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Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Governments are terrible at legislating in the tech and information space. It almost always results in terrible laws that don't even come close to doing what they intended.
I don't like facebook and i certainly don't give a shit if they lose money but you can't force them to buy news articles and deliver them to non-paying users.
Yes the government can force them because theyre the government. Thats how governments work. If youve bought into the propaganda that governments have no right to regulate facebook then I guess facebook is the ultimate authority to rule the world? Perhaps we should hand the military over to zuckerberg? Zuck as unelected dictator president? Governments have authority and a duty to control corporations within their borders no matter what their ceo's have convinced you through the media outlets they have bought up. Yes, governments have ultimate power and authority on planet earth not "business".
Sure, Canada can regulate Meta/FB, but they can’t force them to offer the service in the country. If Meta wants to completely cease operations in Canada they’d be perfectly within their “rights”.
Meta hasn't chosen to cease operations there, and realistically they aren't going to do it, unless they're willing to take a massive hit in stock value that would result from taking out a rich country from the revenue stream.
Gov ask companies to pay for sharing news. Meta is complying with the regulation. They're sharing zero news, which is within their rights.
But they have ceased serving news from canadian outlets, in compliance with the local laws. There’s no way the government can force them to pay out for news links if they won’t serve them at all
Issue is Canada can't force them to do business there. If they continue introducing flawed legislation that is awful at doing what it's supposed to do, then Meta's just gonna get tf outta there. Canada aren't big enough to have that much of a dent on their income, so it's just not worth it.
That's the traditional model, but I don't think it applies anymore. We seem to be living in a post-nation state era. People are fully reliant on the top dozen or so companies, so those companies have tremendous power over government. Some governments are only just now realizing that fact and are trying to push back, but it's way too late.
I think it's a little easier and less complicated than that.
The government wants to give money, specifically Facebook's money, to the publishing industry. The industry lobbying the government.
The government has the ability to tax Facebook directly. That's well established. But the government has a trouble giving money to the publishing industry. That would be a subsidy. People have trouble paying subsidies to failing businesses. From the government. Usually. It's anyway it's a very difficult discussion to have in public.
So the government and the publishers got together and are trying to force Facebook to pay the publishers and not the government.
Facebook gracefully said no, they don't want to pay the publishers.
So now if the government forces them to use the publisher data, they can't logically also force them to pay a fee to use the thing they're forced to use... The government could always tax Facebook... But the goal isn't to tax it's to give money to publishers...
I think this demonstrates we are not in a post-government age, this particular lobbying attempt to keep the horse and buggy industry irrelevant isn't working as planned, it's backfiring in a funny way.