Some reflections on the Australian experience and what they might mean for Canada.
After Google’s move on Thursday, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez sent a written statement calling the companies’ moves “deeply irresponsible and out of touch … especially when they make billions of dollars off of Canadian users” with advertising.
Australia’s regulatory experiment – the first of its kind in the world – also got off to a rocky start, but it has since seen tech companies, news publishers and the government reach a middle ground.
There is no way the general public would adopt RSS. The barrier to entry is just too high right now. Technology that delivers news needs to be idiot-proof and require basically 1-2 steps
Eg:
- click on the blue-green swirl
- type “Facebook”
Or:
- turn TV on
- change channel to news
Don’t get me wrong, RSS is great, but it’s also used exclusively by the computer-literate and it has been that way for basically 25 years.
RSS does not necessarily mean clunky UI and difficult to use. There are some pretty beautiful podcast apps with great content discovery features out there :)
No reason a news app that reads RSS needs to be more complicated than opening Facebook.
