nev on Nostr: npub1r472r…swytr i figured, you seem unfamiliar with Canada's economy and the state ...
npub1r472r6l048muneexp0tx0rmhdz890lq6t7ds30unknl40tm9udhsqswytr (npub1r47…wytr) i figured, you seem unfamiliar with Canada's economy and the state of the Canadian news industry (well, the news industry in general). For context, I am a small-time freelance journalist in Canada.
Canada is as capitalist as anywhere else and virtually *everything* is "capital-owned", not just newspapers. (However, some of the small independent outlets also affected by Facebook's response are nonprofit-owned and run off subscriptions, not ads. Just a small amount, but there are more nonprofit-owned news outlets in Canada than, say, nonprofit-owned pharmacies.)
The traditional newspaper industry was funded by print advertisements. Since everything went online and Google and Facebook have monopolized the online advertising market, the bottom has dropped out and newspapers are dying (and increasingly bought out by hedge funds that make money off driving them into the ground). This situation is especially dire in Canada which has relatively few news outlets and doesn't have the huge audience of the US. Reporters have been getting laid off for years and local media has suffered for it.
Our news industry is dying. I doubt it will exist in 25 years. The new law was an attempt to scrape back some of the revenue that Facebook and Google, in monopolizing the web and web advertising, have taken from news sites over the past few decades.
While I have *plenty* of criticism for the Canadian media and the Canadian government, and I'm not sure the law was the best way to address the situation, 1) I don't know what would have been *better*, and 2) they are not the ones in the wrong here. Facebook, a multibillion-dollar corporation that exerts unprecedented control over the Web and ad revenue and is parasitizing actual news produced by people who increasingly *aren't getting paid*, is.
Not sorry for the essay, next time please use less crylaughing emoji when talking about Facebook blocking vital information sharing.
Canada is as capitalist as anywhere else and virtually *everything* is "capital-owned", not just newspapers. (However, some of the small independent outlets also affected by Facebook's response are nonprofit-owned and run off subscriptions, not ads. Just a small amount, but there are more nonprofit-owned news outlets in Canada than, say, nonprofit-owned pharmacies.)
The traditional newspaper industry was funded by print advertisements. Since everything went online and Google and Facebook have monopolized the online advertising market, the bottom has dropped out and newspapers are dying (and increasingly bought out by hedge funds that make money off driving them into the ground). This situation is especially dire in Canada which has relatively few news outlets and doesn't have the huge audience of the US. Reporters have been getting laid off for years and local media has suffered for it.
Our news industry is dying. I doubt it will exist in 25 years. The new law was an attempt to scrape back some of the revenue that Facebook and Google, in monopolizing the web and web advertising, have taken from news sites over the past few decades.
While I have *plenty* of criticism for the Canadian media and the Canadian government, and I'm not sure the law was the best way to address the situation, 1) I don't know what would have been *better*, and 2) they are not the ones in the wrong here. Facebook, a multibillion-dollar corporation that exerts unprecedented control over the Web and ad revenue and is parasitizing actual news produced by people who increasingly *aren't getting paid*, is.
Not sorry for the essay, next time please use less crylaughing emoji when talking about Facebook blocking vital information sharing.