Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
lol
3 replies
2 recasts
20 reactions
Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
> blocked news from its apps in Canada in 2023 after a new law required the social media giant to pay Canadian news publishers a tax for publishing their content. The ban applies to all news outlets irrespective of origin, including The New York Times. play stupid games, win stupid prizes
5 replies
1 recast
19 reactions
tomato
@tomatoxyz
To be fair to news/media outlets, social media platforms get to embed part of the article as a free dinner and almost zero revenue flows to the outlets. News media in general has had declining revenue for ages so it doesn't really matter if Meta or anyone stops showing news outlets, they will go bankrupt either way. Meta and other platforms make a ton of money from the discussion etc generated by these articles but never pay anything back. It will unfortunately probably be a net loss for society when all the outlets are bankrupt (save for a few independent journalists who are really good, most of the alternatives are terrible)
2 replies
0 recast
1 reaction
Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
Paywall the link? News is a commodity. Preventing distribution on the internet is a futile exercise.
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
tomato
@tomatoxyz
I think paywalls and forced account signups for news sites were a total failure. I don't want to sign up for an account and I don't want to pay a $10/month subscription to read a single article. I'd much rather we had something like Flattr (which is sadly now defunct) and I could pay like $0.25 or $1 to get access to read the article. Facebook/Meta could've even built something for it based on microTXs or a wide coverage monthly subscription akin to Netflix (one payment, would let you read tons of different outlets) but sadly I don't think anyone really got together the publishers or innovated much. I remember paying how ever many dollars monthly for a regional newspaper in a place I was staying - only to realize they would mirror all the same articles on other websites the publisher owned for free. Totally broken distribution model.
1 reply
0 recast
1 reaction
Dan Romero
@dwr.eth
> I think paywalls and forced account signups for news sites were a total failure. I don't want to sign up for an account and I don't want to pay a $10/month subscription to read a single article. Has worked well for the NYT. The reality is most news is not worth paying for. Consumers don't want to pay microtxns
1 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
tomato
@tomatoxyz
NYT is large enough that it works for them, but the failure to monetize journalism meant lots of smaller outlets in small towns etc ended up dying off and local stories don't really get told or recorded as much. All of the local advertising and classifieds moved from those small town outlets to Facebook/Meta who had the advantage that all the news was conveniently there and then when it comes time to pay anything they just cut stuff off. It's a natural progression of tech/the internet in many ways and I agree consumers don't want to pay microtxns - its just sad that the world doesn't have as many interesting local stories in it anymore. Meta won't care, they already extracted the value out of it and left nothing in return.
0 reply
0 recast
0 reaction
