Avid Amoeba
🔦 Arch docker container running on Ubuntu. 🔦
Finally, no more beans 🫘 ☺️
E: We probably want a “Mute Community” option as well. One that removes that community’s content from All, but doesn’t remove access from the community if you search for it or go to it directly. That way we can look at 🫘 when we want to, yet not see them displacing everything else in All.
Unlike subs where there’s one centralized “Technology” sub for example, here they’re spread out. There are at least 3 large and active “Technology” communities and so cross-posting to all is necessary. It’s the equivalent to posting to the single “Technology” sub on the shit site. Therefore multi-communitu cross-posting is the norm here.
Then all you have to do in order to see it through the other lens is to think content when you see link in this context. We know that the platforms don’t do linking as in <a href=...>Click here</a>. They all embed titles, summaries, pictures and sometimes whole pages. I think the conversation about linking in this context is a straw man. It’s not about linking. Then overlay how profits are generated around it. The analogies fall apart and the problem emerges. In the end it comes down to profit or wealth redistribution and priorities. For a while money has been flowing away from news and into platforms. We need to shift money back from platforms to news. If the platforms paid reasonable taxes, maybe we could redistribute it from there to the news. Except platforms don’t pay reasonable taxes. In this case it’s either coming out of citizens pockets, a new net subtraction, or it’s gotta come from the platforms’ pockets. We seem to have made the right choice to take it out of the platforms. We’re going about doing that.
Mind you, the conversation about the accessibility of quality news content across the classes of society is distinctly separate from this and worth having. Depending on how much we are able to get from the platforms back into the news, we may be able to decrease the cost of access for everyone. If you’re concerned about that, you should be rooting for higher numbers rather than lower.
Google and Meta are absolutely getting a shit ton of value from the linking. Those links, that content, is keeping users eyeballs on the platforms longer and hitting ads on the platforms, next to that content. The user opens Facebook, they see an article summary and pic from NatPo, they scroll, they see another one, they scroll, they hit a sponsored post, Meta makes money, NatPo gets nothing. Meta extracted value from the content… cough… link. If you still think the platforms don’t get significant value from links, consider how much ads Google would be able to sell if Google search contained no links to anything compared to now.
The percentage numbers for funding are currently meaningless. They’re the start of a negotiation process. What’s going to show up when all is said and done is unknown yet. Just like the knee-jerk reaction from the platforms isn’t the end result but their initial negotiation move.
To the folks getting worked up about link taxing and proposing the solution of news paywalling themselves,
I’ll speak for the like-minded side since I know I’m not alone in this. We were advocating against link taxes when we had this debate a decade ago when news threatened the survival of the emerging platforms. Back then the platforms weren’t oligo/monopolies and the market power balance was very different. Today Meta has a monopoly on social media and Google does on search. Those are the two most common activities taken online. And with that the market power is firmly within the hands of the platforms. More importantly they have also monopolized the online advertising business. News do not have the required market power to paywall themselves and survive, especially not in Canada. The platforms, through little fault of their own have managed to take the revenue streams and to a large extend the position as platforms from news media. It’s how things shook out. Unfortunately this platform success is self-destructive and we think in need of correction. A financial correction that can ensure the viability of news, which will ensure that platforms can keep profiting from it without destroying it, along our democracy with it. If we end up overcorrecting and as a result the platforms face the risk of failing, we’ll have another discussion over that.
