Canada

Reminder that Canadian media actually lobbied for this. They spent like two years calling Zuckerberg a thief for displaying news articles on Facebook.

This isn't the result of the government just doing a random thing. They did what they were asked to do by the media outlets.

The media outlets aren't going to get what they want, but this still seems like a potentially good thing for users. After all, it's not just Canadian media sites that are being black listed.

Indeed. The world is rife with situations where people go "I don't care if it makes sense, I just want money" and this was clearly one of them.

If news companies want to make money off of the content they've posted, it behooves them to find ways to do that themselves. Paywall it, put advertising on it, use it as a loss leader for other paid services. Putting it up on a billboard and then running around demanding cash from anyone that looks at it is just dumb. I fully support telling them no.

Sensational news articles like this are also expected in the fallout. Most news companies in Canada lobbied for the change and simply hoped that big players would cave right away. But now that Meta and Alphabet have announced that they'll block news in Canada (a predictable response), news companies are realizing the impact it'll actually have on them and the amount of lossed revenue it'll entail if things don't work out the way the want them to. They're basically crapping their pants and writing up these types of headlines to pressure Meta/Alphabet as a last-ditch effort.

It's like, 0% metas fault (and it's not even that I'm not a fan... I viscerally hate them as a company. I do not have a Facebook account)

They're a company and they're obligated to maximize the return on investment of their shareholders. That's it. Full stop.

They crunched the numbers and the cost of compensating for the links outweighs the value of the links. They are obligated to make this decision.

Western governments are absolutely reaping what they've sown. Pathetic anti-trust enforcement and the evisceration of ACTUAL public services (who are instead of shareholders, are obligated to serve the public interest) have put us here.

In a healthy country, "Meta no longer posting news links" would be met with a "so what?". The fact that anyone gives a shit is evidence of a failure of the government to protect the social infrastructure of this nation.

And, it's not the just the liberals fault. They're just the ones still standing when the music stopped.

But it's not what happened in Australia when they did this. So saying it is the expected outcome after the fact fact is a little easy.

The money would go to the news companies, NOT the government.

Australia went through a similar thing. Facebook got what they wanted after a few days.