Canada

It's the control over the advertising that's the issue. Scraping content is fine, as long as it's following copyright laws.

The issue is that the Toronto Star used to make most of their money by being able to offer prime advertising space next to its articles. The rest of their money was from subscriptions and newspaper sales, which people were willing to pay because it was the only way to get the news in a portable form.

More money for newspaper ads meant more money available to journalists, which made the advertising space next to those columns more valuable. It was a virtuous cycle where the better your journalists were, the more valuable the ad space next to them became. Nowadays, Meta and Google control that ad space and take a massive cut of any ad shown there.

At the same time, someone doesn't need to own a printing press to make an article available, thanks to the Internet. That means that mediocre quality "citizen journalism" and low-quality press releases compete for ad space in a way they didn't in the heyday of print journalism. The idea of "buying a newspaper" is gone and will probably never come back because mobile internet meant that getting access to news (and other content) was just so easy.

Meta and Google get virtually all their money from ads. The way to reduce their impact on Canadian journalism isn't to force them to pay some kind of "link tax", it's to address their ads monopoly and give back control over ads to the publishers.

I believe the meta data of the links are scrapped from the meta tags in the header of the site. The info you see before clicking a link was configured by the host for that purpose.

And thank you for thanking them.

Great question!

The services I can think of that allow full-access aren't quite as easy to use as Google News at this time, but here is what I have come up with:

PressReader has a "For You" page that can show you top stories based on reader engagement from any of their publications. You can also create a PressReader account free-of-charge to follow specific publications, sections, journalists and interests.

Another service I would recommend to receive notifications is Canadian Newsstream by ProQuest. This service is a regularly-updated database of news stories from most major newspapers in Canada.

Note that licensing agreements restrict some publications' stories from being uploaded to Newsstream for one or two days, so I would recommend using this in addition to PressReader, which is more current.

You can use Newsstream to search for stories using highly-specific search queries, and request to be sent scheduled email or RSS alerts for any new query results once they are uploaded into the database.

PressReader "For You" Page

Once you have logged in to PressReader.com using your library card:

In the top left corner of PressReader, click "For You". The page will change. (Note that it may take a few minutes to load if the service is very busy.)

On the left side, there will be a menu with the following:

1. "Language & Region", where you can select a country and language you would like to see top stories with;
2. "For You", with top stories about different topics based on the Language & Region you chose;
3. "Following", where you can see stories from your selected publications, newspaper sections, interests and journalists; and
4. "Saved Searches", where you can save keyword searches to see if there are any new updates.
    

Note that 3. "Following" and 4. "Saved Searches" require a free PressReader account in addition to your public library access authorization. You can register for one by clicking the green "Sign up" button on the top right corner of the page after you have signed in through your public library.

ProQuest Canadian Newsstream

Your best bet to access this service is through your local public library's website. If they have it, you will most likely find a link to log into it in the "news" or "newspaper" section of the site's "digital collections", "digital library", or "bibliothèque numérique" page.

Once logged in, you will be at Canadian Newsstream's "Basic Search" page. You can begin keyword searching in the text field, or click "Advanced Search" underneath the main "Canadian Newsstream" header for more options.

Visit the ProQuest LibGuides for more information and instructions on creating library database search queries.

Once you have run your search, you will be at the results page. Here, you can edit your search query and change the filter settings on the left-side menu. Consider this a preview of the kind of stories you can choose to receive email notifications for.

When you are happy with the kind of results you see, click "Save search/alert" on the top right of the page just underneath the search bar. A drop-down menu will appear.

In the drop-down menu, click "Create alert" for email notifications, or "Create RSS feed" for a personalized feed you can add to your RSS reader. A pop-up will appear.

Follow the instructions in the pop-up, and you will be notified of new articles that match your search via email or RSS.

I would suggest keeping a different alert for each topic you want to follow. This will make it easier to cancel or adjust just one topic as you need to.

You can also create a free ProQuest My Research account so you can view and manage all your alerts all at once.

These steps are quite a bit more involved than simple Googling, but you get complete control over what you are searching for. The fact that you get to decide these small granular search parameters means that there are no secret algorithms deciding for you.

Thank you again for your attention. If you have any questions about using these services, I would encourage you to contact your local public library, where the staff will be able to assist you better.

Same reason you're using Lemmy and don't just go to browse every single individual website on the internet.

I'm having a hard time believing that is the case for "search." Cards and "google news" is another story.

As much as I dislike Google's practices, they are doing a service by indexing where websites are and allowing them to be found based on keywords.

I feel if I go to "google.com" and search for Google should show me links to so that I can visit the site directly. Any law that retards that is shooting Canadian news outlets in the foot.

Now if Google somehow finds what you're looking for and does not take me directly to the website and instead parses the site, presents the content, and shows its own ads, as opposed to ads hosted on , then yeah - google can go play in traffic.

Graphene OS is amazing, if you're degoogled. Terrible if you need Google, though.

I tried it and loved it until I tried to get my work Google account working, lol.

LineageOS is a good option if you still need Google on your phone since you can install GApps.