7 ms·

Publishers in Canada urge regulator to prevent Meta from restricting news access

29 points by finphil 3y ago

ChrisArchitect 3y ago
This blog post days later discussing trying to prevent the thing that happened already... Here's the discussion from 5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025233
SllX 3y ago
So how does pulling out of the news aggregator market and refusing to serve that function violate the law they cited in the article?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
1024core 3y ago
> The move follows the passage of Canada's Online News Act, aimed at boosting revenue for Canadian journalism outlets by mandating compensation from companies like Meta and Google's parent company, Alphabet, for hosting and linking to their content. Well, Canada fucked around and found out.
- wredue 3y ago
  The spirit of the regulation makes sense. Advertisers and PII farmers basically use news channel posts to generate revenue, and often scrape critical parts of the article, or even just outright steal the contents in whole. I’m not sure about the execution, but I do agree with the sentiment. Google and Facebook being allowed to steal your content just because they’re massive is a huge problem.
  - 1024core 3y ago
    > Google and Facebook being allowed to steal your content just because they’re massive is a huge problem. Have you heard of robots.txt files? It pains me to read comments such as yours which display such colossal ignorance.
  - dabluck 3y ago
    This is exactly backwards. Google will happily not index any of your content with a simple robots.txt file. These companies are desperate for Google's traffic. They should be paying Google for it!
  - kemayo 3y ago
    If the law was restricted to cases where Google / Facebook had actually scraped the content from the page and was redisplaying it, I suspect we'd be seeing far less objections. Instead, it overreached so hard that it's left Hacker News broadly supporting Facebook's actions, which is pretty wild. Ignoring how it even applies to pure links with no content ("click here"), a lot of the previews you see on Facebook are using special meta tags that're added to news articles for that purpose. If the news orgs think that using that content for a nice preview of their article is bad for them, they should stop deliberately providing it. (I think the `og` meta tags are a better argument here than `robots.txt`, because the former is the news orgs actively helping their content get redisplayed, while the latter is Google they-would-argue saying "we're stealing this unless you tell us not to", which sounds far sketchier.)
    - wredue 3y ago
      So.. we agree? The execution wasn’t right, but the idea of third parties being allowed to take your content just because of their size is bad. I do have to say that I am growing more and more tired of completely tech illiterate laws being passed.
      - kemayo 3y ago
        We sort of agree, in that I believe we're both saying that the law is currently doing something bad, but that preventing unauthorized reuse of the news org's content isn't necessarily unreasonable. However, I don't think calling it an execution issue is quite right. The basic concept built into the law is that telling someone where to go to get the news is a thing you should have to pay to do. We can imagine a far more restrained law that just forbids or requires payment for scraping-and-redisplay of article text... but that'd genuinely be a different law with a different goal.
      - marcinzm 3y ago
        Huh? News organizations are explicitly asking third parties to take their content and helping them do so... I'm not sure how that is an argument for third parties taking that content by force. In fact they're now complaining that Meta is no longer taking their content at all. So really not sure what argument you're trying to make here.
- mc32 3y ago
  I feel like there is no good-gal in this saga. This should be forming symbiotic relationships but they're both acting like parasites. Both sides angle to extract as much revenue as possible. That said, I don't think social media or any technology company is _obligated_ to carry news.
blastonico 3y ago
Wow, the newspaper industry seems desperate. Oppressors becoming oppressed?
- jbm 3y ago
  Canada is easier to understand when you realize that there is a strong current of oligopoly behind many of its large businesses, including the news. A few out-of-touch boomer billionaire families who have the governance-as-a-service support package can put their thumb on the scale to create "consensus" around nonsense like this. I hope Meta and Google never restores these news outlets. My feed has gotten significantly better already.
lacksconfidence 3y ago
They took the wrong approach. The simple answer was to tax the companies you want to pay, and then give the money to the people you want to give money to. Instead they put together this rube goldberg machine and facebook is noping out.
- pasc1878 3y ago
  Unfortunately in all countries (except one) Meta et all have no income on which to be taxed as the costs to support the operation in your country are oddly outweighed by the payment for using the name they have to make to the country where Head Office is.
  - acover 3y ago
    Do you have to tax income? Can't you tax social media companies $2 per user per year that have more than 1 million members or by any other metric you like?
  - martin8412 3y ago
    You just tax them on gross income if their UBO isn't in a country with a tax agreement.
    - pasc1878 3y ago
      But most countries DO have a tax agreement with USA or China which is where most of the multinationals are based.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Tax on ad revenue based on location of user rather than income then. If you want to play nice with local companies, have it offset against income tax, so it's revenue neutral with respect to local broadcasters and billboards, but not for international companies that transfer price all their Canadian income elsewhere.
  - pg_1234 3y ago
    The income generating event occurs where someone sees their ads. There's a simple experiment that would prove this: Prohibit Meta from displaying any adverts on any screens in Canada. When they complain about loosing money, say; OK you can show the ads, but we're taxing you on that money/incone you said you were loosing.
unsubstantiated 3y ago
This is one game where MAD is the winning move to play. I'd like for Meta et al to block Canadian news. I'd also like for Canadian news to block Meta et al. Their endless funnels of garbage that predominantly serve to rile people up are something we could all do with less of. And that goes from both sides.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  > This is one game where MAD is the winning move to play. I'd like for Meta et al to block Canadian news. I don't know if this is MAD. I personally would start using facebook again if there were fewer news and misinformation. If they blocked news in Europe as well that would be great. News and politics killed facebook and most social media. Politics are important for any society but they should not dominate every conversation platform as it currently does. Essentially, news have been transformed into a completed shitshow turning the internet into the new TV.
  - orwin 3y ago
    I agree. I'm not big on social medias (except this site) but I have absolutely no use for post-2012 Facebook. Banning news sources from it would improve it considerably in my eyes.
MAGZine 3y ago
The best I can tell, meta is deliberately overapplying the law in an attempt to rally public sentiment against a law they don't like. An example of this is where meta has basically "regionally suspended" some news accounts. Some Canadians (a/b testing) going to Instagram pages owned by a News Orgs see "sorry, blocked, bitch at the government." But the law doesn't say news orgs can't use social media unless Meta pays them. It's not the first time Canada has seen this sort of bad behaviour from entitled companies. I've seen literally this overapplication strategy in other instances. Perhaps the law should be tweaked. Perhaps it should not be. But this actively damages my view of Meta. maybe the fact they hate this so much is an indication the government is doing something right. Maybe Canadians will be inspired to get their own news instead of consuming whatever viewpoint Meta deems acceptable (and yes I think actual domestic journalism is a better source than Meta).
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I pretty much despise Meta, but this action has be thinking better of them: Canadian Publishers: You have to pay us when you link to our content! Meta: OK, we won't link to your content. Canadian Publishers: No wait that's not what we meant...
  - blq10 3y ago
    Problem being that despite the fact that getting your content hoovered by socials is stealing ad revenue - Facebook etc al have declared themselves the only sites on the internet that matter, and if they aren't linking to you you don't matter. Something does need to be done about this, this is something - whether it's the right something or not is debatable, but I find the idea that this is just smug news orgs getting their justified comeuppance silly.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Facebook etc al have declared themselves the only sites on the internet that matter Users have done that.
goodbyesf 3y ago
Meta should just block canada altogether. Nobody would notice or care.
- pschuegr 3y ago
  On the contrary it would make some of us very happy
kemayo 3y ago
"You're not allowed to not do the things you have to pay us for" sounds a bit iffy, not gonna lie.
- thiht 3y ago
  That’s extortion
nemo44x 3y ago
It’s sort of scary how authoritarian Canada has become in recent years. From compelled speech, gun confiscation, to financially alienating political dissenters to now possibly trying to force companies to participate in things they don’t want to. What’s going on up there?
- polishdude20 3y ago
  We have nothing of value up here and have decided that economic success is something we don't want to strive for anymore (not that we ever did).
- gottorf 3y ago
  Very few countries have the historical, legal, and cultural background that favors freedom (in many senses of the word) over authoritarianism as the US. Maybe Switzerland is another example. See Australia for another Commonwealth country that has been passing pretty dystopian laws around privacy and encryption.
  - Enk1du 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - milsorgen 3y ago
    It looks like the anglosphere or Western world, however you want to frame it, seems to be moving in many troubling directions. It's hard to separate oneself from their moment in time and history and particular vantage point but it does seem we have a growing number of citizens willing (or apathetic enough) to sacrifice a whole bunch of liberty for some promises of security.
- dghughes 3y ago
  > financially alienating political dissenters That's a fancy way to say racist truckers throwing a weeks-long tantrum were made to pay for their actions.
  - gottorf 3y ago
thefurdrake 3y ago
So... Meta is engaged in anticompetetive behavior by removing itself from the market? How, exactly, will that cause a reduction in competition in the market? I think it's GREAT that a cancer peddler like Meta is removing itself. Neat. ... I hate being on Meta's side, but the Canadian authorities have truly taken leave of their senses.
- ben_w 3y ago
  Speaking hypothetically because I'm neither a lawyer nor an economist: If a monopoly or a monopsony withdraw from a market in order to force a change to legislation they don't like, that feels like exactly the kind of thing that governments need to take a dim view of, or else risk becoming de facto puppets of the monop*y.
  - thefurdrake 3y ago
    I feel like this opinion is divorced from reality. A company removing itself from the market creates room for competition. FORCING Meta to provide links and also FORCING them to pay for the links they provide is absurd. They have every right to depart the market. And good riddance, too-- you shouldn't be getting your news from social media, anyway.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > A company removing itself from the market creates room for competition. Not always. Let's say, just for the sake of the argument, that people are lazy and social (so far so good), so much so that they spend all their free time on social media (that's the excessive part for the argument). Don't allow links of category XYZ on social media? Well, now people won't be sharing them. Opportunity has ceased to exist. You only get competition if there's a new social network that does allow XYZ. If the old social network is dominant, this may not be reasonable or effective — if FB pulls out of Canada, some other random university student can pull off what Zuckerberg did at university, but Canadabook still won't (except by luck) get the international cachet. > And good riddance, too-- you shouldn't be getting your news from social media, anyway. Yup, agreed. Im fact, go further and get rid of FB and all the rest — I'd be happy for us to go back to e-mail and IRC (and I'm only 70% sure that's because I'm pining for my lost youth when everything was simple and I didn't have any important things to worry about).
Dystopian 3y ago
As a Canadian, I find the whole saga of how our government works with the technology sector bat-shit crazy. All of the media's coverage up here is disingenuously about tech overreach and not about how their lobbyists tried to double-dip on revenue (both demanding an estimated $329M/year[1] from tech companies, while also receiving the ad revenue from ++1.9B pageviews[2]). The problem is there'll probably be some kind of settlement between the government, news companies, and tech. But while this drags on, the larger oligopoly of news outlets will come out alive, while smaller news outlets are really going to suffer financially. If you want to read more about our government's recent brain-dead policies on technology you can look up: C-11: A streaming services bill that mandates Canadian content on foreign streamers. Not horrible, but also a great way to have "This service is not available in your region." notices in your country. DST: A "just because" global digital services tax of 3%, which will definitely be passed onto consumers, if not lead to service blockages in Canada. C-18: ↑ This bill. Pretty much a shakedown by the government and media companies. > This is coming from a registered liberal party member, who's socially liberal and is consistently confronted with the thought that I may actually be conservative. [1] https://www.pbo-dpb.ca/en/publications/RP-2223-017-M--cost-estimate-bill-c-18-online-news-act--estimation-couts-lies-projet-loi-c-18-loi-nouvelles-ligne https://www.pbo-dpb.ca/en/publications/RP-2223-017-M--cost-e... [2] https://about.fb.com/news/2022/05/how-meta-supports-news-providers-in-canada/ https://about.fb.com/news/2022/05/how-meta-supports-news-pro...
- soperj 3y ago
  If there actually was a small-c conservative party in Canada I think a lot of people would be conservative. Too much religious dogma.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    A first-past-the-post system ends up in a two-party system, which means a big tent progressive party and a big tent conservative party; which in turn means nobody is fully happy with either option. This isn't to say that multiparty democracies always function well, either. Belgium basically had no government (as in a party elected with a mandate to govern) for two years, from 2018 to 2020.
xeckr 3y ago
Does the US have an entrepreneur visa yet, or favourable terms for Canadian entrepreneurs wishing to immigrate?
- kemayo 3y ago
  It has various takes on this: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/options-for-noncitizen-entrepreneurs-to-work-in-the-united-states https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/options-f... Skimming that page, I think that so long as you've got a million dollars to invest in a business based in the US, and will employ 10+ people, you have a straight shot to full-on permanent residency. With other options available, depending on more complicated requirements.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
seryoiupfurds 3y ago
Imagine there's a local newspaper with a community events section. The event organizers say the newspaper is stealing from them because it profits from having ads on the same page, so the government makes them pay $10 to each event they feature. The newspaper decides the community events section isn't worth the trouble and just removes it, and everybody including the government whines that the big bad corporation is bullying them. If they actually believed the original argument that it was stealing, they should be happy that they stopped! I'm sure glad the government is focusing on important issues like this while being dismissive of the housing crisis.
- milsorgen 3y ago
  >If they actually believed the original argument that it was stealing, they should be happy that they stopped! Simply beautifully put.
lambersley 3y ago
This is nothing more than Big Gov trying to save the dinosaurs. The Canadian media giants have not evolved at the pace of technology. They have no innovated since print and radio. Of course their revenue streams are drying up. And of course Big Gov is tired of subsidizing a failing enterprise. Though, it would be interesting if Mr. Trudeau countered with blocking a Meta traffic in Canada.

29 points by finphil 3y ago

This blog post days later discussing trying to prevent the thing that happened already... Here's the discussion from 5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025233 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025233

SllX 3y ago

So how does pulling out of the news aggregator market and refusing to serve that function violate the law they cited in the article?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

1024core 3y ago

> The move follows the passage of Canada's Online News Act, aimed at boosting revenue for Canadian journalism outlets by mandating compensation from companies like Meta and Google's parent company, Alphabet, for hosting and linking to their content. Well, Canada fucked around and found out.

wredue 3y ago
The spirit of the regulation makes sense. Advertisers and PII farmers basically use news channel posts to generate revenue, and often scrape critical parts of the article, or even just outright steal the contents in whole. I’m not sure about the execution, but I do agree with the sentiment. Google and Facebook being allowed to steal your content just because they’re massive is a huge problem.
- 1024core 3y ago
  > Google and Facebook being allowed to steal your content just because they’re massive is a huge problem. Have you heard of robots.txt files? It pains me to read comments such as yours which display such colossal ignorance.
- dabluck 3y ago
  This is exactly backwards. Google will happily not index any of your content with a simple robots.txt file. These companies are desperate for Google's traffic. They should be paying Google for it!
- kemayo 3y ago
  If the law was restricted to cases where Google / Facebook had actually scraped the content from the page and was redisplaying it, I suspect we'd be seeing far less objections. Instead, it overreached so hard that it's left Hacker News broadly supporting Facebook's actions, which is pretty wild. Ignoring how it even applies to pure links with no content ("click here"), a lot of the previews you see on Facebook are using special meta tags that're added to news articles for that purpose. If the news orgs think that using that content for a nice preview of their article is bad for them, they should stop deliberately providing it. (I think the `og` meta tags are a better argument here than `robots.txt`, because the former is the news orgs actively helping their content get redisplayed, while the latter is Google they-would-argue saying "we're stealing this unless you tell us not to", which sounds far sketchier.)
  - wredue 3y ago
    So.. we agree? The execution wasn’t right, but the idea of third parties being allowed to take your content just because of their size is bad. I do have to say that I am growing more and more tired of completely tech illiterate laws being passed.
    - kemayo 3y ago
      We sort of agree, in that I believe we're both saying that the law is currently doing something bad, but that preventing unauthorized reuse of the news org's content isn't necessarily unreasonable. However, I don't think calling it an execution issue is quite right. The basic concept built into the law is that telling someone where to go to get the news is a thing you should have to pay to do. We can imagine a far more restrained law that just forbids or requires payment for scraping-and-redisplay of article text... but that'd genuinely be a different law with a different goal.
    - marcinzm 3y ago
      Huh? News organizations are explicitly asking third parties to take their content and helping them do so... I'm not sure how that is an argument for third parties taking that content by force. In fact they're now complaining that Meta is no longer taking their content at all. So really not sure what argument you're trying to make here.
mc32 3y ago
I feel like there is no good-gal in this saga. This should be forming symbiotic relationships but they're both acting like parasites. Both sides angle to extract as much revenue as possible. That said, I don't think social media or any technology company is _obligated_ to carry news.

blastonico 3y ago

Wow, the newspaper industry seems desperate. Oppressors becoming oppressed?

jbm 3y ago
Canada is easier to understand when you realize that there is a strong current of oligopoly behind many of its large businesses, including the news. A few out-of-touch boomer billionaire families who have the governance-as-a-service support package can put their thumb on the scale to create "consensus" around nonsense like this. I hope Meta and Google never restores these news outlets. My feed has gotten significantly better already.

lacksconfidence 3y ago

They took the wrong approach. The simple answer was to tax the companies you want to pay, and then give the money to the people you want to give money to. Instead they put together this rube goldberg machine and facebook is noping out.

pasc1878 3y ago
Unfortunately in all countries (except one) Meta et all have no income on which to be taxed as the costs to support the operation in your country are oddly outweighed by the payment for using the name they have to make to the country where Head Office is.
- acover 3y ago
  Do you have to tax income? Can't you tax social media companies $2 per user per year that have more than 1 million members or by any other metric you like?
- martin8412 3y ago
  You just tax them on gross income if their UBO isn't in a country with a tax agreement.
  - pasc1878 3y ago
    But most countries DO have a tax agreement with USA or China which is where most of the multinationals are based.
- toast0 3y ago
  Tax on ad revenue based on location of user rather than income then. If you want to play nice with local companies, have it offset against income tax, so it's revenue neutral with respect to local broadcasters and billboards, but not for international companies that transfer price all their Canadian income elsewhere.
- pg_1234 3y ago
  The income generating event occurs where someone sees their ads. There's a simple experiment that would prove this: Prohibit Meta from displaying any adverts on any screens in Canada. When they complain about loosing money, say; OK you can show the ads, but we're taxing you on that money/incone you said you were loosing.

unsubstantiated 3y ago

This is one game where MAD is the winning move to play. I'd like for Meta et al to block Canadian news. I'd also like for Canadian news to block Meta et al. Their endless funnels of garbage that predominantly serve to rile people up are something we could all do with less of. And that goes from both sides.

gumballindie 3y ago
> This is one game where MAD is the winning move to play. I'd like for Meta et al to block Canadian news. I don't know if this is MAD. I personally would start using facebook again if there were fewer news and misinformation. If they blocked news in Europe as well that would be great. News and politics killed facebook and most social media. Politics are important for any society but they should not dominate every conversation platform as it currently does. Essentially, news have been transformed into a completed shitshow turning the internet into the new TV.
- orwin 3y ago
  I agree. I'm not big on social medias (except this site) but I have absolutely no use for post-2012 Facebook. Banning news sources from it would improve it considerably in my eyes.

MAGZine 3y ago

The best I can tell, meta is deliberately overapplying the law in an attempt to rally public sentiment against a law they don't like. An example of this is where meta has basically "regionally suspended" some news accounts. Some Canadians (a/b testing) going to Instagram pages owned by a News Orgs see "sorry, blocked, bitch at the government." But the law doesn't say news orgs can't use social media unless Meta pays them. It's not the first time Canada has seen this sort of bad behaviour from entitled companies. I've seen literally this overapplication strategy in other instances. Perhaps the law should be tweaked. Perhaps it should not be. But this actively damages my view of Meta. maybe the fact they hate this so much is an indication the government is doing something right. Maybe Canadians will be inspired to get their own news instead of consuming whatever viewpoint Meta deems acceptable (and yes I think actual domestic journalism is a better source than Meta).

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I pretty much despise Meta, but this action has be thinking better of them: Canadian Publishers: You have to pay us when you link to our content! Meta: OK, we won't link to your content. Canadian Publishers: No wait that's not what we meant...
- blq10 3y ago
  Problem being that despite the fact that getting your content hoovered by socials is stealing ad revenue - Facebook etc al have declared themselves the only sites on the internet that matter, and if they aren't linking to you you don't matter. Something does need to be done about this, this is something - whether it's the right something or not is debatable, but I find the idea that this is just smug news orgs getting their justified comeuppance silly.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Facebook etc al have declared themselves the only sites on the internet that matter Users have done that.

goodbyesf 3y ago

Meta should just block canada altogether. Nobody would notice or care.

pschuegr 3y ago
On the contrary it would make some of us very happy

kemayo 3y ago

"You're not allowed to not do the things you have to pay us for" sounds a bit iffy, not gonna lie.

thiht 3y ago
That’s extortion

nemo44x 3y ago

It’s sort of scary how authoritarian Canada has become in recent years. From compelled speech, gun confiscation, to financially alienating political dissenters to now possibly trying to force companies to participate in things they don’t want to. What’s going on up there?

polishdude20 3y ago
We have nothing of value up here and have decided that economic success is something we don't want to strive for anymore (not that we ever did).
gottorf 3y ago
Very few countries have the historical, legal, and cultural background that favors freedom (in many senses of the word) over authoritarianism as the US. Maybe Switzerland is another example. See Australia for another Commonwealth country that has been passing pretty dystopian laws around privacy and encryption.
- Enk1du 3y ago
  [flagged]
- milsorgen 3y ago
  It looks like the anglosphere or Western world, however you want to frame it, seems to be moving in many troubling directions. It's hard to separate oneself from their moment in time and history and particular vantage point but it does seem we have a growing number of citizens willing (or apathetic enough) to sacrifice a whole bunch of liberty for some promises of security.
dghughes 3y ago
> financially alienating political dissenters That's a fancy way to say racist truckers throwing a weeks-long tantrum were made to pay for their actions.
- gottorf 3y ago

thefurdrake 3y ago

So... Meta is engaged in anticompetetive behavior by removing itself from the market? How, exactly, will that cause a reduction in competition in the market? I think it's GREAT that a cancer peddler like Meta is removing itself. Neat. ... I hate being on Meta's side, but the Canadian authorities have truly taken leave of their senses.

ben_w 3y ago
Speaking hypothetically because I'm neither a lawyer nor an economist: If a monopoly or a monopsony withdraw from a market in order to force a change to legislation they don't like, that feels like exactly the kind of thing that governments need to take a dim view of, or else risk becoming de facto puppets of the monop*y.
- thefurdrake 3y ago
  I feel like this opinion is divorced from reality. A company removing itself from the market creates room for competition. FORCING Meta to provide links and also FORCING them to pay for the links they provide is absurd. They have every right to depart the market. And good riddance, too-- you shouldn't be getting your news from social media, anyway.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > A company removing itself from the market creates room for competition. Not always. Let's say, just for the sake of the argument, that people are lazy and social (so far so good), so much so that they spend all their free time on social media (that's the excessive part for the argument). Don't allow links of category XYZ on social media? Well, now people won't be sharing them. Opportunity has ceased to exist. You only get competition if there's a new social network that does allow XYZ. If the old social network is dominant, this may not be reasonable or effective — if FB pulls out of Canada, some other random university student can pull off what Zuckerberg did at university, but Canadabook still won't (except by luck) get the international cachet. > And good riddance, too-- you shouldn't be getting your news from social media, anyway. Yup, agreed. Im fact, go further and get rid of FB and all the rest — I'd be happy for us to go back to e-mail and IRC (and I'm only 70% sure that's because I'm pining for my lost youth when everything was simple and I didn't have any important things to worry about).

Dystopian 3y ago

As a Canadian, I find the whole saga of how our government works with the technology sector bat-shit crazy. All of the media's coverage up here is disingenuously about tech overreach and not about how their lobbyists tried to double-dip on revenue (both demanding an estimated $329M/year[1] from tech companies, while also receiving the ad revenue from ++1.9B pageviews[2]). The problem is there'll probably be some kind of settlement between the government, news companies, and tech. But while this drags on, the larger oligopoly of news outlets will come out alive, while smaller news outlets are really going to suffer financially. If you want to read more about our government's recent brain-dead policies on technology you can look up: C-11: A streaming services bill that mandates Canadian content on foreign streamers. Not horrible, but also a great way to have "This service is not available in your region." notices in your country. DST: A "just because" global digital services tax of 3%, which will definitely be passed onto consumers, if not lead to service blockages in Canada. C-18: ↑ This bill. Pretty much a shakedown by the government and media companies. > This is coming from a registered liberal party member, who's socially liberal and is consistently confronted with the thought that I may actually be conservative. [1] https://www.pbo-dpb.ca/en/publications/RP-2223-017-M--cost-estimate-bill-c-18-online-news-act--estimation-couts-lies-projet-loi-c-18-loi-nouvelles-ligne https://www.pbo-dpb.ca/en/publications/RP-2223-017-M--cost-e... [2] https://about.fb.com/news/2022/05/how-meta-supports-news-providers-in-canada/ https://about.fb.com/news/2022/05/how-meta-supports-news-pro...

soperj 3y ago
If there actually was a small-c conservative party in Canada I think a lot of people would be conservative. Too much religious dogma.
- gottorf 3y ago
  A first-past-the-post system ends up in a two-party system, which means a big tent progressive party and a big tent conservative party; which in turn means nobody is fully happy with either option. This isn't to say that multiparty democracies always function well, either. Belgium basically had no government (as in a party elected with a mandate to govern) for two years, from 2018 to 2020.

xeckr 3y ago

Does the US have an entrepreneur visa yet, or favourable terms for Canadian entrepreneurs wishing to immigrate?

kemayo 3y ago
It has various takes on this: https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/options-for-noncitizen-entrepreneurs-to-work-in-the-united-states https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/options-f... Skimming that page, I think that so long as you've got a million dollars to invest in a business based in the US, and will employ 10+ people, you have a straight shot to full-on permanent residency. With other options available, depending on more complicated requirements.

DueDilligence 3y ago

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seryoiupfurds 3y ago

Imagine there's a local newspaper with a community events section. The event organizers say the newspaper is stealing from them because it profits from having ads on the same page, so the government makes them pay $10 to each event they feature. The newspaper decides the community events section isn't worth the trouble and just removes it, and everybody including the government whines that the big bad corporation is bullying them. If they actually believed the original argument that it was stealing, they should be happy that they stopped! I'm sure glad the government is focusing on important issues like this while being dismissive of the housing crisis.

milsorgen 3y ago
>If they actually believed the original argument that it was stealing, they should be happy that they stopped! Simply beautifully put.

lambersley 3y ago

This is nothing more than Big Gov trying to save the dinosaurs. The Canadian media giants have not evolved at the pace of technology. They have no innovated since print and radio. Of course their revenue streams are drying up. And of course Big Gov is tired of subsidizing a failing enterprise. Though, it would be interesting if Mr. Trudeau countered with blocking a Meta traffic in Canada.