If you're doing business in a country, naturally you need to deal with the regulatory environment of that country. Its surprising to see such explicit american chauvinism when discussing this issue.

I'm as much against american hegemony as the next frenchman, and I still consider this wave of "we'll make google pay for the traffic they send our way" regulations to be bullshit.

It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete.

I'm just disappointed that it seems the only way our government can make money is by pulling it from American companies.

> It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete.

That's utter nonsense. If google is sending traffic to a site, then naturally they consider that site valuable in some way. Nothing about google makes news "obsolete", and in fact google is basically just a website for finding news articles (and other content). The Canadian implementation of this law, unlike the Australian one for example, gives google the option of excluding these news sites from search results entirely if they consider them unnecessary. That google has chosen to negotiate a deal instead demonstrates that google recognizes the value these sites provide.

Fair, that's on me for reacting to the headline without reading the article, and "obsolete" is too strong a word.

I was mostly thinking of the lobbying groups in europe which very much didn't want to allow the "exclude from search results" opt-out.

We have a userbase that, in general, prides itself on reading the article. Far too many here still don't make it past the headline. Do you think Google is actually sending traffic to articles posted by the news orgs, or are people more likely scanning headlines and confirming their biases? At most (on average) I'd expect clicking through and skimming the sub-headline

Yeah, and some times that regulatory environment is a greasy extortionist demanding bribes.

Canadian here, many Canadians oppose this law and have a negative view of the CTRC. Many did not agree with the level of control over online news content that the Canadian government sought with this bill.

I'm Canadian. It's obviously extortion. Unless you take the position that linking to someone on the internet harms them.

In the regular world, people pay for links. Google had to ban the practice of paying for links because links are so valuable. And people still do it.

It is nonsensical to argue that links are a cost. So, this law was an attempt at a shakedown.

And it didn't work very well. Meta walked, and this deal with google exempts it from the law if it pays $100 million. All existing deals with the media were cancelled too.

This only applies to specific firms, and no one else. That's hardly typical.

Arguably it violates international agreements Canada has signed, as they essentially agreed to a level playing field for local and international firms.

Yeah it’s a shakedown. I don’t see them getting any money out of Facebook though. I actually think Facebook is a better experience for users without news.

I'm not sure if this is what you meant but just in case, from the article: "Meta [...] ended its talks with the government last summer and stopped distributing Canadian news on Facebook and Instagram".

Facebook, all Meta properties no longer allow sharing anything considered news in Canada. If you put in a link to a news site it will be blocked. At one point they were event blocking news satire. People sharing news now will drop in an image instead of a link. Much less useful.

I think news sharing on Facebook mainly leads to outrage spirals and toxic engagement. That’s why I say the platform is better off without it. I’m disappointed that people have been able to circumvent the block with screenshots though.

Well it's a shitty way to operate but since these companies pay close to zero taxes I kinda support it