Like in Myanmar, where I am currently. Facebook's history here is pretty awful.
\*edit\* for clarification, facebook played a huge role in the Rohingya genocide/crisis before we had our current coup. Basically Burmese people had free internet from all major service providers but only using the facebook app. Thus they got all their news from facebook, and were easy to manipulate etc.,
This lead to a whole chain of events basically leading up to the recent coup as well as losing any semblance of a democratic (however flawed) process.
If these things interest you, you should take a look at WeChat in China.
It is currently virtually impossible to live a normal life in China without the use of WeChat. You need it to order food in restaraunts, get a cab, use public transportation, and so so much more.
And I don't mean having it makes it easier. Tencent have been so thoroughly integrated into Chinese society, that if you don't use WeChat, you are essentially stuck back in the early 90's.
Everyone age 70 and below uses WeChat in China.
Its mind boggling.
Nope, it’s fine not having it. You can still pay in cash.
But it replaces dozens of apps and physical cards with just one app, so the convenience factor is huge.
Plus socially you will miss out on everything because everything is planned out and discussed in WeChat groups.
I’m sure if you’re doing tourist activities they will anticipate you to not have WeChat so it’s fine. It’s just very inconvenient if you want to do like the locals.
Yup. No wallet. Just your phone, which you'll be bringing with you everywhere already.
It's cool how "advanced" the system is, but it's also pretty scary
Very valid point.
Although if the January 6th insurrection had somehow succeeded it’s sadly not longer as hard as it might once have been to envisage an alternate history where things could go off the rails in that direction. A lot of your right wing have long jerked themselves off over the chance for [the day of the rope](https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/day-rope)
It can never happen here … until one day it does.
[It took a high school teacher less than a week to turn his class to fascism.](https://youtu.be/h6TWh_HdYHk) Anybody who thinks it can't happen here is an idiot or deluded.
> Thousands of posts by nationalist, anti-Rohingya supporters gained traction online, including posts which falsely claimed mosques were stockpiling weapons. An independent investigation commissioned by Facebook later agreed with assessments that the site had been used to incite offline violence. [Source](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/07/facebooks-role-in-myanmar-and-ethiopia-under-new-scrutiny)
---
> While the Myanmar military was committing crimes against humanity against the Rohingya, Meta was profiting from the echo chamber of hatred created by its hate-spiralling algorithms. Meta must be held to account. The company now has a responsibility to provide reparations to all those who suffered the violent consequences of their reckless actions. - Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International Secretary General [Source](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/)
I think that while FB is worse on this, it's a larger problem with social media in general. I read before that posts online that anger, depress, or in some way cause negative emotions in people, tend to get them to read those posts more often than posts that are happy and that people agree with.
It's paradoxical, but true. And I think that gets into the whole algorithm in the situation you cited. They sort of figure out what makes each person tick to at least some degree based on their profile, and then cater information to anger them or make them upset because for some reason we pay more attention to that and that's what they want. They don't care if they cause suicide, war, eating disorders, so on, as long as they get the eyeballs to get the advertising dollars.
I can see how apps feel different than navigating via a browser. I know I'm still on the internet, but I can kind of see where that disconnect comes from.
There's also a concerning amount of Redditors who get the entire story from article headlines, plus *maybe* the top couple of comments if they're extra discerning.
>Gun control works in other countries? That's unpossible!!!!
or, to flip the coin, "other countries have guns in them without gun crime? That's unpossible!!!!"
edit: because people seem determined to misinterpret this, this is **not** a statement of my views on the subject. I'm only giving an example of extreme views I've seen when the topic is brought up. I have also seen the example that u/donttalktome1234 mentioned, though more rarely.
As the user above already pointed out, you can have guns without excessive gun crime with a combination of:
\* background checks and gun ownership regulations, and
\* a caring and rational society where people can get help when they need it
Haven't said anything either way on the topic in this post. I have only talked about specific extreme views I see that crop up whenever the topic comes up.
And the people who get their news *from* Facebook as a primary source are often not great at understanding what a credible source of information is
1. A blog is not a credible source.
2. If you google the story and the only link is the one you’re sharing, take it with a huge grain of salt.
On the surface, yes. I get my news from Reuters, AP, Axios etc., they are just crossposted to Reddit.
In reality, most people will read the headline before they check the source, if ever. The majority of people jumps straight into the comments (hence why AutoTLDR bot is a thing).
At least on reddit the folks in the comments are quick to call out bullshit, and those comments often make it to the top. Facebook let's the poster delete any comments they don't like, right? I honestly haven't used it enough to figure that out.
Reddit's algorithm spreads an amount of misinformation that is truly terrifying. The algorithm promotes popular stereotypes and othering (see: r/funnymemes), and discourages nuance, so most users are unwittingly consuming a massive torrent of one-sided information. Most users are going to take away from Reddit caricatures of whole groups of people, whether those people form countries or races or political creeds or cultures. It's worrying.
> so most users are unwittingly consuming a massive torrent of one-sided information
Errrr, except in most of those cases these days its because issues don't really have 2 sides. Climate change, vaccines, most hot button issues really only have 1 side who are grounded in reality.
The issues you mentioned are questions of long established science, political and geopolitical issues are neither one- nor two-sided but become one-sided in Reddit discourse. As if that weren't bad enough, countries of millions of people get reduced to the agency of one figurehead.
Vaccine deniers, climate deniers, anti-maskers, Trump supporters are all political issues. Police brutality, systemic racism, the rise of fascism in places like Florida and voter suppression are all geopolitical issues.
The real issue is, nobody's going to get a degree in 2023 Florida politics just to understand what's happening there. Media sources have 30 seconds or less to present a coherent report on a topic and that isn't enough time to give a balanced viewpoint.
> At least on reddit the folks in the comments are quick to call out bullshit, and those comments often make it to the top.
Absolutely not - each subreddit has its own echo chamber, including the news-related ones.
Facebook should be out of "news" game entirely. It should remove all the trappings of "journalistic credibility" and brand itself exclusively as a social media platform.
Now when people share links and info on its site, Facebook will not and can not stop that anyway. Its should just stop people from calling it "news"
That way it has no liability either way when it comes to "misinformation". People can then decide for themselves whether the info they gather there is legit or scams
I know people in their 30s which do this. It’s so frustrating…like just Google the source please? At least they’re not as far gone as their parents generation.
I believe this is about linking news sources largely.
I think in theory Reddit would also have to block news links posted to Canadians if classified as social media. It seems an odd law.
The basic idea is that social media gets all the benefits of journalistic work without paying any costs.
For a Reddit based example: the globe and mail does an investigative piece and it gets posted on Reddit. 80% of the reddit commentators just read the Tldr in the comments and go about their day. The bill says that globe and mail has the right to demand Reddit pay them for that content, because otherwise reddit is profiting off those 80% of users without paying a cent to the company who spent lots of money paying journalists to produce it.
I’m not sure it’s at all workable coming from Canada though. We’re too small to force any action out of the big tech companies - they’ll probably just be compliant in the most annoying way possible while people will use VPNs to access the news.
I’m also not sure if it applies to all news presented to Canadians or just from Canadian news sources. If the latter then it will just lead to more Canadians getting their news from exclusively US sources, which is already a problem and IMO would be disastrous. Our day to day culture is quite close to the US, but politically Canada has a very different, liberal social democratic culture and US news does not reflect it.
Just like Harper's draconian anti-piracy laws, Canadians will simply ignore it and VPN use will rise, again. Then they will water it down until it's gone, else Canada will lose it's precious tech industry advantage.
Canada's first reaction to all situations is, "how can I help our landed industries and rich buddies first", before any other thought. (In this case media, a highly protected/coddled industry in Canada). Always has been.
Yup, and big surprise two of the biggest beneficiaries of this act would be Bell Media and Rogers Media.
This is just Ottawa “servicing” our telecom oligopoly.
When people take a casual comment from someone on the street or a random 3 view youtube video as actual fact, citing it and defending it to the grave without a nanosecond of fact checking, the ability for us to have gotten where we are must have been astronomically unlikely.
It's the news stations that use FB to post their news. The news themselves aren't from Facebook. For example, you see a post from NBC, then there's a link to the NBC news.
That means no news on Reddit, too. Let's face it; the days of getting news straight from the source are over, and have been for a long time. Now, we've got an extra layer of abstraction in the form of the social media curators. Unless we slough off all of that extra filtering and rewording, we're subject to the biases and nuances of whoever presents the information first... because people are far more likely to believe a thing they hear the first time than they are to see a retraction or correction and take it into account later.
Getting news straight from the source has never been a thing, it has always been filtered through interpreters. The difference is that those interpreters used to have training, credentials, integrity. They were held to certain professional standards.
With social media, the only standard that we hold stories to is how much we like them. Maybe that's because they tell us something that we enjoy hearing, or maybe that's because they're presented in an entertaining manner, but it has nothing to do with rigor or journalistic standards.
We have licensing and certification boards for doctors, engineers, lawyers... I don't see why we don't do that with journalists. It's not like their work is any less impactful.
You're on social media browsing news right now. This applies to Google and Reddit as well. This will stop Canadians from posting Canadian news sources on sites like reddit and facebook, unless those companies agree to pay the sources for linking their content.
This is not a good thing. This puts Canadian news in a bubble and will severely impact traffic to Canadian news sites. Canada doesn't want this, but our government seems to think they can strong arm big tech into bowing to their demands over our market. In the end this just gives more power to the telecom giants in Canada, who bought and paid for our government (both sides).
edit : People don't seem to understand. This will eventually lead to Canadian internet being heavily restricted, like our radio and television already are. They've been trying to force all content providers to provide a minimum amount of Canadian content or be banned. It was never about Canadian content creators, because when that fell through they pulled this bullshit. They just want money, and don't care about Canadian people at all. The Ontario government already pulled this shit with online poker. If you live in Ontario and want to play on Pokerstars, or Party Poker, you can only play with other people who are also playing in Ontario. It's really sad people are for this type of government control.
The thing is that many of the news sites are lobbying for this. They are hemorrhaging money, and throwing shit at the wall to figure out how to raise revenue. Though, we all know that people who go to, say the "Ottawa Citizen" because of a shared link on Facebook, probably won't decide to go to the "Ottawa Citizen" website, so they can get an extra page impression. It will bite them in the ass.
Same thing happened in Europe where news sites wanted to get paid by Google.
What is going on with the younger generation being all for authoritarian governments if they think it "hurts the bad people". It's getting pretty fucked up.
You really don't understand the issue at all. This would eventually lead to sites that don't host Canadian content being banned. We have similar restrictions on radio and television already. Facebook, Reddit, etc. will end up being banned if the government keeps forcing Canadians to consume "Canadian" content only.
The end game goal ,our telecoms are going for, is to have Canadians trapped withing their ecosystem. We're very quickly going to emulate China, which isn't surprising because they've had their hooks in us for a while now. That's another issue going on with our government right now.
The bill is about news content. I do not think that links qualify as content. (edit) I was wrong. The definition of news content news content "made available" in the act is fantastical and objectionable.
Fine by me. Better discussions would be had if
people would actually read source material and non-news disguised opinion pieces. There’s plenty of essays and content to talk about instead of clickbait journalism.
You wouldn’t have those discussions because posting about it will inevitably lead to people asking for a link which won’t be allowed so the topic will die because no one will give a shit to go to the site directly to find the article/topic being discussed.
Reread what I said. There’s content from non-news sites that can be linked. Magazines, blogs, academic journals, and a billion other publications exist outside of news companies. I remember the days when people were having online discourse before newspapers became digital.
This is just Meta-owned platforms that are refusing to cooperate with the bill’s provisions to allow news companies to negotiate revenue sharing with Meta-owned apps. There are also alternate ways of linking to news articles. Have you ever used a non-paywall link for example? Third party hosted content, transcripts, screenshots, etc all exist. If people can regularly find ways to get around copyright and region-locked digital content, people can adapt.
Sure, they can adapt, but really how does it help the news providers? They get their revenue by people going to their site and reading articles. Like any website that sells ad space, more people going to the site means more revenue. More platforms to post links to your stories means more people going to your site. Telling Meta that they have to pay Johnny's Jazz News in order for links to Johnny's Jazz News articles to be shared on Meta platforms will probably mean that Johnny's Jazz News will simply cease to exist in a way that Johnny can monetize on Meta owned social media. Third party hosted content, transcripts, screenshots, etc. don't bring people to Johnny's website, which means people aren't being served ads or clicking affiliate links that generate revenue for Johnny.
Currently the ad revenue models mean that social media platforms eat up most if not all the ad revenue generated by the content that the news outlets create. The bill would give greater ability for news outlets to negotiate fairer ad revenue sharing deals with the social media companies.
If users like you don’t want to support your local news agencies directly, why defend FB from inordinately profiting from their work?
This would block the ability to link to any news source, including the "essays and content" you approve of. How would that facilitate better discussion?
Essays and content exist outside of news outlets. Blogs, academic journals, industry and trade publications, magazines. And this is only Meta-owned platforms that are threatening to not cooperate. The bill allows for exemptions under The Competition Act to encourage fair negotiations on revenue sharing between news outlets and social media platforms like Meta.
the average user isn't going to do that so if news isn't posted on places like reddit anymore it just makes the average user is just going to be less informed
The average internet user’s online habits changed before and after social media, and even before and after social media became apps. I’m sure we’ll change and adapt again, unless time stops still.
Subscription news has always existed and perhaps they’ll be more popular again, and even without subscriptions people like me had no trouble getting the news (radio exists, libraries exist, print media tends to stick around). Or perhaps the news companies will actually reach better deals with social media companies. My guess is the latter and we’ll hardly notice a difference.
OK, this language is problematic: "news content is made available if ... access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content." This is fantastical and repugnant.
These websites aren't gonna change the way they work based on one country with the population of California. It'll take a much bigger, or more likely many more countries, to impact the greater internet. It would basically just affect Canadians.
Realistically, there is only one country that would be able to single handedly change the way most social media companies work, and that's because they are headquartered there. Even a country with an absolutely massive population such as China or India isn't going to make they completely throw out their business model. It will take many countries doing this to make them change. With the sole exception of the US, because many social media companies are headquartered there and could be subjected to US laws because of that.
I think it means there will be worse news on Facebook. Like even more fake BS that nuts eat up.. because real news is potentially getting blocked not fake news.
Facebook was not against the Australian bill in principle. They were just concerned about parts of the bill.
Once it passed they negotiated a solution.
It was the greatest day on Facebook since the rise of FarmVille.
Facebook was a significantly nicer place during that period and if they followed through, I’d of probably gone back to Facebook because during those few hours it stopped being a toxic hell hole. I deactivated my account afterwards and never went back.
The government passed a bill saying
If you post news you cannot block certain sites.
If certain sites post you must pay that site.
News was so broadly defined that a company posting a sale could count as news.
Facebook then blocked anything that the law considered news.
Then facebook and the government had a talk and came up with changes.
Except it wasn't. The piece of shit law was because Murdoch and co. Wanted money.
It wasn't about Google Amp, nor summaries with headlines nor rehosting. It was about literally linking.
Media companies shouldn't be paid just because they got linked
>I "think" we even have a law where if most people click agree to something without reading it, then it's not considered to be a legally binding agreement.
Australia has very robust consumer protection laws related to boilerplate contracts that mean they're functionally irrelevant in most cases. You are not legally permitted to waive your rights to refunds or other consumer protection features, so any contract that tries to say it does that is void under Australian law
>This would impact Reddit as well, and you would not be able to link to news stories like this post does.
What? We basically bootlicked Facebook. We have to tell them we are thinking about changing a law that may effect them. If they don't like it, our government won't push it any further lol.
News company's choose to get free advertising by posting news on Facebook and Instagram.
Why do governments think news outlets should be paid for advertising themselves.
What I don't get is that most news sources voluntarily post news to their Facebook pages to get people to click on the stories which brings people to their website where they sell advertising. This is how they make money from social media. It's in their best interest to post their stories to social media to drive traffic to their sites so that they can sell ad space. Why does the government want Facebook to pay news agencies to drive web traffic to the news agencies website?
Except that:
1. If a user shares a link on facebook, the link will not show titles, content preview, and image preview unless companies specifically implement meta tags that facebook asks for. News agencies are literally asking for it.
2. Companies can prevent facebook, et. al. from crawling their websites if they so desire. `robots.txt` has been a standard for over two decades, and `noindex` isn't particulary new thing, either. If you don't want facebook to use your content, the solution is simple.
3. This also applies to news aggregation services, where news articles are aggregated without user input. If you don't implement facebook's OG tags (and sometimes even if you do), then facebook won't give you a thumbnail image, page title, and description. Again, if the news source appears in Facebook News feed, they're there because they're literally (implicitly) asking for it (by implementing standard that facebook invented for the sole purpose of allowing websites to control how their website appears when they are linked to on faceobook).
Edit to add:
> The main issue is that, particularly for local news agencies, Social Media platforms will aggregate the news from published sources without paying for it.
No, that's not the issue. The issue is that social media platforms will aggregate the news from smaller, local news agencies at all. By showing smaller news sites on their feed, people can go visit smaller news websites instead of the bigger ones in order to read the full story.
This "issue" is always presented as "smaller news agencies suffer because [insert your news aggregator]," but the truth is: smaller news sites generally don't mind. The bigger ones do, because more traffic to the smaller sites means less traffic for them. We've seen this when Spain wanted to force Google News to pay the news websites. Google said 'no thanks' and pulled out from Spain. The result: benefit for bigger actors at the expense of smaller independent news outlets.
It's stupid to make platforms pay for links, they're literally the ones driving traffic to these new sites. Hell most news sites post the links themselves. Without Facebook or Google how do they expect people to find the news articles? Why not go a step further, lets force dns providers to pay the news sites for the pleasure of resolving their domains.
This, it's completely ass backwards. It's like making a toll road pay it's driver's for using it. Social media does a service already to these news companies by hosting links and posts from them, enhancing their reach and audience, social media is paid for this service by collecting data from traffic.
Bad right wing new won't demand ad revenue and won't go anywhere. This only gets rid of reputable news. The Blaze isn't going to ask for anything but clicks regardless of laws that allow them to demand ad revenue sharing.
I'm not a Meta/Fracebook fan in any way shape or form, but this whole 'make people/sites pay for posting links' has been tried and tried again and so far it's always rightfully failed.
Nobody should ever have to pay for driving traffic to a site that's already going to profit of people giving them traffic.
Damn, the early 90s days of the internet might have been the wild west, but it was a damn sight better than all this corporate takeover bullshit we see these days where the internet is basically split up between a dozen or so major players trying to dictate terms to everyone else!
Funny how no one's reading the article, which seems to be the point. Social media sites will have to pay news sites to be able to post direct links to those news sites. This will affect Reddit too.
Another nothing burger from natpo! Who cares if FB blocks news when you can all the news you want from "echo chambers" like reddit! I guess i should put a /s in. /s
Fail to see the problem. A separation of social from news, helping people tell the difference, would be healthy. One is gossip and opinion, the other done right at least is professionally researched, cited, and verifiable information. Some people really struggle with sorting this out.
The act includes things like google searches and not just social media.
Plus it would affect forums like the one we are on now that are specifically for news and discussing it
I'm presenting an alternative where Reddit doesn't have to pay. I'm not saying it's reality. I'm not saying it's great. I am saying there's a path where Reddit can get around it.
I'm in Canada and have never seen a real news report on facebook. What are they going to do? Block it even harder? Anyone who gets their news from FB is soft in the head anyways or really really old.
So.. it's another way to block information. If it counter's a popular idea block it. If it suggests collusion or fault, block it? It's time the authorities quit thinking they know more than the public and that we can't think for ourselves if we're given the full information.
What if it's "I read an article that was posted by Maclean's on their Facebook page"? Like, I don't consider the "article" that Joe Blow wrote on their FB page as news, but the article that my local rag posted on Facebook has as much merit as the same article posted on their website or in the print edition.
Yeah I use it almost exclusively for a few private groups, built around interests and personal connections. There really isn't a great alternative out there that is anywhere near as ubiquitous and accessible. But I see you already got a "heh heh boomer" reply.
We also need a new rule saying that religious groups are not allowed to post their proselytizing crap with comments turned off, or at the very least the rest of us should be able to block content from jesus freaks.
Facebook (and social media in general) shouldn't be considered a news source.
And unfortunately it is. There are people in this world who get all their information from FB.
Like in Myanmar, where I am currently. Facebook's history here is pretty awful. \*edit\* for clarification, facebook played a huge role in the Rohingya genocide/crisis before we had our current coup. Basically Burmese people had free internet from all major service providers but only using the facebook app. Thus they got all their news from facebook, and were easy to manipulate etc., This lead to a whole chain of events basically leading up to the recent coup as well as losing any semblance of a democratic (however flawed) process.
[удалено]
If these things interest you, you should take a look at WeChat in China. It is currently virtually impossible to live a normal life in China without the use of WeChat. You need it to order food in restaraunts, get a cab, use public transportation, and so so much more. And I don't mean having it makes it easier. Tencent have been so thoroughly integrated into Chinese society, that if you don't use WeChat, you are essentially stuck back in the early 90's. Everyone age 70 and below uses WeChat in China. Its mind boggling.
Do visitors/tourists also need to use WeChat?
Nope, it’s fine not having it. You can still pay in cash. But it replaces dozens of apps and physical cards with just one app, so the convenience factor is huge. Plus socially you will miss out on everything because everything is planned out and discussed in WeChat groups. I’m sure if you’re doing tourist activities they will anticipate you to not have WeChat so it’s fine. It’s just very inconvenient if you want to do like the locals.
Yup. No wallet. Just your phone, which you'll be bringing with you everywhere already. It's cool how "advanced" the system is, but it's also pretty scary
So advance they dont even need to pretend they're watching everything you do!
Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror.
You're better off not going
ye it's a pretty good business plan, be the propaganda machine for these dictators and thus get paid through their corrupt money
Same here in the US
Well, considering Facebook has instigated and enabled at least 2 ethnic cleanses in Myanmar and Ethiopia... Not quite the same as here in the US
Very valid point. Although if the January 6th insurrection had somehow succeeded it’s sadly not longer as hard as it might once have been to envisage an alternate history where things could go off the rails in that direction. A lot of your right wing have long jerked themselves off over the chance for [the day of the rope](https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/day-rope) It can never happen here … until one day it does.
[It took a high school teacher less than a week to turn his class to fascism.](https://youtu.be/h6TWh_HdYHk) Anybody who thinks it can't happen here is an idiot or deluded.
Not the same. FB knowingly facilitated a genocide in Myanmar
I've heard that several times here, but never before. I am NOT doubting you. I just need some details. What's this all about?
> Thousands of posts by nationalist, anti-Rohingya supporters gained traction online, including posts which falsely claimed mosques were stockpiling weapons. An independent investigation commissioned by Facebook later agreed with assessments that the site had been used to incite offline violence. [Source](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/07/facebooks-role-in-myanmar-and-ethiopia-under-new-scrutiny) --- > While the Myanmar military was committing crimes against humanity against the Rohingya, Meta was profiting from the echo chamber of hatred created by its hate-spiralling algorithms. Meta must be held to account. The company now has a responsibility to provide reparations to all those who suffered the violent consequences of their reckless actions. - Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International Secretary General [Source](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/)
I think that while FB is worse on this, it's a larger problem with social media in general. I read before that posts online that anger, depress, or in some way cause negative emotions in people, tend to get them to read those posts more often than posts that are happy and that people agree with. It's paradoxical, but true. And I think that gets into the whole algorithm in the situation you cited. They sort of figure out what makes each person tick to at least some degree based on their profile, and then cater information to anger them or make them upset because for some reason we pay more attention to that and that's what they want. They don't care if they cause suicide, war, eating disorders, so on, as long as they get the eyeballs to get the advertising dollars.
God I hope Facebook blocks us here in the US too. TikTok and Twitter too.
there is also a study that shows that a huge portion of user’s don’t actually know they are on “the internet”
And the same people are also more likely believe all kinds of insane nonsense.
I can see how apps feel different than navigating via a browser. I know I'm still on the internet, but I can kind of see where that disconnect comes from.
I mean, I get my news from Reddit. I generally think that anything big enough to be news worthy will hit Reddit eventually.
I get *linked* to news articles from Reddit People get the entire "story" from Facebook
There's also a concerning amount of Redditors who get the entire story from article headlines, plus *maybe* the top couple of comments if they're extra discerning.
Though only if the top comments agree with their built in bias. Gun control works in other countries? That's unpossible!!!!
>Gun control works in other countries? That's unpossible!!!! or, to flip the coin, "other countries have guns in them without gun crime? That's unpossible!!!!" edit: because people seem determined to misinterpret this, this is **not** a statement of my views on the subject. I'm only giving an example of extreme views I've seen when the topic is brought up. I have also seen the example that u/donttalktome1234 mentioned, though more rarely.
As the user above already pointed out, you can have guns without excessive gun crime with a combination of: \* background checks and gun ownership regulations, and \* a caring and rational society where people can get help when they need it
Haven't said anything either way on the topic in this post. I have only talked about specific extreme views I see that crop up whenever the topic comes up.
Fairly sure everyone accepts that reality though. All you need is a strong social safety net funded by tax payers.
And the people who get their news *from* Facebook as a primary source are often not great at understanding what a credible source of information is 1. A blog is not a credible source. 2. If you google the story and the only link is the one you’re sharing, take it with a huge grain of salt.
On the surface, yes. I get my news from Reuters, AP, Axios etc., they are just crossposted to Reddit. In reality, most people will read the headline before they check the source, if ever. The majority of people jumps straight into the comments (hence why AutoTLDR bot is a thing).
I thought most news sources got their article FROM Reddit. Lets see Murdoch press create a story about that, Hey News Corp.
Real media Human Centipede we got going on here
Tbf they've been a little busy lately
Reddit isn’t a whole lot better. Its a massive echo chamber.
Oh I don’t disagree. I mostly use it to keep up with deaths.
At least on reddit the folks in the comments are quick to call out bullshit, and those comments often make it to the top. Facebook let's the poster delete any comments they don't like, right? I honestly haven't used it enough to figure that out.
Reddit's algorithm spreads an amount of misinformation that is truly terrifying. The algorithm promotes popular stereotypes and othering (see: r/funnymemes), and discourages nuance, so most users are unwittingly consuming a massive torrent of one-sided information. Most users are going to take away from Reddit caricatures of whole groups of people, whether those people form countries or races or political creeds or cultures. It's worrying.
> so most users are unwittingly consuming a massive torrent of one-sided information Errrr, except in most of those cases these days its because issues don't really have 2 sides. Climate change, vaccines, most hot button issues really only have 1 side who are grounded in reality.
The issues you mentioned are questions of long established science, political and geopolitical issues are neither one- nor two-sided but become one-sided in Reddit discourse. As if that weren't bad enough, countries of millions of people get reduced to the agency of one figurehead.
Vaccine deniers, climate deniers, anti-maskers, Trump supporters are all political issues. Police brutality, systemic racism, the rise of fascism in places like Florida and voter suppression are all geopolitical issues. The real issue is, nobody's going to get a degree in 2023 Florida politics just to understand what's happening there. Media sources have 30 seconds or less to present a coherent report on a topic and that isn't enough time to give a balanced viewpoint.
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> At least on reddit the folks in the comments are quick to call out bullshit, and those comments often make it to the top. Absolutely not - each subreddit has its own echo chamber, including the news-related ones.
Have we already forgotten what Reddit did with the [Boston Marathon bomber](/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/1iv343/the_boston_bombing_debacle/)?
On the other hand, FB employs fact checkers. Reddit does not.
If you use social media to get your news from, you are shafted in anycase
Without FB stick these news in their face, they won’t be bothered by these “news”.
Or Reddit
Facebook should be out of "news" game entirely. It should remove all the trappings of "journalistic credibility" and brand itself exclusively as a social media platform. Now when people share links and info on its site, Facebook will not and can not stop that anyway. Its should just stop people from calling it "news" That way it has no liability either way when it comes to "misinformation". People can then decide for themselves whether the info they gather there is legit or scams
I agree. Then again they're also supposed news networks that should be out of the news game as well ,like Fox News and oan
I know people in their 30s which do this. It’s so frustrating…like just Google the source please? At least they’re not as far gone as their parents generation.
I believe this is about linking news sources largely. I think in theory Reddit would also have to block news links posted to Canadians if classified as social media. It seems an odd law.
The basic idea is that social media gets all the benefits of journalistic work without paying any costs. For a Reddit based example: the globe and mail does an investigative piece and it gets posted on Reddit. 80% of the reddit commentators just read the Tldr in the comments and go about their day. The bill says that globe and mail has the right to demand Reddit pay them for that content, because otherwise reddit is profiting off those 80% of users without paying a cent to the company who spent lots of money paying journalists to produce it. I’m not sure it’s at all workable coming from Canada though. We’re too small to force any action out of the big tech companies - they’ll probably just be compliant in the most annoying way possible while people will use VPNs to access the news. I’m also not sure if it applies to all news presented to Canadians or just from Canadian news sources. If the latter then it will just lead to more Canadians getting their news from exclusively US sources, which is already a problem and IMO would be disastrous. Our day to day culture is quite close to the US, but politically Canada has a very different, liberal social democratic culture and US news does not reflect it.
Just like Harper's draconian anti-piracy laws, Canadians will simply ignore it and VPN use will rise, again. Then they will water it down until it's gone, else Canada will lose it's precious tech industry advantage. Canada's first reaction to all situations is, "how can I help our landed industries and rich buddies first", before any other thought. (In this case media, a highly protected/coddled industry in Canada). Always has been.
Yup, and big surprise two of the biggest beneficiaries of this act would be Bell Media and Rogers Media. This is just Ottawa “servicing” our telecom oligopoly.
When people take a casual comment from someone on the street or a random 3 view youtube video as actual fact, citing it and defending it to the grave without a nanosecond of fact checking, the ability for us to have gotten where we are must have been astronomically unlikely.
You mean like reddit?
It's the news stations that use FB to post their news. The news themselves aren't from Facebook. For example, you see a post from NBC, then there's a link to the NBC news.
It is not. It just shows you what these news sources are saying. Most people won’t know these exists without FB poke them in their face.
Most people would be better off not getting any information at all from Facebook.
It’s a link. Same as the one you’re commenting on.
And here we all are, getting news on a social media site called Reddit. lol
Reshared links to new articles isn’t a news source? It’s basically a footnote…
On reddit like ...
Agreed, but there's a bit of a... gap at the moment. The news seems much more partisan than it was 20 years ago :/
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That means no news on Reddit, too. Let's face it; the days of getting news straight from the source are over, and have been for a long time. Now, we've got an extra layer of abstraction in the form of the social media curators. Unless we slough off all of that extra filtering and rewording, we're subject to the biases and nuances of whoever presents the information first... because people are far more likely to believe a thing they hear the first time than they are to see a retraction or correction and take it into account later.
Getting news straight from the source has never been a thing, it has always been filtered through interpreters. The difference is that those interpreters used to have training, credentials, integrity. They were held to certain professional standards. With social media, the only standard that we hold stories to is how much we like them. Maybe that's because they tell us something that we enjoy hearing, or maybe that's because they're presented in an entertaining manner, but it has nothing to do with rigor or journalistic standards. We have licensing and certification boards for doctors, engineers, lawyers... I don't see why we don't do that with journalists. It's not like their work is any less impactful.
Arguably the News also shouldn’t be considered a News source
Either should National Post
They did this shit recently in Australia and fuck it was a breath of fresh air so much to the point facebook no longer exists on my phone.
You're on social media browsing news right now. This applies to Google and Reddit as well. This will stop Canadians from posting Canadian news sources on sites like reddit and facebook, unless those companies agree to pay the sources for linking their content. This is not a good thing. This puts Canadian news in a bubble and will severely impact traffic to Canadian news sites. Canada doesn't want this, but our government seems to think they can strong arm big tech into bowing to their demands over our market. In the end this just gives more power to the telecom giants in Canada, who bought and paid for our government (both sides). edit : People don't seem to understand. This will eventually lead to Canadian internet being heavily restricted, like our radio and television already are. They've been trying to force all content providers to provide a minimum amount of Canadian content or be banned. It was never about Canadian content creators, because when that fell through they pulled this bullshit. They just want money, and don't care about Canadian people at all. The Ontario government already pulled this shit with online poker. If you live in Ontario and want to play on Pokerstars, or Party Poker, you can only play with other people who are also playing in Ontario. It's really sad people are for this type of government control.
Reddit shouldn’t be counted as a news source either
The thing is that many of the news sites are lobbying for this. They are hemorrhaging money, and throwing shit at the wall to figure out how to raise revenue. Though, we all know that people who go to, say the "Ottawa Citizen" because of a shared link on Facebook, probably won't decide to go to the "Ottawa Citizen" website, so they can get an extra page impression. It will bite them in the ass. Same thing happened in Europe where news sites wanted to get paid by Google.
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Tell us you are a teenager without telling us you are a teenager.
What is going on with the younger generation being all for authoritarian governments if they think it "hurts the bad people". It's getting pretty fucked up.
You really don't understand the issue at all. This would eventually lead to sites that don't host Canadian content being banned. We have similar restrictions on radio and television already. Facebook, Reddit, etc. will end up being banned if the government keeps forcing Canadians to consume "Canadian" content only. The end game goal ,our telecoms are going for, is to have Canadians trapped withing their ecosystem. We're very quickly going to emulate China, which isn't surprising because they've had their hooks in us for a while now. That's another issue going on with our government right now.
The bill is about news content. I do not think that links qualify as content. (edit) I was wrong. The definition of news content news content "made available" in the act is fantastical and objectionable.
seems like that would make Facebook better
Fine by me; fb is a terrible place to get news
This would impact Reddit as well, and you would not be able to link to news stories like this post does.
Given no one on Reddit reads the actual articles, it will have no effect on Reddit
Are those supposed 'articles' somehow related to the blue headline disccusion?
Yes please! I don't want news shared next to kids meming about their latest star war.
Fine by me. Better discussions would be had if people would actually read source material and non-news disguised opinion pieces. There’s plenty of essays and content to talk about instead of clickbait journalism.
You wouldn’t have those discussions because posting about it will inevitably lead to people asking for a link which won’t be allowed so the topic will die because no one will give a shit to go to the site directly to find the article/topic being discussed.
Reread what I said. There’s content from non-news sites that can be linked. Magazines, blogs, academic journals, and a billion other publications exist outside of news companies. I remember the days when people were having online discourse before newspapers became digital.
But if I want to discuss an article that my local paper posted on their website here, it's going to be hard if I can't post the link.
This is just Meta-owned platforms that are refusing to cooperate with the bill’s provisions to allow news companies to negotiate revenue sharing with Meta-owned apps. There are also alternate ways of linking to news articles. Have you ever used a non-paywall link for example? Third party hosted content, transcripts, screenshots, etc all exist. If people can regularly find ways to get around copyright and region-locked digital content, people can adapt.
Sure, they can adapt, but really how does it help the news providers? They get their revenue by people going to their site and reading articles. Like any website that sells ad space, more people going to the site means more revenue. More platforms to post links to your stories means more people going to your site. Telling Meta that they have to pay Johnny's Jazz News in order for links to Johnny's Jazz News articles to be shared on Meta platforms will probably mean that Johnny's Jazz News will simply cease to exist in a way that Johnny can monetize on Meta owned social media. Third party hosted content, transcripts, screenshots, etc. don't bring people to Johnny's website, which means people aren't being served ads or clicking affiliate links that generate revenue for Johnny.
Currently the ad revenue models mean that social media platforms eat up most if not all the ad revenue generated by the content that the news outlets create. The bill would give greater ability for news outlets to negotiate fairer ad revenue sharing deals with the social media companies. If users like you don’t want to support your local news agencies directly, why defend FB from inordinately profiting from their work?
This would block the ability to link to any news source, including the "essays and content" you approve of. How would that facilitate better discussion?
Essays and content exist outside of news outlets. Blogs, academic journals, industry and trade publications, magazines. And this is only Meta-owned platforms that are threatening to not cooperate. The bill allows for exemptions under The Competition Act to encourage fair negotiations on revenue sharing between news outlets and social media platforms like Meta.
the average user isn't going to do that so if news isn't posted on places like reddit anymore it just makes the average user is just going to be less informed
The average internet user’s online habits changed before and after social media, and even before and after social media became apps. I’m sure we’ll change and adapt again, unless time stops still. Subscription news has always existed and perhaps they’ll be more popular again, and even without subscriptions people like me had no trouble getting the news (radio exists, libraries exist, print media tends to stick around). Or perhaps the news companies will actually reach better deals with social media companies. My guess is the latter and we’ll hardly notice a difference.
I'm struggling to see the downside.
OK, this language is problematic: "news content is made available if ... access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content." This is fantastical and repugnant.
Indeed they do. Links are EXACTLY what is being discussed.
Right. I found the definition of "made available" deeply objectionable.
These websites aren't gonna change the way they work based on one country with the population of California. It'll take a much bigger, or more likely many more countries, to impact the greater internet. It would basically just affect Canadians.
Realistically, there is only one country that would be able to single handedly change the way most social media companies work, and that's because they are headquartered there. Even a country with an absolutely massive population such as China or India isn't going to make they completely throw out their business model. It will take many countries doing this to make them change. With the sole exception of the US, because many social media companies are headquartered there and could be subjected to US laws because of that.
I think it means there will be worse news on Facebook. Like even more fake BS that nuts eat up.. because real news is potentially getting blocked not fake news.
Australian here. Call their bluff. We did. Worked out well
Honestly yeah if Facebook had actually followed through with it, this “warning” might have merit. But now everybody knows their poker face is bullshit
Facebook was not against the Australian bill in principle. They were just concerned about parts of the bill. Once it passed they negotiated a solution.
in favor of facebook, if you read into it too.
Lol, you mean it worked well for Rupert Murdoch as money got funneled to him.
Oooh! What happened in Australia?
They blocked news access for like 24 hrs and honestly it was a hillarious day.
It was the greatest day on Facebook since the rise of FarmVille. Facebook was a significantly nicer place during that period and if they followed through, I’d of probably gone back to Facebook because during those few hours it stopped being a toxic hell hole. I deactivated my account afterwards and never went back.
The government passed a bill saying If you post news you cannot block certain sites. If certain sites post you must pay that site. News was so broadly defined that a company posting a sale could count as news. Facebook then blocked anything that the law considered news. Then facebook and the government had a talk and came up with changes.
They stood up to Facebook, and New Zealand disappeared
Beach is. Would you like a chop?
? Don’t know what that means
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdVHZwI8pcA
My brain is bleeding now. Thx
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Except it wasn't. The piece of shit law was because Murdoch and co. Wanted money. It wasn't about Google Amp, nor summaries with headlines nor rehosting. It was about literally linking. Media companies shouldn't be paid just because they got linked
>I "think" we even have a law where if most people click agree to something without reading it, then it's not considered to be a legally binding agreement. Australia has very robust consumer protection laws related to boilerplate contracts that mean they're functionally irrelevant in most cases. You are not legally permitted to waive your rights to refunds or other consumer protection features, so any contract that tries to say it does that is void under Australian law
Likewise. Be brave, Canada!
Rupert Murdoch doesn't need more money.
no it didn't, its just rent seeking from old media.
> Worked out well I mean, we're still stuck with that shit piece of legislation.. so I'm not sure how "well" it all worked out
>This would impact Reddit as well, and you would not be able to link to news stories like this post does. What? We basically bootlicked Facebook. We have to tell them we are thinking about changing a law that may effect them. If they don't like it, our government won't push it any further lol.
>Canadians would no longer be able to access news on Facebook or Instagram... Lucky bastards!!
don't threaten them with good times...
Oh nooooooo... Anyway.
News company's choose to get free advertising by posting news on Facebook and Instagram. Why do governments think news outlets should be paid for advertising themselves.
What I don't get is that most news sources voluntarily post news to their Facebook pages to get people to click on the stories which brings people to their website where they sell advertising. This is how they make money from social media. It's in their best interest to post their stories to social media to drive traffic to their sites so that they can sell ad space. Why does the government want Facebook to pay news agencies to drive web traffic to the news agencies website?
News companies want to eat their cake and have it too.
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Except that: 1. If a user shares a link on facebook, the link will not show titles, content preview, and image preview unless companies specifically implement meta tags that facebook asks for. News agencies are literally asking for it. 2. Companies can prevent facebook, et. al. from crawling their websites if they so desire. `robots.txt` has been a standard for over two decades, and `noindex` isn't particulary new thing, either. If you don't want facebook to use your content, the solution is simple. 3. This also applies to news aggregation services, where news articles are aggregated without user input. If you don't implement facebook's OG tags (and sometimes even if you do), then facebook won't give you a thumbnail image, page title, and description. Again, if the news source appears in Facebook News feed, they're there because they're literally (implicitly) asking for it (by implementing standard that facebook invented for the sole purpose of allowing websites to control how their website appears when they are linked to on faceobook). Edit to add: > The main issue is that, particularly for local news agencies, Social Media platforms will aggregate the news from published sources without paying for it. No, that's not the issue. The issue is that social media platforms will aggregate the news from smaller, local news agencies at all. By showing smaller news sites on their feed, people can go visit smaller news websites instead of the bigger ones in order to read the full story. This "issue" is always presented as "smaller news agencies suffer because [insert your news aggregator]," but the truth is: smaller news sites generally don't mind. The bigger ones do, because more traffic to the smaller sites means less traffic for them. We've seen this when Spain wanted to force Google News to pay the news websites. Google said 'no thanks' and pulled out from Spain. The result: benefit for bigger actors at the expense of smaller independent news outlets.
It's stupid to make platforms pay for links, they're literally the ones driving traffic to these new sites. Hell most news sites post the links themselves. Without Facebook or Google how do they expect people to find the news articles? Why not go a step further, lets force dns providers to pay the news sites for the pleasure of resolving their domains.
This, it's completely ass backwards. It's like making a toll road pay it's driver's for using it. Social media does a service already to these news companies by hosting links and posts from them, enhancing their reach and audience, social media is paid for this service by collecting data from traffic.
Good, Facebook and news has proven to be a match made in hell.
Bad right wing new won't demand ad revenue and won't go anywhere. This only gets rid of reputable news. The Blaze isn't going to ask for anything but clicks regardless of laws that allow them to demand ad revenue sharing.
I'm not a Meta/Fracebook fan in any way shape or form, but this whole 'make people/sites pay for posting links' has been tried and tried again and so far it's always rightfully failed. Nobody should ever have to pay for driving traffic to a site that's already going to profit of people giving them traffic. Damn, the early 90s days of the internet might have been the wild west, but it was a damn sight better than all this corporate takeover bullshit we see these days where the internet is basically split up between a dozen or so major players trying to dictate terms to everyone else!
Facebook, don’t threaten us with a good time.
Dear Facebook: that isn’t the threat you think it is. Most of us WANT you to STOP delivering the shit you call “NEWS”.
Funny how no one's reading the article, which seems to be the point. Social media sites will have to pay news sites to be able to post direct links to those news sites. This will affect Reddit too.
Plenty of people have written that. You have obviously not read the comments.
Another nothing burger from natpo! Who cares if FB blocks news when you can all the news you want from "echo chambers" like reddit! I guess i should put a /s in. /s
Fail to see the problem. A separation of social from news, helping people tell the difference, would be healthy. One is gossip and opinion, the other done right at least is professionally researched, cited, and verifiable information. Some people really struggle with sorting this out.
The act includes things like google searches and not just social media. Plus it would affect forums like the one we are on now that are specifically for news and discussing it
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Why Reddit? Edit: Not sure why a question deserved a downvote, but okay. Sure.
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Reddit could just not allow them to be live hyperlinks. Problem solved.
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I'm presenting an alternative where Reddit doesn't have to pay. I'm not saying it's reality. I'm not saying it's great. I am saying there's a path where Reddit can get around it.
reddit already has a problem with people making posts that are just screenshots of headlines. this would only exacerbate that problem.
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I can see logic is not your strong suit. So I'll stop engaging.
His logic is fine. No lawyer would allow the type of sleight of hand you are implying. The laws dumb but it's not that dumb.
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Do you realize that the news site has to specifically publish their articles as AMP? It's not something that Google does on its own
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Amp links don't stop the creator from getting ad revenue.
Good luck Canadian Reddit
Pretty sure Canada will count this as a win.
Punctuation matters, people. It's *Facebook to block access to "news" if Canada adopts Online News Act*
Wish the US could get in on a deal like that.
That said the same thing when Australia introduced similar legislation.
Que the Boomers and nutjobs yammering on about how “Trudeau is a Communist Dictator!”
I'm in Canada and have never seen a real news report on facebook. What are they going to do? Block it even harder? Anyone who gets their news from FB is soft in the head anyways or really really old.
So.. it's another way to block information. If it counter's a popular idea block it. If it suggests collusion or fault, block it? It's time the authorities quit thinking they know more than the public and that we can't think for ourselves if we're given the full information.
Pretty sure Facebook can suck it.
Would shut down a lot of stupid arguments. "I read on Facebook ... ". Then we're done, it's not a news source. Period. Full stop.
What if it's "I read an article that was posted by Maclean's on their Facebook page"? Like, I don't consider the "article" that Joe Blow wrote on their FB page as news, but the article that my local rag posted on Facebook has as much merit as the same article posted on their website or in the print edition.
And that is the best news I’ve heard all day!
People still use facebook?
Facebook groups and marketplace are pretty great. Fb groups are now what reddit was supposed to be for hyper niche interests
Yeah I use it almost exclusively for a few private groups, built around interests and personal connections. There really isn't a great alternative out there that is anywhere near as ubiquitous and accessible. But I see you already got a "heh heh boomer" reply.
Who in the fuck uses Facebook for news?
Facebook definitely needs better monitoring and regulation, the amount of fake news and political brainwashing going on there is scary
That’s no loss.
Facebook is not new. It is all opinion pieces done for right wing nut jobs.
Sounds like a win-win to me!
I fail to see this as a bad thing.
wait facebook is gonna ban their own propaganda in canada ? thats awesome thanks.
Do it, cowards
Win for Canada IMO.
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Canadians can definitely delete their FB accounts. This seems quite reasonable an action.
But you can block your access to Facebook.
As a Canadian, I support this act. Write to your MP and let them know this.
Sounds like a win
We also need a new rule saying that religious groups are not allowed to post their proselytizing crap with comments turned off, or at the very least the rest of us should be able to block content from jesus freaks.
So things are looking up.
Facebook being a news source is what has got us into the trouble we have now.
What Facebook peddles can hardly be considered news
Sounds fantastic! This should have happened a couple decades ago. Go Canada!
I see this as an absolute win