“Now that we’ve killed your industry, it’s time to move on.”

Meta is threatening the world with the reintroduction of seeking out news sources instead of using a feeding tube.

  • As much as I dislike Facebook I really don’t agree with the idea that they should pay for linking to news articles.

    One could flip the argument in article and ask if having a post on Facebook is worthless for the newspapers, then why are companies paying Meta for ads on Facebook?

    I also feel that this goes against the concept of the internet. If Facebook has to pay then why shouldn’t I when I’m linking to a page from my blog? Why shouldn’t Lemmy?

    The problem for the rest of us is that big companies can handle the payment, and they can handle the admin for getting paid. The rest of us won’t get paid but we’ll all have to pay. The barriers for entry will only become bigger and only the big boys will be allowed to play.

    •  PenguinTD   ( @PenguinTD@lemmy.ca ) 
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      1211 months ago

      Then don’t link, write your own. Cause most of time it’s just reports that either:

      • copy existing stuff on internet and add journalist’s or editorial’s opinions. Often they lag about 1~2 days.
      • reporting what different level of government agencies’ press releases, these you can find on gov’s press release site.
      • other useless stuff, I mean the celebrity, sports stuff, etc that any “fan” probably already follow their own fan outlet. Any one here goes to news website to search for computer hardware reviews? I don’t think so.
      • scam/marketing articles( embedded marketing pretending to report something but actually is a sales campaign )
      • ads
        •  PenguinTD   ( @PenguinTD@lemmy.ca ) 
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          111 months ago

          Cause people are too lazy to fact check? Like trust some outrageous claims and form cults like anti-vaxxer, flat-earther, etc? That’s an education problem not a blog/new self-publishing problem. Even our news agencies often time present biased information?

          Writing your piece doesn’t mean others has to trust you, doesn’t mean you don’t have to cite source directly from government or org press release, if you do investigative piece you have to list your data source and how you get it, that’s the “normal” way. Instead, our news are often linking from one to another and sometimes just refer social media in embeded blocks( which can be changed or taken down if removed api access or account is ban/deleted.)

          To be honest, like button or upvote/downvote is probably the worst invention of internet. I can understand how pre-internet propaganda or public psyop worked cause access to information was very limited and slow. And now people have quick access to tons of information but lack the will to fact check or critical thinking is astounding. Like if you see some controversial topic on reddit and see how many people just “follow” the train cause those are most upvoted comments are sickening, all while different opinion gets downvoted to oblivion. Some of the garbage comments make me question the worth of humanity.

        •  PenguinTD   ( @PenguinTD@lemmy.ca ) 
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          211 months ago

          I wrote the above to the comment mentioned small player can’t pay the link fee to new agencies, be it blog or their own community website etc. It’s targeted to people that actually wanted to write something but does not belong to a new agency. You would still need to link to government or whatever publicly available info as source, that way you don’t fall into a “rumor” site and you can do your own piece at your own pace and investigation. Everyone needs to start somewhere.

          We are at the age where the entry to publication is very minimum, but to gain regular viewer/audience is hard. (on top of having to combat AI generated garbage that are search engine optimized. )

          Honestly. everyone should “check source” and not blindly read and eat up all the spoon fed stuff, cause many times a article is an influence piece, not a report that just layout the facts and information. From how the agency decides the title, how they quote or present information, and how they know many people don’t actually want to know details and just want to throw upvote or have a fake emotional outlet by complaining in the comments.

    • I just don’t get what any party gets out of this. The news sites get traffic driven to their websites by the links where they can serve ads and the social media companies benefit from the engagement with the article. Did someone honestly think that Facebook and Google would actually pay for the privilege?

  •  elfpie   ( @elfpie@beehaw.org ) 
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    311 months ago

    I think there’s something missing in this article. It sounded familiar and I remembered the old news when they mentioned Google and Australia. The issue with Google was that the news would show in the search results, which meant there’s no need to visit the source.