Canadian government just keeps taking Ls in this saga. Facebook and Google aren't going to give in to your extortion. Linking to websites is free, and always will be. Just kill the bill so everyone can move on.
They won't see foreign sources either, the bill applies to showing news in Canada rather than just Canadian news. They'll have to visit sources directly.
Is it desired? Probably not, but there could be silver linings. Fewer governments posting important information exclusively on social media, for example, and people being conditioned to look directly to news sources for their news.
I know that people like to hate on social media, and for good reason. But remember when it was encouraged that people look to multiple sources in order to find the truth somewhere in the middle? Yes you can still do that without social media but ...
Social media is a multi-source aggregator and then some.
I know there have been charges of social media creating echo chambers. But consider who made those charges to begin with. Typically traditional media.
And people who don't take conscious active measures to expose themselves to a broad point of view are just going to stick to their comfortable world-affirming sources anyway like they did before social media.
Something to consider is that when virtually every single person now carries around a video camera with them 24/7, with the ability to instantly upload footage to a potentially unlimited audience ... what use is there for traditional journalists in the majority of cases?
We still desperately need investigative journalism that uncovers events not widely exposed. But when there's a car accident, a fire, a weather alert? Why rely on your local NBC or Fox news outlet? What's the benefit to getting information plus spin when you can just get the raw first-hand footage from the people who were there? And not only do you get it without bias, you get it faster.
The bill is not about social media, but the fundamental sharing of information on the internet. Google searches are affected as well. As are aggregators like Reddit (and HN). And literally everywhere else that can display a link in text form. The only criteria (for now) is the company's revenue.
It's not clear to me how this is "taking an L" in any way.
The only people I know who think getting news from fucking facebook of all places are boomers caught up in the doomscrolling dopamine treadmill who are also caught up in the milquetoast Canadian version of MAGA.
Forcing people to go outside their shitty echo chambers for news seems like an astronomical win.
It's taking an L in the sense that the government doesn't want Facebook to ban news, they want Facebook to pay for linking news. Forcing people to leave their shitty echo chambers is good, but it's the opposite of what the government wants in this case.
You need to go out and meet more people then. Upwards of 50% of an average news website's referrals come from Google. Add in Meta products (FB, Instagram, Whatsapp) and that can easily cross 70%-80%. All that traffic is about to drop down to 0 in the coming weeks.
Well this bill is not about facebook, but links posted anywhere on the internet. Google is also blocking Canadian news from search, news and other products. Sites like Reddit will follow if they cross $1B in revenue.
My point was that the person was specifically disparaging Facebook users, although the text of the bill is also not remotely as clear as it should be.
The entire entity of Facebook (not meta) could go away tomorrow and the only people who'd care are probably the ones who voted this government in, property boomers and their forgotten gen x offspring.
The rest would just switch their messaging platform if they use messenger, and go back to Craigslist for classifieds.
Edit: To clarify, I'm still being hyperbolic. All kinds of people voted for all kinds of candidates, but in my city most of the extremely wealthy neighborhoods voted for Liberal candidates, so it's a bit fun to poke at. Likewise, the only people I personally know who still use Facebook directly for anything unrelated to selling stuff or direct messaging, are just quite a lot older
Facebook has 4 billion active users across the world. They are not all "boomers" and whatever else you want to call them. There will be much more negative impact on the world if all Facebook properties disappeared tomorrow then all of Canadian news media put together.
You keep roping in other properties into this, if you want to do that, use their parent company name. 4b users on facebook as in Facebook seems a bit of a reach to me at this point. 4b on all properties, ya maybe. Either way, while I could see it having a negative impact, it would mostly be as an advertising platform, and the net positive of that going away might bring it to neutral.
I know it's imused in some places as their primary messaging service or something, but it seems likely they're not doing much unique here.
