news links – Techdirt (original) (raw)

from the what-a-surprise dept

As California (and possibly Congress) are, again, revisiting instituting link taxes in the US, it’s worth highlighting that our prediction about the Canadian link tax has now been shown to be correct. It didn’t harm Meta one bit to remove news.

The entire premise behind these link taxes/bargaining codes is that social media gets “so much free value” from news orgs, that they must pay up. Indeed, a ridiculously bad study that came out last fall, and was widely passed around, that argued that Google and Meta had stripped $14 billion worth of value from news orgs and should offer to pay up that amount.

$14 billion. With a “b.”

No one, who understands anything, believes that’s true. Again, social media is not taking value away from news orgs. It’s giving them free distribution and free circulation, things that, historically, cost media organizations a ton of money.

But, now a study, in Canada is proving that social media companies get basically zero value from news links. Meta, somewhat famously, blocked links to news in Canada in response to that country’s link tax. This sent many observers into a tizzy, claiming that it was somehow both unfair for Meta to link to news orgs AND to not link to news orgs.

Yes, media organizations are struggling. Yes, the problems facing the news industry are incredibly important to solve to help protect democracy. Yes, we should be thinking and talking about creative solutions for funding.

But, taxing links to force internet companies to pay media companies is simply a terrible solution.

Thanks to Meta , not giving in to Canada and blocking links to news, we now have some data on what happens when a link tax approach is put in place. Some new research from McGill University and the University of Toronto has found that Meta didn’t lose very much engagement from a lack of news links. But media orgs lost out big time.

Laura Hazard Owen has a good summary at Nieman Lab.

“We expected the disappearance of news on Meta platforms to have caused a major shock to the Canadian information ecosystem,” the paper’s authors — Sara Parker, Saewon Park, Zeynep Pehlivan, Alexei Abrahams, Mika Desblancs, Taylor Owen, Jennie Phillips, and Aengus Bridgman — write. But the shock appears to have been one-sided. While “the ban has significantly impacted Canadian news outlets,” the authors write, “Meta has deprived users of the affordance of news sharing without suffering any loss in engagement of their user base.”

What the researchers found is that users are still using Meta platforms just as much, and still getting news from those platforms. They’re just no longer following links back to the sources. This has done particular harm to smaller local news organizations:

This remarkable stability in Meta platform users’ continued use of the platforms for politics and current affairs anticipates the findings from the detailed investigation into engagement and posting behaviour of Canadians. We find that the ban has significantly impacted Canadian news outlets but had little impact on Canadian user behaviour. Consistent with the ban’s goal, we find a precipitous decline in engagement with Canadian news and consequently the posting of news content by Canadian news outlets. The effect is particularly acute for local news outlets, while some news outlets with national or international scope have been able to make a partial recovery after a few months. Additionally, posting by and engagement with alternative sources of information about Canadian current affairs appears unmoved by the ban. We further find that Groups focused on Canadian politics enjoy the same frequency of posting and diversity of engagement after the ban as before. While link sharing declines, we document a complementary uptick in the sharing of screenshots of Canadian news in a sample of these political Groups, and confirm by reviewing a number of such posts where users deliberately circumvented the link-sharing ban by posting screenshots. Although the screenshots do not compensate for the total loss of link sharing, the screenshots themselves garner the same total amount of engagement as news links previously had.

I feel like I need to keep pointing this out, but: when you tax something, you get less of it. Canada has decided to tax news links, so they get fewer news links. But users still want to talk about news, so they’re replacing the links with screenshots and discussions. And it’s pretty impressive how quickly users switched over:

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Meaning the only one losing out here are the news publishers themselves who claimed to have wanted this law so badly.

The impact on Canadian news orgs appears to be quite dramatic:

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But the activity on Meta platform groups dedicated to news doesn’t seem to have changed that much:

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If “news links” were so valuable to Meta, then, um, wouldn’t that have declined once Meta blocked links?

One somewhat incredible finding in the paper is that “misinformation” links also declined after Meta banned news links:

Surprisingly, the number of misinformation links in political and local community Groups decreased after the ban.

Political Groups:

Though the paper admits that this could just be a function of users recognizing they can’t share links.

This is still quite early research, but it is notable, especially given that the US continues to push for this kind of law as well. Maybe, just maybe, we should take a step back and recognize that taxing links is not helpful for news orgs and misunderstands the overall issue.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the approach taken by Canada and other countries to force platforms like Meta to pay for news links is misguided and counterproductive. These laws are reducing the reach and engagement of news organizations while doing little to address the underlying challenges facing the industry. Instead of helping news organizations, these laws are having the opposite effect. Policymakers need to take a more nuanced and evidence-based approach that recognizes the complex dynamics of the online news ecosystem.

Filed Under: c-18, canada, link tax, link taxes, news links
Companies: meta

Blame Silly Politicians For Google Starting To Block News Sites In California

from the the-law-is-bad dept

That thing is happening again, where politicians are pushing a bad law that will benefit Rupert Murdoch, while harming the public. Rather than blaming Murdoch or the politicians pushing the law, they’re blaming “big tech” for actually responding to the law accordingly. Because that’s easier. But it’s wrong.

In this case, it’s California’s terrible attempt at a link tax, pushed for by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. Google is experimenting with removing links to California news publications for California news users, which is exactly what the law demands. But, lots of people are getting mad at Google, when they should be mad at Wicks.

Let’s take a step back to the beginning.

Link taxes are bad, mmkay?

The entire concept is broken and represents an attack on the open internet. They have not worked, contrary to what supporters will tell you. In Australia, often held up as the shining example of link taxes working, smaller publications are laying off journalists and shutting down at a faster pace than before.

If you don’t follow this closely, link taxes are a horrible idea. They were cooked up by Rupert Murdoch because he was mad that his internet ventures were flopping, while Google and Facebook were thriving. The famed faux-free market supporter insisted that if Google and Facebook were making money while he was struggling, it must be because of something “unfair” that they had done: namely become a source that people go to to find links to news stories.

Somehow, Murdoch and friends spun this as “stealing” the news. Except, it’s not. It’s literally linking to news sites and sending traffic to them. And the news orgs clearly value that traffic, because they not only do not block such traffic (which would be easy to do with robots.txt and referral blockers), they actually hire “search engine optimization” and “social media marketing” teams to make sure they appear more often on Google and Facebook.

So, what Murdoch wants is not just for Google and Facebook to send free traffic his way, but actually for them to pay to send him traffic. That is literally all that these “news bargaining codes” are. They are direct wealth transfers, facilitated by politicians, from internet companies that are making money (Google/Meta) to media companies that are also (mostly) making money, but are mad that Google and Meta are successful.

Even if you believe that we need more sustainable options for journalism (and, as a journalist, I believe that very strongly), everything about link taxes is corrupt. It’s a direct, government-mandated, wealth transfer from one industry to another industry. It’s an out-and-out favor to the news industry (which the political class often relies on for election endorsements). It effectively takes money from one industry and hands it to another for doing nothing more than helping news sites get more traffic and distribution for free.

Meta has been much stronger than Google in standing up to these nonsense laws. Unfortunately, Google has caved in both Australia and Canada, while Meta has been more willing to push back.

However, last week, Google announced that it has begun experimenting with removing links to California news publishers with California’s link tax, the California Journalism Preservation Act by Buffy Wicks back on the legislative docket.

As we’ve shared when other countries have considered similar proposals, the uncapped financial exposure created by CJPA would be unworkable. If enacted, CJPA in its current form would create a level of business uncertainty that no company could accept. To prepare for possible CJPA implications, we are beginning a short-term test for a small percentage of California users. The testing process involves removing links to California news websites, potentially covered by CJPA, to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience. Until there’s clarity on California’s regulatory environment, we’re also pausing further investments in the California news ecosystem, including new partnerships through Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.

I’ve seen some people get mad at Google about this, just as people were mad at Meta when they did a similar thing in both Australia and Canada.

But that anger is misplaced: be mad at Rupert Murdoch, who would be the largest single beneficiary of the law by far. Be mad at California Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who would be orchestrating this wealth transfer from companies that have employees in her district to Rupert Murdoch, and pretending this attack on the open web is somehow good for journalism.

Be mad at all the media companies that won’t report accurately on the problems of such a law because they so want in on this wealth transfer.

In the end, Google is doing exactly what the law suggests it should do. If the government taxes something, you get less of that thing. That’s a fairly fundamental economic concept. Here, the tax is ridiculously problematic because it’s (1) taxing something that should never be taxed: links on the open web, and (2) not a typical tax, but one where the monetary transfer goes directly from one industry to another. Either way, it remains a tax. And the end result of a tax is: less of what is being taxed. So, yes, if those links are taxed, there will be less links on Google and Meta to news sites.

And, obviously, this sucks for me as a California-based publication. But I don’t blame Google for doing what the law directly incentivizes. I blame Buffy Wicks for pushing an obviously flawed law, on a topic she clearly doesn’t understand, to please the local newspaper that endorsed her.

As we discussed last year, there’s historical precedent here. Richard Nixon passed a similar law in the 1970s, in exchange for newspaper endorsements. It hastened the collapse of local newspapers, but Nixon got his endorsements. Wicks seems similarly willing to sell out journalism in her state in order to get an endorsement. It won’t be good for smaller news publishers like ours. It won’t be good for the public. It won’t be good for the internet. But it will be good for Buffy Wicks and Rupert Murdoch.

Filed Under: buffy wicks, california, cjpa, google news, link tax, news links
Companies: google

This isn’t a huge surprise, as they’d already suggested they would do this, but Google has announced officially that it will block news links in Canada to avoid having to pay to send traffic to Canadian news sources.

We have now informed the Government that when the law takes effect, we unfortunately will have to remove links to Canadian news from our Search, News and Discover products in Canada, and that C-18 will also make it untenable for us to continue offering our Google News Showcase product in Canada.

The company goes on to note all the ways in which it had been supporting journalism in Canada, nearly all of which it will now stop because of the pure stupidity and open internet-breaking nature of the bill, which demands payments for linking to news, going against the fundamental principle of the web.

We already pay to support Canadian journalism through our programs and partnerships – and we’ve been clear we’re prepared to do more. As part of our Google News Showcase program, we have negotiated agreements covering over 150 news publications across Canada. Last year alone, we linked to Canadian news publications more than 3.6 billion times — at no charge — helping publishers make money through ads and new subscriptions. This referral traffic from links has been valued at $250 million CAD annually. We’re willing to do more; we just can’t do it in a way that breaks the way that the web and search engines are designed to work, and that creates untenable product and financial uncertainty.

Ever since the Government introduced C-18 last year, we have shared our experiences in other countries and been clear that unworkable legislation could lead to changes that affect the availability of news on Google’s products in Canada.

We have successfully collaborated with Governments and news publishers around the world on the shared goal of strengthening the news industry, and we currently have thousands of mutually beneficial agreements with news publications around the world.

We tried to take this same approach with Bill C-18. We repeatedly offered constructive feedback and recommended solutions that would have made it more workable for both platforms and publishers, unlocking further financial support for Canadian journalism. We also endorsed the alternative model of an independent fund for Canadian journalism supported by both platforms and the Government, an approach that’s worked elsewhere. We appeared several times before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications and submitted detailed recommendations to both committees.

We advocated for reasonable and balanced amendments to the legislation for over a year. None of our suggestions for changes to C-18 were accepted.

This news follows on Meta making a similar announcement a week earlier. For what it’s worth, Meta has also announced that it will be ending the program it had to fund journalism in Canada.

As the fallout from the federal government’s Online News Act continues, Facebook parent Meta is terminating a contract with The Canadian Press that saw the digital giant support the hiring of a limited number of emerging journalists at the national newswire service.

The newswire agency was informed Wednesday that Meta will end the contract, which has funded roughly 30 reporting fellowship positions for early-career journalists at CP since the program’s inception in 2020.

Canadian Press executive editor Gerry Arnold said that in its letter informing the media company of its decision, Meta clearly linked its termination of the program to Canada’s Online News Act, which became law last week.

With all of this going on, even as the Canadian government was very clearly warned about just how damaging C-18 would be, Drew Wilson at Freezenet reported that the government is now scrambling to negotiate (after the bill was passed) on ways to keep Meta and Google allowing news links in Canada.

Of course, that quoted some Google folks saying that they were hopeful for an agreement — and that was before this announcement from Google, so it sounds like the negotiations failed.

Meanwhile, two of Canada’s biggest newspapers, Postmedia (owners of the National Post) and Nordstar (owners of the Toronto Star), are apparently in talks to merge, meaning there would be even less competition and fewer major news orgs in Canada. I’m sure that some would argue that this is why the internet companies need to pay for links, but it actually just reinforces how terribly traditional news orgs have been run in the internet age, where they’ve consistently failed to adapt or figure out how to actually embrace the internet.

And now they want to be paid for their own failures. But, instead, the end result may be that they’re in more trouble because Google and Facebook take away all the benefits they’ve been providing them already.

Filed Under: c-18, canada, google news, journalism, link tax, news, news links, news search
Companies: google, meta, nordstar, postmedia