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Meta’s Dumb Deletion Of Links To Journalism Shows Why Attempts To Tax Platforms That Link To Journalism Is Even Dumber
from the stop-cheering-this-on dept
As Mike has already chronicled, Meta has managed to alienate itself from reasonable people by first suppressing links to an independent Kansas journalism outlet, then links to others reporting on the suppression, and eventually entire accounts discussing the episode. I tend to be of the view that what happened was an error caught in a system that may have some design flaws, where the error was able to snowball in the enormity of its effect without there being adequate checks, more than I tend to think it was a deliberate choice by Meta. At the same time, large platform providers like Meta do need powerful systems in order to be able to take any sort of meaningful stand against actual abuse. And even if, rather than an error, the suppression was a conscious editorial decision by Meta, it would have and should have been a perfectly legal choice for it to make, albeit a really stupid one.
But it sort of doesn’t matter whether the suppression was deliberate or accidental: Meta suppressed voices, including voices practicing journalism, and, as a result, public discourse took a hit. Which is what prompts this post, because with things like the JCPA and link taxes and other such programs proposed in the US and abroad, what regulators are demanding is that this sort of thing happen all the time. These are laws that are all designed to force platforms to suppress links to journalistic expression because they essentially impose a penalty when the platforms do not.
Now, that may not be what regulators have in mind. They simply want platforms to share their money with any linked-to sites. But forcing anyone to share their money when they do something is a pretty significant deterrent against doing that something. And here that something is having platforms be vibrant forums for sharing links to journalistic voices. The outrage resulting from this particular link suppression episode is the outrage that results from when platforms are NOT being vibrant forums for sharing links to journalistic voices. We obviously want them to continue to be those forums, so how could we possibly support law that would deter them from providing us that service?
We have argued over and over again that these laws will only harm something we actually want social media to be good at, and harm in particular the independent journalistic voices that depend on social media being good at it to make sure those voices can be widely heard. And here is evidence for why we are right, because when Meta stopped being good at it, those voices got hurt. It is therefore dumb for anyone to support any sort of law that would only make them hurt those voices more.
Filed Under: jcpa, journalism, link tax, suppression
Companies: meta
Comments on “Meta’s Dumb Deletion Of Links To Journalism Shows Why Attempts To Tax Platforms That Link To Journalism Is Even Dumber”
It isn’t even really “sharing”, since social media sites don’t make any money either from the link to a news site or from someone clicking on it. E.g., Facebook makes money when you stay on Facebook looking at insipid adds, not when you leave Facebook for cnn.com and look at CNN’s insipid adds.
The logic is nothing more than “legacy media needs money, Facebook has money, so Facebook should give legacy media money despite owing them absolutely nothing”.
Cathy, you’re asking the question backwards. We already know that the ONLY ones wishing for this wealth redistribution are the oversized news outlets. So instead of asking why/who, we should instead be asking “Are these lawmakers qualified to promolugate laws that don’t take money out of one (private) pocket only to stuff it into another (private) pocket?”
I’d posit that no, they have no clue as to how finances work, no clue as to how a free market works, and no clue about where their next “campaign donation” is coming from, if they don’t write laws favoring the undeserving over the best interests of the general public.
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).
This can, and should be addressed, ahead of time. If they’re billed the same regardless of suppressing links, it eliminates the economic incentive to do so.
This isn’t unique to these laws, the same arguments surround things like compliance over environmental standards or waste disposal.
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Thing is, what would you bill them for if they aren’t linking to the news sites? It’s the “use” of the site’s content that’s the basis for demanding payment, you can’t demand someone pay for not “using” your stuff.
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Depends on how they want to handle it. For instance, if you expect link taxes to bring in say, $50million, you could just tax Meta $50million regardless. And then use links to decide how to divvy it up. The incentive to block links is gone, because they’re going to have to pay $50million regardless. (Of course, this introduces other potential issues, like Meta being less incentivized to accurately count clicks).
There are other ways to do it as well, like forcing them to keep links, or penalizing them for removing links (which you’d have to regulate in some way, to ensure they can still remove spam, among other issues.). If having a link is $0.02, removing a link could be $0.03. There’s not a whole lot the company can do about that (assuming it’s legal in that jurisdiction, depending on stuff like free speech protections etc), barring leaving the country entirely, unless the country lets them. Most places like Canada aren’t going to go that far, so there’s room for them to negotiate, but that is relying on the government to not go too hard and follow certain norms.
The main issue with that is, links are just a proxy for the actual content in the first place. Removing links doesn’t actually solve that underlying problem, they’re not actually the content that is being “used”/targeted. If people are still consuming news on social media even without links, that’s the “use” that they’re really trying to get at.
The reason countries look to link taxes, is that they’re more easily quantifiable to a first approximation, in a way that measuring the actual “content” wouldn’t be. It’s not a perfect stand-in, by any means, but that’s where a lot of the allure comes from. It has basically nothing to do with links themselves, other than the fact that if people talk/read about the NYT more, there’s likely more NYT links, in a very crude approximation.
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Funny how we skipped over the whole question about forcing company A to pay company B for something they don’t want.
Forcing and penalizing – those words says it all.
No, links aren’t in no way a proxy for actual content. A link is a reference to where someone can find content, nothing else.
Yes, the problem with a link tax is that links aren’t actual content.
I’m sorry? What do you mean by “consuming” here? If there’s no links, what’s the source of the news people are “consuming”?
The only reason “countries” are looking at link taxes is because very big media conglomerates have lobbied and paid off politicians so they can siphon off money to prop up an industry that has been steadily been in a race to the bottom for decades now.
After enough time with having link taxes it will get normalized, which means some bright and greedy fellows will try to extend the concept to other things besides news – because why should news get preferential treatment over any other type of content?
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We didn’t skip over it, it’s just a different question they didn’t ask and has already been answered. If a country is doing link taxes, they’ve already decided they’re ok with forcing company A to pay company B.
Yeah, that’s usually how regulations work. They’re usually not voluntary, otherwise they wouldn’t need to be law in the first place. Chemical companies hate the EPA forcing them to do things and penalizing them, too.
Yes, they are. And this is particularly obvious in say, Canada’s bill:
The Bill introduces a new bargaining framework intended to support news businesses to secure fair compensation when their news content is made available by dominant digital news intermediaries and generates economic gain.
Similarly:
Under the Bill, a digital news intermediary could make news content available by reproducing it or by facilitating access to the news content, including by generating links to news content. Facilitating access to news content could be done through any means, including by way of an index, aggregation or ranking, all of which are methods used by online platforms to organize and distribute news content. However, the Bill does not automatically or necessarily require digital news intermediaries to compensate news publishers when they make news content or portions of it available, including when digital news intermediaries generate links to news content. Instead, the Bill gives parties the flexibility to bargain over compensation based on the nature of the content and how it is made available by the intermediaries.
There’s nothing in there about being just links specifically. There’s other parts as well that make this obvious, like the arbitration, which also says nothing specifically about links.
The content of the news. For example, if you take the text of a news article and paste it without including a link, when someone reads it that’s still consuming the content of the news. The link just makes it easier to source back, it’s not itself the news nor is it required.
No, it’s not. While those media companies are definitely trying to take advantage of it for their own benefit (and that’s a problem), it’s not the only reason.
That is literally a slippery slope argument, but yes, that is a potential risk.
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The bill can say whatever it wants, but news stories on another site aren’t ‘made available’ or ‘distributed’ by an algorithm or index. This would be similar to claiming an index or TOC make the context of the book available. Which it does not, it just makes the content easier to find in the published format.
The law was written by grifters and morons.
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Agreed, hence why I said they’re proxies.
The issue isn’t actually things like links, or indices. All a link does, by itself, is direct you where to find the thing.
What the bills are actually trying to target, is when you read some of that content on the social media site (and therefore don’t have to actually click through the link).
For example, in Cathy’s post, Meta has managed to alienate itself from reasonable people by first suppressing links to an independent Kansas journalism outlet tells me a lot of what the article that the link goes to says. If I just want the gist of it, she already gave the relevant info. I don’t need to click the link unless I want more detail. I never have to click on the Kansasreflector link from Mike’s article to get that info. (And similarly, they could just strip the Kansasreflector link out of the article. It’d be slightly more annoying for me to go find it if I wanted those details from the original source, but the content is all still there)
It’s just way easier to target something like a link, than content like a summary/blurb or whatever.
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Quoting a document has always been fair use and does not require licensing or renumeration. Changing that concept would break journalism, research, etc.
Also, as demonstrated by Meta in Canada, the link and quote has more value to the content owner than to Meta.
The whole thing is just a massively dumb grift for morons to champion because they hate ‘big tech’.
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Chemical companies are regulated because chemicals are fucking dangerous and toxic you disingenuous asshole.
A proxy is an intermediary, a go between. A link is information where you can find information.
Because they want to cover all the angles, so it’s not a link tax – it’s extortion of money for news from 3rd parties.
At worst it’s copyright infringement, at best it’s fair fuse – all done by a user and already covered by law.
Yes it is. You are just a stupid little shit that don’t understand that link tax is all about the money and how it forces a transfer of wealth to media companies from other companies. Who the fuck do you think actually came up with link tax? Media execs.
If you bothered to look up Steven Guilbeault you would know he has ties to news media.
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Yes, that’s literally the point of that example. They said “Forcing and penalizing – those words says it all.”. Turns out those words don’t say it all, the rest of the context matters. Like, for example, if the companies being forced/penalized are dangerous/toxic. I picked companies that were dangerous/toxic to make the point.
Another definition of proxy is (via google) :a figure that can be used to represent the value of something in a calculation.
Another one, via Cambridge dictionary: a situation, process, or activity to which another situation, etc. is compared, especially in order to calculate how successful or unsuccessful it is:
It means to be a stand-in.
Yes, hence why new laws are being proposed, as it’s not covered under existing law. If it was, they wouldn’t need new laws.
Depends on what you mean by “all about the money”
I’m very aware it does that. That is the point of the law.
There are other people who have talked about link taxes. It’s not just media execs. Yes, media execs are pushing it for selfish reasons, that doesn’t mean those other reasons don’t exist.
In the same way, Netflix pushing for say, net neutrality doesn’t make NN bad. Even if they’re only doing it for selfish reasons. NN still has a purpose beyond benefitting Netflix.
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So in the last thread you said it was good for us to fight link taxes, presumably because those reasons are selfish. Now you don’t want us to fight link taxes because non-selfish reasons exist?
Make up your damn mind!
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No? I never said you don’t have to fight link taxes.
What I want people to do is stop strawmanning them just because they disagree with a part of them. Case in point, the OP article talking about how link taxes will cause social media to suppress journalism. I’m not saying you have to like link taxes, but like c’mon, this is such an easily solvable nonissue, we don’t have to shoehorn it. If we’re going to fight against link taxes, stick to actual real problems.
I can totally respect people fighting against link taxes. It drives me nuts when that turns into lazy circlejerking, because people here are smart enough to know better. You can fight link taxes without doing that, it just comes across as silly and unserious.
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So what technique will be used to determine who gets the payment for links that never happened? Ouija board? Psychic divination? Or do we just skip the “actually pretending there’s a valid reason for this” step and just cut checks to whichever media outlets donated the most to major party political campaigns this year?
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Depends on what the country wants to do. But it’s not some magical unsolvable problem, and it’s silly to pretend like it is.
In the case of Canada’s law, for instance, it just forces them into arbitration (and lists the criteria for arbitrators in section 38). It doesn’t actually specify counting clicks, just:”
(a) the value added, monetary and otherwise, to the news content in question by each party, as assessed in terms of their investments, expenditures and other actions in relation to that content;
(b) the benefits, monetary and otherwise, that each party receives from the content being made available by the digital news intermediary in question; and
(c) the bargaining power imbalance between the news business and the operator of the digital news intermediary in question.
Those are two completely separate things, and it’s lazy to conflate them. There are reasons for it (you can argue on whether or not they outweigh the downsides, YMMV. But there are reasons, and it’s not pretending just because you don’t like those reasons).
But whether there’s a valid reason or not is different from difficulty in counting it. If you don’t like link taxes, that’s fine, but just sticking to saying that instead of pretending there’s some counting issue.
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True, but trying to quantify the ``value added” by each side is a fool’s errand. You need to count something for value and something for usage.
Value is pretty difficult. It is not clear how to quantify the value of the web site’s user who carefully chooses interesting stuff to link. That user may in fact be a volunteer.
Then, too, the value must necessarily involve people viewing the material. Counting clicks is a good fill-in for that, counting paraphrases in web site posts is more challenging.
The factors for the Canadian arbitrator to consider do not lend themselves to non-arbitrary results because they provide no measurement tools or methods. The squishy ``value” to be considered will come down to who gets to choose the arbitrator. Frankly that does not seem a good method for forcible wealth redistribution.
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It’s worse.
It’ll be “whatever Rupert Murdoch deems appropriate”.
And unfortunately, his death and the forcible dismantlement of News Corp is not considered “appropriate compensation”
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Hmm, still no mention of the persecution X-Twitter and Elon Musk are experiencing at the hands of a rogue, pro-fascist Brasilian judge.
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Then you should go out and get a life.
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You mean that thing where Elon, who is definitely an adult, whined because he didn’t get his way?
Sorry, I guess that’s not very specific.
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Just a note for folks: The judge is not pro-fascist. This commenter is implying Alexandre de Moraes is a fascist because he has been a staunch opponent of the actual fascists in Brazil, which are Bolsonaro and his supporters who attempted a coup on Jan 8 2023.
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the commentor you replied to is most likely a troll or a pro fascist supporter
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Of course de Moraes is fascistic. He opposes free speech and has brazenly and repeatedly betrayed the constitution and people of Brazil while persecuting political rivals and pursuing authoritarian ends.
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shut the fuck up troll scum
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You’re a rude person.
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me rude your the one protecting the actual fascists while labeling not a fascist as fascist
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A: [makes bigoted statement]
B: What the fuck?
C: Now, now, let’s have civility.
Dear C: You came in one statement too late.
-John Scalzi
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Looking forward to reading on your super awesome blog with hookers and blackjack!
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Maybe because that’s not what’s actually happening outside of your own personal fantasy land.
All link tax’s are a bad idea and even if they worked most of the money go,s to large publishers not small independent journalists . meta can simply stop linking to news websites in Canada if they want to save money
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They’re already doing that and have been doing that for a while.
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Not the AC you replied to, but I would have put it like this: Meta can simply stop linking to news websites in Canada if they want to, and no law should be created to either make them link to news websites or punish them for Facebook or its users not linking to them.
From where is all this money supposed to come from?
There have been a few stories about how difficult it is to turn a profit running a website, some simply shutdown, and yet somehow websites are assumed to be full of cash flow originating from their links to news.
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This is something that traditional media outlets have never been able to explain away.
If making a social media website – or a site like BestNetTech – was a genuinely lucrative venture, these journalism companies would have done so. But they don’t do it. If they wanted to be not tracked by Google they could insert robots.txt into their websites. But they don’t do it.
The strategy seems to be little more than demanding Facebook for money and the explanations don’t go much further than “Well Zuckerberg is rich and he’s probably a dick so he deserves to pay us more anyway”.