a lot of things, but my knowledge is by no means inclusive of everything related to law.
... find out next week on "Lawyers Behaving Badly"!
He's not the only one, either. Mr. Dingbat, Kevin O'Leary said he wanted to buy it as well: https://www.inc.com/melissa-angell/kevin-oleary-wants-to-buy-tiktok-make-it-part-of-mr-wonderfuls-empire.html I have my doubts he'll end up with it, but if he does, I fully expect him to Musk up that platform.
Probably a case of Meta realizing the short term payoff wasn't worth the cost of admission here. When Meta and Google signed those deals in Australia, I remember both of us scratching our heads over why both platforms would do this. The best theory that I remember at the time was that they did this in an effort to raise the price of entering either the search or social media markets for potential competitors. This would lock out any competition for both Meta and Google because it would cost tens, if not, hundreds of millions just to enter the market. A new competitor would be unlikely to enter into the market with that kind of entry fee. This was, of course, short term thinking because the idea that a link tax would never spread beyond Australia was insanely laughable. Everyone was going to want their pound of flesh here and that's exactly what happened since: several countries passing equally (or worse) link tax laws because the platforms decided that this was the new normal (even though it's a completely backwards thought process). As a result, the cost of doing business kept going up by the hundreds of millions for both Meta and Google. Sooner or later, the math was always going to catch up to them as they realize that there is a cost limit to go along with this anti-competitive power play move. With Meta, at least, that cost limit was reached and now they are trying to undo the mess they created as long term consequences became too much for the short term gain they thought they could get out of this. I agree that these moves being made now aren't being made with the integrity of the open internet in mind. I personally think it's because the costs became excessive when other countries started trying to to pull the same stunts as Australia did. Meta just decided that maybe there are better, more cost effective, ways of maintaining their market dominance.
I like the learning material these cautionary tales provide. I'll just jot some notes down... If my news website starts getting big, don't do what Vice, Messenger, or Sports Illustrated did. There, I think that's a good start!
I don't personally use Meta platforms, FYI. I set up a presence for my website to automatically share articles published to Facebook, but otherwise, I use Mastodon, YouTube, Fark, and, occasionally, Twitter for a couple of very specific accounts I follow. Set out an account on Bluesky, but I've been busy with a bunch of other things. Good job on your presumption, though. ;)
There are real social issues out there that need to be addressed. Whether it is environmental issues, poverty, affordable housing, and other issues. Just giving a blanket ban on a platform that is supposed to be open to any topic seems like a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You ban literally anything that can be seen as "political", you cut down on a LOT of what can be discussed. I mean, obviously, this is a private property we're talking about. Meta can do whatever it pleases. Still doesn't detract me from also saying that this is a bad idea.
The Online Harms Bill Does Fix Some Critical Problems
I'm not saying the bill is problem free, but I have spent the last few days analyzing this bill line by line. I have to say, it is a marked improvement over the 2021 version. I published a wrapup post on the legislation here: https://www.freezenet.ca/the-online-harms-bill-bill-c-63-conclusions-and-thoughts/ The short of it is this: ISP level site blocking: Gone. Scoping in every website: Gone. (it really is only social media websites this targets) Vague definition of "harmful content" that can be interpreted to mean anything: Gone. $10 million fines for small websites: Gone. 24 hour time windows for responses from websites over a simple complaint: Gone. A lot of what made the 2021 version of this bill atrocious is gone. Could the bill be amended later on to include some of these REALLY bad ideas? Sure. Still, as it stands, it's shockingly not terrible.
Better Staffing Ranks > Higher Executive Compensation
I already knew this was not how I plan on running a website, but Vice offered a great reminder that the primary financial focus of a business is not to furnish executives with the biggest salaries. Anything north of $200,000 per year is obviously excessive. Unless the company can easily shoulder it, there are better places to spend that money. If my website was that big and I had a choice between making $640,000 per year or putting a vast majority of that money into paying for a bigger staff to produce and promote high quality content, I'd choose the latter. To me, that doesn't even seem like a serious question. You have to think towards the future and investing in your workforce is huge in that regard.