Facebook Says It Will Block News Sharing In Australia If Murdoch's Social Media Tax Becomes Law

from the the-nuclear-option dept

Earlier this year, regulators in Australia announced plans to tax Google and Facebook for sending traffic to news organizations, and then pay those news organization. The draft law literally names Google and Facebook and says that this law only impacts those two companies. The whole thing is bizarre. There are no pretenses here. It's just that old line media companies (many owned by Rupert Murdoch) are jealous of the success of Google and Facebook online, and seem to think they're magically owed money. And that's what the tax would do. It would force Google and Facebook to pay money for the awful crime of sending traffic to news sites without paying them.

Nevermind that if they didn't want this traffic they could use robots.txt to block it. Nevermind that companies (including many of these media companies) hire SEO and social media experts to try to get more traffic. These companies feel so entitled to money that they feel that Facebook and Google need to pay them for sending traffic, just because.

And Australian regulators seem to think this is a grand idea.

A few weeks back Google posted an open letter to Australians noting that this would do a lot more harm than good, and other parts of the draft law would damage the quality of Google's search results (among other things, the law wouldn't let Google make changes to its search algorithms without giving media companies a 4-week notice, which is insane, given that Google tweaks its algorithm multiple times a day).

Now Facebook has gone even further, and outright said that if this becomes law, it will no longer allow publishers to share news on its platform in Australia. This is the nuclear option -- similar to what Google did in Spain six years ago when Spain passed a similar law. In that case, Google waited until after the law went into effect to make the announcement and pull the plug.

In this case, Facebook is firing a warning shot by saying that's exactly what it will do if this draft bill becomes law:

Assuming this draft code becomes law, we will reluctantly stop allowing publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram. This is not our first choice – it is our last. But it is the only way to protect against an outcome that defies logic and will hurt, not help, the long-term vibrancy of Australia’s news and media sector.

We share the Australian Government’s goal of supporting struggling news organisations, particularly local newspapers, and have engaged extensively with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission that has led the effort. But its solution is counterproductive to that goal. The proposed law is unprecedented in its reach and seeks to regulate every aspect of how tech companies do business with news publishers. Most perplexing, it would force Facebook to pay news organisations for content that the publishers voluntarily place on our platforms and at a price that ignores the financial value we bring publishers.

The ACCC presumes that Facebook benefits most in its relationship with publishers, when in fact the reverse is true. News represents a fraction of what people see in their News Feed and is not a significant source of revenue for us.

It's not like people didn't warn Australia how all of this would play out (just like people warned various European countries). I don't know why each one expects a different result.

Filed Under: australia, google tax, journalism, links, murdoch tax, news
Companies: facebook, google

Google Warns Australians That The Government's Plan To Tax Google To Give Money To Newspapers Will Harm Search & YouTube

from the a-bad-deal dept

Earlier this year we noted that the Australian government was setting up a you're-too-successful tax on Google and Facebook which it planned to hand over to media organizations. We should perhaps call it the "Welfare for Rupert Murdoch" tax, because that's what it is. Murdoch, of course, owns a huge share of media operations in Australia and has been demanding handouts from Google for years (showing that his claimed belief in the free market was always hogwash).

In response, Google has now released an open letter to Australians pointing out that this plan to tax Google to funnel money to Murdoch will have massive unintended consequences. In particular, Google argues, under the law, Google would be required to give an unfair advantage to big media companies:

You’ve always relied on Google Search and YouTube to show you what’s most relevant and helpful to you. We could no longer guarantee that under this law. The law would force us to give an unfair advantage to one group of businesses - news media businesses - over everyone else who has a website, YouTube channel or small business. News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result. We’ve always treated all website owners fairly when it comes to information we share about ranking. The proposed changes are not fair and they mean that Google Search results and YouTube will be worse for you.

Even more to the point, in a cynical demand for "transparency" the law would actually create privacy problems for Australians by forcing Google to cough up info on its users to Australian media businesses:

You trust us with your data and our job is to keep it safe. Under this law, Google has to tell news media businesses “how they can gain access” to data about your use of our products. There’s no way of knowing if any data handed over would be protected, or how it might be used by news media businesses.

Australia's "competition watchdog" who was tasked with creating this legislation in the first place claimed that the letter was "misinformation."

“Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services such as Google Search and YouTube, unless it chooses to do so.”

The ACCC also reiterated that Google will “not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news business unless it chooses to do so”, as is outlined in the code.

“The draft code will allow Australian news businesses to negotiate for fair payment for their journalists’ work that is included on Google services,” the watchdog added.

Of course, if you look at the details of the draft code, it's actually the ACCC that is spreading misinformation here, and Google's concerns seem entirely substantiated. First, it's notable that the ACCC flat out says that the law is designed specifically just to impact Facebook and Google, though other companies could be added if bureaucrats in Austalia decided those companies got too big. This is astounding in its own way. In the US Congress isn't supposed to create laws that explicitly are designed to deal with a single company, but Australia has no apparent problem with that. Similarly, this kind of law would violate the 1st Amendment. That's because it's set up to benefit news organizations -- but only news organizations that the Australian government deems to "adhere to appropriate professional editorial standards." In other words, if the government doesn't like you, you might not qualify.

But the details in the draft also very much support Google's publicly stated concerns. It would require Google (and Facebook) to give these specially privileged news organizations all sorts of information (some of it quite crazy):

• give news media businesses at least 28 days’ notice of:
  • algorithm changes likely to materially affect referral traffic to news;
  • algorithm changes designed to affect ranking of news behind paywalls; and
  • substantial changes to display and presentation of news, and advertising directly associated with news, on digital platform services;
• give news media businesses clear information about the nature and availability of user data collected through users’ interactions with news on their services;
• publish proposals to appropriately recognise original news on their services;
• provide flexible user comment moderation tools for news media businesses; and
• allow news media businesses to prevent their news being included on any individual digital platform service

First off, the idea that Google would need to alert media orgs to any algorithmic change is crazy. At the very least, it gives those organizations the ability to game the system. As Google said, it gives an unfair advantage.

Second, giving news businesses "clear information about the nature and availability of user data" is an issue. While the draft proposal tries to suggest that this doesn't violate privacy because it's not giving the news orgs the actual underlying user data, just (effectively) the metadata of what is collected, that's not at all accurate either. As we've discussed in the past regarding government surveillance, the metadata about the data can be just as, if not more, valuable.

I know it's trendy to hate on Google, but this proposal in Australia is downright insane. It truly is welfare for Rupert Murdoch because he's jealous of the success of Google and Facebook, and that's just nuts.

Filed Under: algorithms, australia, data, google tax, journalism, news, news aggregation, news industry, rupert murdoch, search
Companies: google

For All The Hype, Trump's Favorite 'News' Channel (OAN) Faces Shrinking Footprint

from the dysfunction-junction dept

The President's favorite sycophancy channel, OAN (One America News) has seen no shortage of headlines in the recent weeks for its dubious "news" programming. Said programming has included claims that elderly people are Antifa agitators, that the coronavirus was created in a North Carolina lab as part of a "deep state" plot, all while banning polls that dare to suggest that dear leader may not be doing all that hot in the wake of corruption, incompetence, and a raging pandemic. That's before you get to media allegations that the outlet has some uncomfortable parallels to Russian state TV.

But the people hyperventilating over the network's Trumpist disinformation and pole position in the White House briefing room often forget to mention that the channel doesn't actually have all that many viewers. While the channel currently reaches 35 million potential households (notably fewer actually watch), that's a far cry from the 119 million TV households that have access to major news networks like CNN and Fox News. Major cable TV providers like Dish, Charter, and Comcast don't carry the channel at all, leaving Verizon and AT&T as the only major cable TV providers that think it's worth it.

And even that could be changing. The company's contract with AT&T/DirecTV, first signed in 2017 and expiring in 2021, could be in trouble. Most notably because of the tough terms affixed to carriage at a time when cable providers are already being pushed to cut expensive dead weight due to cord cutting:

"One hurdle to getting carried by other major TV providers may be OAN’s contract with DirecTV. Under the terms, DirecTV is required to make OAN available to 85% of its subscribers, and the channel must seek the same arrangement with other pay-TV companies, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. In addition, OAN and its sister channel, AWE, which stands for “A Wealth of Entertainment,” charge pay-TV providers a monthly fee of about 15 cents per subscriber, according to Herring."

Cable providers have been cutting dead channel weight for several years as they work to try and cut their own costs -- to in turn prevent more cable TV customers from cutting cable TV out of their diet entirely (it's not really working). Sources told Bloomberg those conditions are likely too onerous for AT&T/DirecTV, and if that falls apart, OAN would lose access to yet another 19 million US households:

"Together, those provisions may be too onerous to entice big cable-TV providers to carry the network, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the contract is private. And OAN will have a large chunk of its audience at stake when it negotiates a contract renewal with AT&T, which has about 19 million pay-TV customers."

OAN, to this point, has tried to frame AT&T's decision to carry disinformation as an act of bravery:

"We are very pleased that AT&T seems to want to offer programming for everybody and not just people with one viewpoint," he said.

But if you're familiar with AT&T, you know it's not about bravery, it's about profitability. The company is swimming in debt from a recent slate of megamergers and losing customers hand over fist due to debt-recouping rate hikes. It's in the process of firing employees en masse (despite a parade of huge favors from the Trump administration), and examining every opportunity to save a buck. Combine that with growing OAN criticism and the potential for a looming political sea change, and concerns that OAN is on the cusp of being a major league media player don't appear entirely warranted.

Filed Under: donald trump, news, propaganda
Companies: oan, one america news

Copyright As Censorship: WSJ Identifies Hundreds Of Bogus News Takedowns; People Blame Google Rather Than Copyright

from the place-the-blame-correctly-please dept

For years, the Copyright Office has been working on a report that is expected to be released sometime soon, about whether or not the DMCA's Section 512 "notice and takedown" regime needs to be changed. The big Hollywood and recording industry lobbyists have been gearing up to push for new rules, a la the European Copyright Directive, that put even more liability on intermediaries. Of course, what they really want is to force Google and Facebook to just hand them some cash because they've failed to adapt their business models while those two companies have thrived. Those legacy copyright-focused industries have already been pushing for things like mandatory licensing and "notice-and-staydown" rules, whereby if something that was taken down once gets re-uploaded, the hosting site becomes liable. Indeed, the industry already seems to have political support for some of these changes.

What's odd, however, is how little attention people seem to be paying in most of these discussions to whether or not we need to fix the DMCA in the other direction -- to fix for the fact that the notice-and-takedown provisions of the DMCA are regularly used for censorship, even of news. Late last week, the Wall Street Journal had a very thorough article (possibly paywalled) detailing how they found hundreds of news articles that were taken out of Google's search due to what appears to be bogus DMCA takedowns. After contacting Google about this, the company said that it had found approximately 52,000 news articles that had been deleted from its index via bogus copyright notices:

After the Journal shared its findings with Google, the company conducted a review and restored more than 52,000 links it determined it had improperly removed, she said. Google said its review identified more than 100 new abusive submitters, declining to discuss individual cases.

Think about that for a second. While we frequently hear Hollywood insisting that (1) copyright is never used for censorship, and (2) that Google is too permissive in allowing infringement, this simple case is showing just how wrong that is and how serious an impact that can have. When important news stories are being censored as an illicit form of a "right to be forgotten" that should concern all of us (not to mention raise some 1st Amendment questions about the DMCA):

When a Colorado man, Dak Steiert, faced state-court charges of running a fake law firm in 2018, he sent Google a series of copyright claims against blogs and a law-firm website that discussed his case, claiming they had copied the posts from Mr. Steiert’s own website. That wasn’t true, the Journal determined, but Google erased the pages from its search engine anyway.

Last year, Mr. Steiert, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, pleaded guilty in Colorado state court to one count of false advertising in his business. The Colorado Supreme Court closed his practice. The articles remained invisible in Google searches until the Journal flagged the cases to Google, which then reinstated the links.

Later in the article, they detail one trick used by some to delete articles: copying the articles to a blog, and then changing the date to make it look like theirs was first, and the real version came later and is infringing:

Financial-news site Benzinga fell victim to a common tactic to trick Google: backdating. Someone wanting Google to hide a webpage will find a little-trafficked blog and post a copy of the content from the legitimate webpage. After backdating the plagiarized post, the complainant will file an electronic notice with Google claiming the real article is a copyright violation.

Benzinga, after publishing an August 2015 article about financial difficulties at publicly traded Amira Nature Foods Ltd., began getting emails demanding it take the story down, said its managing editor, Jason Shubnell. The emails came from three different names, including a Richa Parikh who wrote that the Amira article was “spoiling our online reputation” and offered to pay Benzinga to remove it, according to a copy of an email the Journal reviewed.

Benzinga largely ignored the emails. In 2018, Google wiped the Benzinga story from its search results after a blog masquerading as CNN made a copyright claim. Mr. Shubnell said Benzinga wasn’t aware Google had hidden its story until the Journal contacted it, adding: “There was nothing wrong with the actual content of the article.”

Of course, over the past few years, we've certainly seen similar scammy attempts to abuse copyright law to remove stories. Revenge porn scammer and pretend politician Craig Brittain famously tried to get a ton of news articles about his past behavior removed from Google via bogus DMCA notices, and, in the last few years, we've seen a cottage industry pop up of "reputation management firms" that use dirty tricks, including fake DMCA notices and faked legal filings as a way to get stories delisted from Google.

While the WSJ article is very well researched and reported, and highlights this huge problem, my one complaint with it is that it barely acknowledges how the real problem here is the structure of the DMCA 512's notice and takedown structure -- which is heavily one-sided. Under the rules of 512, if you receive a takedown notice, you don't have to remove the content, but the legal pressure and liability is heavily weighted in that direction. If you remove the contested content, you are then (mostly) free from any copyright liability. If you refuse to remove the content, you are not. And while you might still prevail should a lawsuit be brought and you can make use of other defenses, the 512 safe harbor means that you'll get out of the case faster and easier if you just remove the content (and you're much less likely to be sued).

But, if a platform removes content in error? Well, there's no liability at all. And, while there is 512(f) of the DMCA that provides some theoretical legal liability for those who issue bogus takedowns, in practice the courts have largely rendered 512(f) moot. Add to that the already imbalanced nature of copyright's "statutory damages," which allow for up to $150,000 in damages for each infringed work (even if you can't show any actual damages), and the scale is heavily, heavily tilted towards censorship.

Just to review: a DMCA takedown strongly encourages content to be removed from the internet, even absent any actual infringement. There is almost no punishment for those who send bogus takedowns. There are strong legal liability reasons for recipients of notices to take content down upon receipt, and no corresponding liability for making the wrong call in taking down work that wasn't infringing. And the potential amounts of liability for leaving something up can be overwhelming. All that adds up to a law that is almost perfectly designed to encourage censorship.

Indeed, this rather unique aspect of the DMCA's notice-and-takedown provision is why academics have been pointing out that this law is frequently repurposed as a "general-purpose privacy and reputation" protecting law despite it not being designed for that (and the fact that if it were, it would clearly violate the 1st Amendment).

So, if I had one complaint about the WSJ piece, it is that it brushes over these structural flaws in the law, and that leaves many to believe that the faulty takedowns the WSJ discovered are somehow a Google problem, rather than a problem with copyright law today and the DMCA 512 specifically. Indeed, watching the discussion about this article flow through Twitter, it seemed that many wanted to blame Google for these mistaken story removals. That seems kind of silly. Indeed, of all the internet platforms out there, Google has historically been among the most aggressive in reviewing takedown notices and pushing back on bogus ones (and even sometimes suing abusers). Indeed, the few times that people have tried to remove Techdirt stories via bogus DMCA copyright claims, Google has always refused.

Yes, you can point to the 52,000 stories that Google has reversed itself on and reinstated and say the company should have done better -- but that gets back to the whole impossibility theorem when you have to do content moderation at a massive scale. Mistakes are going to be made, and that's especially true when you have a professionalization of the scamming via these sketchy reputation management firms, which explore many different ways to fool Google, utlizing the extremely unbalanced nature of the law itself.

Unfortunately, though, when a story is positioned this way, it would not surprise me to see even some Google haters who want to make copyright law worse, use this very article as an example of why 512 should be made worse, not better. Anything to blame Google, I guess, even when the actual problem is with the law itself.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, dmca 512, dmca takedowns, news, reputation management, search
Companies: google

Australia Gives Up Any Pretense: Pushes Straight Up Tax On Facebook & Google To Pay News Orgs

from the how-dare-you-send-us-traffic-without-paying dept

Last week we wrote about France's push to force Google to pay legacy news organizations for the high crime of... sending them traffic. That was somewhat expected, as under the EU Copyright Directive, some version of this will show up in every EU country over the next few months (though France's first approach is particularly dumb). Down in Australia, they're not subject to the EU Copyright Directive, but it's not stopping them from taking the same ridiculous approach:

Facebook and Google will be forced to share advertising revenue with Australian media companies after the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, instructed the competition watchdog to develop a mandatory code of conduct for the digital giants amid a steep decline in advertising brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

As the article notes, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission had been working to get the media companies and Google and Facebook to come up with a voluntary plan, but since the media companies basically want it all, that hasn't worked out so well. Instead, the ACCC has now been told to just write up the plan. Make no mistake about this: this is the Australian government, at the behest of a bunch of legacy media companies that failed to adapt to the internet, now taxing Google and Facebook for sending media companies free internet traffic that those companies don't know how to monetize.

And it goes beyond just having to pay to send them traffic, it also requires Google and Facebook to let media companies know ahead of time if they're going to make any changes to their algorithms that might impact content rankings. That is ridiculous. It's basically giving news companies preferred placement in search rankings, and locking those legacy providers in. Why in the world should media companies get special access to the algorithm of either company?

Frydenberg said it was only fair that media companies that created the content got paid for it.

They do get paid for it. They decided to put content on the web. If they don't like the traffic, they can easily use robots.txt to block sites from scraping them. If they can't monetize the traffic, that's on them, isn't it?

“This will help to create a level playing field,” he said.

This is the exact opposite of a level playing field. This is basically tilting the playing field strongly towards legacy media companies in a manner that is not only silly for the internet companies, but in a manner that makes it nearly impossible for new entrants in the field, as the legacy players get an automatic boost from the free money they get from the internet companies that send them free traffic.

Filed Under: aggregation, australia, journalism, legacy, links, media, news, tax, traffic
Companies: facebook, google

As Politicians Are Still Looking To Destroy The Internet, Covid-19 Reminds Us Why Social Media Is Not Just Good, But Saving Lives

from the killing-it-might-kill-more-people dept

For all the fears and freak-outs over "disinformation" on social media, over the past few weeks Twitter, especially, has been an amazing source for getting accurate, thoughtful information regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and how to deal with it. It's a pretty stark contrast, in fact, between people who seemed to be paying attention to credible voices on social media, and who began "social distancing" sooner, and those who were getting their information from politicians and television (especially cable news) who seemed to wave off the dangers for way too long. That's not to say there hasn't been disinformation about Covid-19 online -- including some spread by politicians and crackpots. However, on the whole, social media has done what it does best: allowed credible, knowledgeable voices to rise to the top for many.

As Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason notes, COVID-19 Reminds Us: Social Media Is Good, Actually:

Social media have also been providing news from early outbreak zones across the globe, as users widely disseminate stories from foreign news outlets, statements from foreign leaders, and first-hand accounts from residents of affected areas abroad.

These snaphots helped give Americans a better sense of the scope of the threat posed by COVID-19 at a time when the messages coming from official channels were conflicting and confusing. They also illustrated the ways in which various social responses could play out—giving credence to calls here for "social distancing" and spurring measures to make room in medical facilities.

Around the U.S., communities still seem to be experiencing widely different reactions to the pandemic, with some areas seeing runs on grocery stores and empty streets while in others things look pretty normal. This will likely change rapidly, as more businesses close their doors voluntarily—and as more governments order them to close whether they want to or not. But for now, one thing that's been noticeable is how quickly the mood on Twitter, Reddit, etc. embraced voluntary social distancing, especially in comparison to the mood in the "real world."

The NY Times had a similar article, though with a bit more snarky a title, When Facebook Is More Trustworthy Than the President. Of course, Facebook is often more trustworthy than our current President, so that's not unique. But it is notable that during such a crisis, people are able to get much more reliable information via social media.

All through February and early March, the voices of doctors and nurses on social media provided a vital antidote to those of confused and complacent political leaders embodied by President Trump. Their voices carried credibility and urgency in a way the always-on crisis of cable news can’t. They fed and were fed by credible journalism. And they helped force the United States to reckon with the crisis.

After four years in which social media has been viewed as an antisocial force, the crisis is revealing something surprising, and a bit retro: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others can actually deliver on their old promise to democratize information and organize communities, and on their newer promise to drain the toxic information swamp.

Elsewhere, it's been noted that the first person to really spot the threat of Covid-19 was a blogger in Florida who tracks flu outbreaks (and, no, don't ask me why the Washington Post put this story in their "Lifestyle" section):

The news seemed so intriguing — and so potentially alarming — that Sharon Sanders stayed up almost until dawn on Dec. 31 to keep track of it.

From her home in Winter Haven, Fla., Sanders began compiling reports of public comments by health officials in China’s Hubei Province. The officials, Sanders reported on her blog, FluTrackers, had announced an outbreak of an unusual cluster of pneumonia cases, caused by a mysterious virus.

The disease apparently had spread among merchants in a seafood market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people. “A number of people from hospitals in Wuhan said that the current cause is not clear,” read one of FluTrackers’ first, uncertain posts about the outbreak.

As you may or may not recall, this was the original promise of the internet. It would enable anyone to get their voices out there, and that could allow more viewpoints and perspectives. Of course, that also includes ill-informed people or those with malicious or chaotic intent to get their voices out there as well. And over the last few years it's felt that we've over-corrected on worrying about those people. But one key point that I think has become quite clear in the past few weeks is that for much of the public, the ability to parse through and determine who is credible and who is trustworthy, is a useful skill that still applies online, and has allowed many more people to inform themselves, rather than to mis-inform themselves.

Indeed, it appears that you'd receive a lot more misinformation just by watching the mainstream news acting as a stenographer for a President who is more concerned about how the crisis makes him look, than how it actually impacts the lives of everyone. Social media has always been a tool for getting voices heard -- and part of that means that we, the users of social media, are taking on some responsibility to sort out the good from the bad.

But, most importantly, the events of the last few weeks show the importance of enabling platforms where people can connect and share knowledge, and we shouldn't toss all of that in the gutter, as some in Congress are trying to do, just because there remain a small group of people pushing misinformation.

Filed Under: covid-19, disinformation, internet, news, section 230, social media

How Reading Books Instead Of News Made Me A Better Citizen

from the consuming-information dept

As the 2020 presidential race kicks into high-gear, I find myself telling friends about an important lesson I learned last time primary season rolled around. During the run-up to the 2016 election, as now, vitriol filled the headlines. Rather than well-informed, reading the internet often left me feeling emotionally exhausted, powerless, and alone. So many stories were urgent but not important, and certainly not actionable.

Frustrated, I decided to run an experiment. I read and engaged with dramatically less news, and spent that time reading books instead. I read ancient philosophy, fantastical adventures, historical biographies, scientific treatises, globetrotting thrillers, and mind-bending stories of magical realism. I followed my enthusiasm and read what I loved, challenging myself to think more deeply and broadly in the process.

After a few months, my life and outlook had changed completely. Reading was no longer an exercise in rubbernecking and literature armed me to face the challenges of the present with fresh eyes, seek out other points of view, and put the political turmoil into perspective. Taking ownership of my media diet turned the stories I read into sources of strength, fuel to fire my own personal and public life. My wife and I volunteered to host a Ugandan refugee in our home for nine months. I helped design a game that illustrated emerging vulnerabilities in American democracy. I co-created an internet public art project that raised money for ProPublica.

We are what we pay attention to. The stories we read don't just inform, entertain, or inspire, they shape our identities, become a part of us. These stories have consequences. The Allies were inspired to defeat the Nazis by stories of resisting oppression, protecting freedom, and ending humanitarian disaster. The Nazis were themselves inspired by stories of racial superiority, national dominance, and the return to a mythical past. Humans are capable of transcendence and unspeakable horror when we convince ourselves of the righteousness of our cause.

So I expanded my experiment into a novel that quickly grew into a trilogy. Bandwidth explores what happens when someone hijacks our attention in order to transform us into the person they want us to be. Borderless examines the rise of tech platforms and the decline of nation-states. Breach extrapolates what might come next and how to build new institutions for the internet age. My hope is that the Analog Series inspires readers to reassess their own most deeply held beliefs with candor, kindness, and healthy skepticism.

As candidates and special interest groups ruthlessly vie for your attention across the vast datascapes of the internet like gladiators in a digital Colosseum, remember that seizing control of your media diet is the first step toward acting with intention to realize your version of a better future.

***

Eliot Peper is the author of Breach, Borderless, Bandwidth, Cumulus, True Blue, Neon Fever Dream, and the Uncommon Series. His writing has appeared in the Verge, Tor.com, Harvard Business Review, VICE, OneZero, TechCrunch, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and he has given talks at Google, Comic Con, Future in Review, and SXSW.

Filed Under: election, information overload, news, news consumption

Just As Everyone Predicted: EU Copyright Directive's Link Tax Won't Lead To Google Paying Publishers

from the duh dept

Look, not only was the following story totally predictable, but many of us directly warned the EU of what would happen if they instituted a "link" or "snippet" tax as part of the EU Copyright Directive. Of course, EU officials totally ignored all of the experts (or listened to a bunch of idiots in the publishing industry who insisted that "this time it will be different," despite multiple examples of link taxes not working) and put a link tax into law anyway.

France has been the most eager to put the EU Copyright Directive into practice, and now that it's about to establish a link tax for news aggregators, the one company such a link tax is mainly directed at (Google) has made it clear that (as it's done with previous such taxes) it's not planning to pay anyone to link to them (nor should it). Instead, Google has given webmasters (including publishers) greater control over how results linking to their pages will look -- including letting publishers detail the types of snippets it will allow.

Previously, it was only possible to allow a textual snippet or to not allow one. We're now introducing a set of methods that allow more fine-grained configuration of the preview content shown for your pages. This is done through two types of new settings: a set of robots meta tags and an HTML attribute.

Google has long allowed publishers to allow for a snippet or not, but now it's also letting publishers designate a "maximum length" of the snippet, or a maximum video or image preview.

With that in place, Google has told publishers in France that in order to respect the new Copyright Directive link tax, it is removing all snippets unless the publishers opt-in via the tools mentioned above, to voluntarily choose to add back the snippets.

When the French law comes into force, we will no longer display an overview of the content in France for European press publishers, unless the publisher has made the arrangements to indicate that it is his wish. This will be the case for search results from all Google services.

Publishers have always been able to choose whether or not they want their content to be accessible through Google's search engine or Google News. We have just put in place more granular webmaster settings that allow publishers to specify how much information they want to appear as a preview in the search results. Publishers around the world can use these new settings to choose the type of preview best suited to attract users to their site.

This is being framed by some as Google trying to "bypass" the EU Copyright Directive, but that's nonsense. This is Google complying with the EU Copyright Directive. Again, this is similar to how it's reacted in France and Germany, when similar link taxes were put in place. The problem is that the Eurocrats made a bunch of really dumb miscalculations here: first, they assumed that including snippets was more valuable to Google than it is to the publishers. It is not. Their traffic will decline without snippets, meaning many will quickly rush to opt-in to add them back. Second, they assumed that putting a tax on something wouldn't change the incentives and that Google would just carry on offering the same snippets, but just paying for them. They were wrong.

Again, we went through all of this five years ago with the German link tax, and even though Google effectively did the same thing, when asked about this, I distinctly remember some EU politicians insisting that it would be different if the whole EU all agreed to a link tax, and that Google would have to pay. What's incredible is that these same politicians will now whine and complain and lie, saying that Google is evading the tax when it's actually complying with the law as written -- and complying in the same way they complied with similar laws in the past. And, indeed, France's Culture Minister has already put out a laughable statement arguing that in complying with the law, Google is violating it:

I call for a real global negotiation between Google and the publishers: the unilateral definition of the rules of the game is contrary to both the spirit of the directive and its text. I will speak very soon with my European counterparts to remedy this situation.

How hard is this to understand? If you make something against the law (aggregating news and posting snippets without a license), don't be surprised if the companies who have been doing that stop doing that. You outlawed something, and so Google obeyed your new law and stopped doing it.

If the EU Parliament wanted a different outcome, perhaps instead of attacking those of us who warned this would happen, they should have listened to us. Apparently that's just too difficult.

Filed Under: aggregators, article 11, article 14, controls, france, link tax, metatags, news, snippet tax
Companies: google

Once More With Feeling: Nearly All General Interest News Paywalls Will Fail

from the if-you're-not-one-of-the-giants dept

Just a few weeks ago we pointed out (for not the first time) that news paywalls for general interest publications did not seem likely to succeed outside of a very small number of exceptions: mainly three giant east coast newspapers which have established themselves as key news sources: the NY Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal (arguably the last one, with its focus on finance, might not even count as "general interest"). In that last post, we pointed out that even people who liked to pay for news tended to only subscribe to a single news source. That helps create a winner take all proposition where only a very small number (see above) can actually build a sustainable business model through an internet paywall.

And that means that even if you're a pretty well known newspaper, falling outside the big ones, it means you're going to be in trouble. Witness the LA Times failing paywall. As Nieman Lab notes, in terms of paper subscriptions, the LA Times used to rank above the Washington Post. But it didn't make the transition to digital the way the Post did:

Digital subscriptions at the Los Angeles Times are way below expectations, and leadership, in a memo to staff, said the future of the paper could depend on solving the issue rapidly.

Whether due to unrealistic expectations or editorial and business failures, the Times is nowhere close to meeting its digital subscription goal. The Times had hoped to double its digital subscriptions from just more than 150,000 to 300,000 this year — a number that would have to be doubled again, the memo said, to come close to covering editorial costs. But midway through the year, the Times is nowhere near that number, having netted only 13,000 digital subscriptions in 2019.

As the article notes, the LA Times basically missed the boat here, despite having a wealthy owner who could have invested a ton of money.

Of course, part of the problem here is focusing solely on paywalls as a solution. As seen by the three success stories, it can work, but in a winner-take-all kind of market, you need to be a winner, and the LA Times was not positioned to do that. And the LA Times hasn't done much to distinguish itself as to why you'd want to subscribe to it rather than its competitors.

And it doesn't look like the paper is going to figure it out any time soon. So far it's plan seems to be wishful thinking:

In a memo sent to staff on Monday afternoon and obtained by Poynter, Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine and Managing Editor Scott Kraft wrote, “Our future depends on rapid and substantial subscription revenue growth.” They added, “Performance for the first half of the year … has been disappointing.”

That's the wrong approach. Subscription growth would be one way to increase revenue -- but to do that you have to give people a reason to subscribe, and just doing the same things as those other newspapers isn't going to cut it. I'm surprised that the LA Times hasn't, instead, decided to buck the paywall trend and go in the other direction. Why not focus on opening itself up, building up traffic, and providing an alternative to the east coast papers who got all the subscribers by doing strong reporting, and then layering in other, better business models?

Unfortunately, the newspaper business keeps making the same mistakes over and over again and refuses to get creative. The possible demise of the LA Times is just one symptom of that failure to innovate.

Filed Under: journalism, news, newspapers, paywalls