Forcing private companies to pay for links is a bizarre practice. Governments should just directly give subsidies to news organizations if that's the end goal. See also, Tildes' previous...
Forcing private companies to pay for links is a bizarre practice. Governments should just directly give subsidies to news organizations if that's the end goal.
The concept is that Google these days scrapes and summarizes the news pieces, which proceeds to disincentivize actually clicking on the link. So it gains value from extracting value out of its...
The concept is that Google these days scrapes and summarizes the news pieces, which proceeds to disincentivize actually clicking on the link. So it gains value from extracting value out of its sources, a parasitic relationship instead of a symbiotic one.
This will only get worse as AI proceeds, so this may have more ground today than a few years back when Canada attempted this notion.
I don't really understand what's in the bill they're fighting against. Is it just about links in search results or is it about Google providing a summary in their own site which is sourced from...
I don't really understand what's in the bill they're fighting against. Is it just about links in search results or is it about Google providing a summary in their own site which is sourced from news outlets?
Here's the raw bill for the lawyer types. for me and other laymen, this summary seems to suffice: Summary of summay. So yeah, basically part of the ad revenue goes to journalism websites on some...
for me and other laymen, this summary seems to suffice:
Summary of summay.
This bill, the California Journalism Preservation Act, would require, within 10 days of the close of each month, quarter, a covered platform, as defined, to remit a journalism usage fee payment to each eligible digital journalism provider, as defined, that submits to the covered platform a certain notice. Under the bill, the journalism usage fee payment would be equal to a percentage, as determined by a certain arbitration process, of the covered platform’s advertising revenue generated during that month quarter multiplied by the eligible digital journalism provider’s allocation share, as defined, for that month. quarter....
This bill would prohibit a covered platform from retaliating against an eligible digital journalism provider for asserting its rights under the act by refusing to index content or changing the ranking, identification, modification, branding, or placement of the content of the eligible digital journalism provider on the covered platform.
So yeah, basically part of the ad revenue goes to journalism websites on some case by case basis, and some general protections against retaliation by search engines.
Counterargument summary
>By helping people find news stories, we help publishers of all sizes grow their audiences at no cost to them. CJPA would up-end that model. It would favor media conglomerates and hedge funds—who’ve been lobbying for this bill—and could use funds from CJPA to continue to buy up local California newspapers, strip them of journalists, and create more ghost papers that operate with a skeleton crew to produce only low-cost, and often low-quality, content. CJPA would also put small publishers at a disadvantage and limit consumers’ access to a diverse local media ecosystem.....
>
>For more than two decades, we’ve provided substantial support to help news publishers navigate the changing digital landscape and innovate. We’ve rolled out Google News Showcase, which operates in 26 countries, including the U.S., and has more than 2,500 participating publications. Through the Google News Initiative we’ve partnered with more than 7,000 news publishers around the world, including 200 news organizations and 6,000 journalists in California alone.
Their main point against this (outside of he profit motive) has to do with this mostly benefitting the larger publishers, and how this may even encourage them to consume smaller ones as they essentially get funded by getting views (which they are already good at). There definitely should be some mechanism to keep this from further skewing journalism.
So is the fee based on search result hits or search result/news summaries where the source is the news outlet? Both? Edit. If it's only the summaries, that sounds kinda great? It would both...
So is the fee based on search result hits or search result/news summaries where the source is the news outlet? Both?
Edit. If it's only the summaries, that sounds kinda great? It would both support the news industry and incentivize original reporting over lazy reposting. That would mean even a small outlet could potentially see big payoffs. Especially when the independent/employee owned news outlets seem to be a legitimate thing nowadays.
From my understanding here, the actual payment details are all very vauge (which I imagine is by design. How often do exact dollar figures age in history?). Google et. al needs to allocate some %...
is the fee based on search result hits or search result/news summaries where the source is the news outlet? Both?
From my understanding here, the actual payment details are all very vauge (which I imagine is by design. How often do exact dollar figures age in history?). Google et. al needs to allocate some % of their ad revenue from search to paying news outlets, which is divied up based on some other sort of process to determine how much each site gets. Those divies per site can be from objective metrics like traffic/how much Google uses summaries from which site, or based on completely subjective factors like site reputation, quality, projected reach, etc.
I imagine there will be a lot of back and forth over those numbers and divy methods if Google does manage to relent in their current blocks.
From the article: That blog post is here. They seem to be concerned about local newspapers being bought out and converted to content farms: Going back to the Politico article:
From the article:
Google is temporarily blocking California-based news outlets’ content for some state residents, reprising a political tactic the tech industry has repeatedly used to try to derail such bills in places like Canada and Australia that require online platforms to pay journalism outlets for articles featured on their websites.
“We have long said that this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism,” Google’s vice president for global news partnerships, Jaffer Zaidi, said in a Friday blog post. Zaidi warned the bill could “result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers.”
That blog post is here. They seem to be concerned about local newspapers being bought out and converted to content farms:
It would favor media conglomerates and hedge funds—who’ve been lobbying for this bill—and could use funds from CJPA to continue to buy up local California newspapers, strip them of journalists, and create more ghost papers that operate with a skeleton crew to produce only low-cost, and often low-quality, content.
Going back to the Politico article:
Google made similar threats to block content in Canada over its online news legislation before reaching a deal there with the government. Meta, meanwhile, permanently erased news content from its social feed in Canada and has threatened to do the same if Congress and California advance similar legislation.
In California, the company has lobbied heavily against the measures currently before the California Legislature, channeling more than $1 million to an organization that ran an ad campaign decrying the bill as a “link tax.” Zaidi used the same phrase in his blog post.
What is the logic of these bills? It seems like biting the hand that feeds. Google is like a privately owned road that leads to your business. Why do you want tolls on roads that lead to your...
What is the logic of these bills? It seems like biting the hand that feeds. Google is like a privately owned road that leads to your business. Why do you want tolls on roads that lead to your business?
Because the road doesn't actually take people into your drive-in movie theater, it just goes right past it where they can see over the wall. People get the convenience of seeing a little bit of...
Because the road doesn't actually take people into your drive-in movie theater, it just goes right past it where they can see over the wall. People get the convenience of seeing a little bit of what you're showing, but they don't actually park, buy concessions, form any attachment to your place, or do anything to financially support you. They just stay on the private road, viewing little bits from a bunch of different places but never parking or paying much to any of them.
It used to be that Google News would show short snippets from articles, but they stopped many years ago. It’s been headlines only for a long time. You have to click to see anything. There are...
It used to be that Google News would show short snippets from articles, but they stopped many years ago. It’s been headlines only for a long time. You have to click to see anything.
There are plenty of other news sites that copy a lot more.
There are short snippets in regular search results, though.
Do those people actually want what you’re selling? Personally I don’t use Google for news. I pay for a couple of news outlets and read them on my phone. I’m definitely an outlier so I’m not sure...
Do those people actually want what you’re selling?
Personally I don’t use Google for news. I pay for a couple of news outlets and read them on my phone. I’m definitely an outlier so I’m not sure what most people want.
If people don't want what the news outlets are offering, then why is Google fighting to be able to continue providing a news aggregator service without paying the news outlets? In the face of...
If people don't want what the news outlets are offering, then why is Google fighting to be able to continue providing a news aggregator service without paying the news outlets? In the face of Google killing so many products or services, clearly they think it's worth fighting to keep it the way it is.
Forcing private companies to pay for links is a bizarre practice. Governments should just directly give subsidies to news organizations if that's the end goal.
See also, Tildes' previous discussion on Canada's bill: https://tildes.net/~tech/1c1r/in_canadas_battle_with_big_tech_smaller_publishers_and_independent_outlets_struggle_to_survive
The concept is that Google these days scrapes and summarizes the news pieces, which proceeds to disincentivize actually clicking on the link. So it gains value from extracting value out of its sources, a parasitic relationship instead of a symbiotic one.
This will only get worse as AI proceeds, so this may have more ground today than a few years back when Canada attempted this notion.
I don't really understand what's in the bill they're fighting against. Is it just about links in search results or is it about Google providing a summary in their own site which is sourced from news outlets?
Here's the raw bill for the lawyer types.
for me and other laymen, this summary seems to suffice:
Summary of summay.
So yeah, basically part of the ad revenue goes to journalism websites on some case by case basis, and some general protections against retaliation by search engines.
And I suppose in the name of fairness, I'll present Google's official argument and interpretation of the bill
Counterargument summary
>By helping people find news stories, we help publishers of all sizes grow their audiences at no cost to them. CJPA would up-end that model. It would favor media conglomerates and hedge funds—who’ve been lobbying for this bill—and could use funds from CJPA to continue to buy up local California newspapers, strip them of journalists, and create more ghost papers that operate with a skeleton crew to produce only low-cost, and often low-quality, content. CJPA would also put small publishers at a disadvantage and limit consumers’ access to a diverse local media ecosystem..... > >For more than two decades, we’ve provided substantial support to help news publishers navigate the changing digital landscape and innovate. We’ve rolled out Google News Showcase, which operates in 26 countries, including the U.S., and has more than 2,500 participating publications. Through the Google News Initiative we’ve partnered with more than 7,000 news publishers around the world, including 200 news organizations and 6,000 journalists in California alone.Their main point against this (outside of he profit motive) has to do with this mostly benefitting the larger publishers, and how this may even encourage them to consume smaller ones as they essentially get funded by getting views (which they are already good at). There definitely should be some mechanism to keep this from further skewing journalism.
So is the fee based on search result hits or search result/news summaries where the source is the news outlet? Both?
Edit. If it's only the summaries, that sounds kinda great? It would both support the news industry and incentivize original reporting over lazy reposting. That would mean even a small outlet could potentially see big payoffs. Especially when the independent/employee owned news outlets seem to be a legitimate thing nowadays.
From my understanding here, the actual payment details are all very vauge (which I imagine is by design. How often do exact dollar figures age in history?). Google et. al needs to allocate some % of their ad revenue from search to paying news outlets, which is divied up based on some other sort of process to determine how much each site gets. Those divies per site can be from objective metrics like traffic/how much Google uses summaries from which site, or based on completely subjective factors like site reputation, quality, projected reach, etc.
I imagine there will be a lot of back and forth over those numbers and divy methods if Google does manage to relent in their current blocks.
From the article:
That blog post is here. They seem to be concerned about local newspapers being bought out and converted to content farms:
Going back to the Politico article:
What is the logic of these bills? It seems like biting the hand that feeds. Google is like a privately owned road that leads to your business. Why do you want tolls on roads that lead to your business?
Because the road doesn't actually take people into your drive-in movie theater, it just goes right past it where they can see over the wall. People get the convenience of seeing a little bit of what you're showing, but they don't actually park, buy concessions, form any attachment to your place, or do anything to financially support you. They just stay on the private road, viewing little bits from a bunch of different places but never parking or paying much to any of them.
It used to be that Google News would show short snippets from articles, but they stopped many years ago. It’s been headlines only for a long time. You have to click to see anything.
There are plenty of other news sites that copy a lot more.
There are short snippets in regular search results, though.
Do those people actually want what you’re selling?
Personally I don’t use Google for news. I pay for a couple of news outlets and read them on my phone. I’m definitely an outlier so I’m not sure what most people want.
If people don't want what the news outlets are offering, then why is Google fighting to be able to continue providing a news aggregator service without paying the news outlets? In the face of Google killing so many products or services, clearly they think it's worth fighting to keep it the way it is.