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 am not sure if I am missing something here, if directing the viewer to website and website display the content+ad, how does google take a cut? Google take a cut from sponsored link right? So if the media feel that paying for the link redirection is an extortion, then don’t buy sponsored links right?
I am old enough that I know what news is like before internet, so to compete the eyeballs and attract regular/repeat users, your content needs to be in top quality. And we all know how it’s not the “media” controlling ads, it’s the other way around, it’s who paid for ad space controlling the media. And to be honest, it was never a good healthy cycle anyway.(see TV ads, new paper ads, youtube ads, and intrusive web ads), faster and shorter engagement time means less conversion, and usually it means worse content overtime as sites try everything to prolong engagement time. (ie. sponsored content, embeded autoplay, more “next page”, more “releated” “you might also be interested” links with clickbait title/thumbnail, etc, etc.)
People ARE statistics, there are portion of people that are considering buying certain thing, so owning your social interation/search data leads to higher associations, thus more effective ads. It’s the sole reason why Google/Meta’s business work, cause they can do user targeted ads.
Let’s be honest, journalist quality is going down the drain as well. Like almost 30~40% of content is lagging social network for about minimum half day up toward a week. Maybe articles are just glorified blog post of referencing social media posts. Don’t get me wrong, people do crave quality content articles, it’s just that majority of time, even when posted to say special interest sub-reddit, the content itself is really lacking. ie. say, compare the hardware review from early 2000 and now(after 2020), it takes “longer” to get to the point, it was filled with many charts that aren’t really interesting(cause we know benchmark and game performance are usually have special driver treatment etc.), less article explains the important architecture changes, how much it would affect your experience(just copy paste sponsor marketing material), talking about the hard points like is it worth the upgrade, longevity, etc. It’s so bad that usually, asking in a specific gaming sub or discord about certain hardware gives you less biased feedbacks and chances are, they also give you links to cheaper vendor or links to price tracker. Hardware review sites gives you none of that(here is our sponsored market place, please support us by using the linkes below, blah.)
Last but not least, the intrusive full screen blocking shit when I just view the article’s first paragraph and scroll 2 mouse wheel ticks down. How can a website expect me to subscribe without at least let me check 1 article? heck, like even 1 page or something before you pop that thing and ask me to subscribe. I am trained in a way that if I clicked an external link and see that full screen block, I just ctrl+w and close that tab. It is not worth my time. And I am the type of guy that whitelist sites that are actually helpful or pay visit often. The media sites aren’t doing their best to keep or invite random visitors to come again. It’s pretty much the same shit if you just scroll through Edge’s suggested contents.( which I have to turn off everytime if the update reset my settings. ) They have to provide something where people are willing to stick around.
if directing the viewer to website and website display the content+ad, how does google take a cut?
Nearly every ad on the Internet that isn’t on Facebook is a Google ad. They take approximately 1/3 of the money the publisher makes on the ad. So, if Ford pays $1 per click on an ad shown on the Toronto Star, the Star gets $0.68 and Google gets $0.32. Also, Ford pays Google to show that ad because Google runs both the publisher and advertiser sides of the game.
And we all know how it’s not the “media” controlling ads, it’s the other way around
Sure, to some extent. But, the big, powerful news organizations used to have content that was in such high demand that they journalism staff was insulated from the ads side of things. It also used to be a point of honour among journalists and their editors that they were going to speak truth to power, even if it alienated some of their advertisers.
usually, asking in a specific gaming sub or discord about certain hardware gives you less biased feedbacks
I disagree, most communities become echo-chambers, certain hardware is popular, and certain hardware is “trash” and if you disagree you get downvoted or shouted down. It’s very rare when you can have an informed, balanced conversation about whether nVidia or AMD have the best card at a certain price point. At best you have fanbois for each side duking it out.
Anyhow, the point is that traditional media, media that actually hires people who went to journalism school, now has to compete with random bloggers, people who want to be influencers, people looking to be paid for their affiliate links, etc. Google and Facebook don’t care what you click on, as long as there’s a chance you’ll click on their ads. So, if they have to pay a link tax to link to traditional media companies, they’re happy just to link to the other stuff instead – or just to link to American news sites.
So, if Ford pays $1 per click on an ad shown on the Toronto Star
That’s the root cause no? why does it has to go through Google or Meta? If Ford paid google and Toronto Star give google ad space for ad revenue split, everything is in the contract. There is no law to prevent traditional media to have their own union ad organization right? Or at very least, Toronto can refuse and run their own ad space selling like old paper times. If say, Ford can’t do it the old way like on paper, why is that? Toronto Star don’t have enough technical people to handle online ad? don’t know how to do ad pricing and conversion tracking? don’t know how to do targeted ads? Those aren’t google’s fault, if traditional media wants to save money on upgrade their ad technology and backend, they will ended up forking money and purchase what others provided.
used to have content that was in such high demand
That’s also not google’s problem, it’s the industry’s problem. Like theaters/cable tv fighting for survival against streaming, brick and mortar fighting against Amazon, people only want to spend time or money on things they feel justified.
most communities become echo-chambers
If you go to nvidia community and ask what AMD card is better, then yeah, that’s sort of stupid. In my example, my question or intention is to ask directly in the game’s community. ie. if you ask which monitor might be best in “Home Theater” vs in “CS:GO” community, you would get totally different answer. Which is exactly what should happen for specific “review” for certain target audience. But we only get generic reviews that covers some talk points but not have actual feedbacks. So if I want to have best performance for say, Street Fighter, than I go ask in that community for best setup. Compare to spend hours and hours on review sites, you can quickly get a couple candidates for building/upgrading your PC/setup.
Lastly, say, if people go through say, fine art school, should we protect their job opportunity? Or people that have management degree they should get management jobs? Where are those shoe fixing/tailor made clothing jobs? The entire world is moving target, “used to be” is not a proper excuse to put a bad legislation that might actually back fire and damage the industry in the end.
