Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's *good* that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's *good* that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/06/stolen-money-not-content/#content-free
1/
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/06/stolen-money-not-content/#content-free
1/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/2
And yet, the most popular - and widely deployed - anti-Big Tech tactic promulgated by the news industry and supported by many of my fellow trustbusters is premised on making Big Tech pay to index the news and/or provide a forum to discuss news articles.
2/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/3
These US bills are probably dead on arrival, for reasons that can be easily understood by the Canadian experience with them.
3/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/4
This has been a disaster for the news industry and a disaster for Canadians' ability to discuss the news. Oh, it makes Meta look like assholes, too, but Meta is the poster child for "too big to care" and is palpably indifferent to the PR costs of this boycott.
4/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/5
5/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/6
But there's another, more fundamental reason that must-carry is incompatible with the American system: the First Amendment.
6/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/7
7/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/8
This might also be illegal in Canada, but it's harder to be definitive.
8/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/9
9/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/10
So *maybe* Canada's Supreme Court would find a must-carry order to Meta to be a violation of the Charter, but it's hard to say for sure.
10/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/11
11/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/12
But all that isn't to say that the news industry shouldn't be attacking Big Tech. Far from it. Big Tech compulsively steals from the news!
But what Big Tech steals from the news isn't *content*.
It's *money.*
12/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/13
13/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/14
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-need-end-end-web
14/
To Save the News, We Need an End-to-End Web
Electronic Frontier FoundationCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/15
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge
15/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/16
16/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/17
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores
Finally, Big Tech steals money by monopolizing the ad market. The Google-Meta ad duopoly takes 51% out of every ad-dollar spent. The historic share going to advertising "intermediaries" is 10-15%.
17/
To Save the News, We Must Open Up App Stores
Electronic Frontier FoundationCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/18
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue
There's two ways to unrig the ad market, and we should do both of them.
18/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/19
19/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/20
This is as if you were in court for a divorce and you discovered that the same lawyer representing your soon-to-be ex was also representing you...*while* serving as the judge...*and trying to match with you both on Tinder*. It shouldn't surprise you if at the end of that divorce, the court ruled that the family home should go to *the lawyer*.
20/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/21
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech
*Also*: we should ban surveillance advertising. Surveillance advertising gives ad-tech companies a permanent advantage over publishers. Ad-tech will *always* know more about readers' behavior than publishers do, because Big Tech engages in continuous, highly invasive surveillance of every internet user in the world.
21/
To Save the News, We Must Shatter Ad-Tech
Electronic Frontier FoundationCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/22
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising
22/
To Save the News, We Must Ban Surveillance Advertising
Electronic Frontier FoundationCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/23
23/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/24
It also includes everyone who discovers that they're paying higher prices because a vendor is using surveillance data to determine how much they'll pay.
24/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/25
https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again
Attacking Big Tech for stealing *money* is much smarter than pretending that the problem is Big Tech stealing content. We *want* Big Tech to make the news easy to find and discuss.
25/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/26
And there's *amazing* news on this front: a consortium of UK web-publishers called Ad Tech Collective Action has just triumphed in a high-stakes proceeding, and can now go ahead with a suit against Google, seeking damages of GBP13.6b ($17.4b) for the rigged ad-tech market:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/17-bln-uk-adtech-lawsuit-against-google-can-go-ahead-tribunal-rules-2024-06-05/
26/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/27
This is exactly what publishing should be doing. Targeting the method by which tech steals from the news is a benefit to *all* kinds of news organizations, including the independent, journalist-owned publishers that are doing the best news work today.
27/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/28
You can read more about Big Finance's raid on the news in Margot Susca's *Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy*:
https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087561
28/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/29
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N21YfWy0-bA
Frankly, the looters and billionaires who bought and gutted our great papers are no more interested in the health of the news industry or democracy than Big Tech is. We should care about the *news* and the workers who produce the news, not the profits of the hedge-funds that own the news.
29/
How Capitalism Murdered Journalism with Margot Susca - 263
YouTubeCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/30
30/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/31
31/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/32
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mh8Z5pcJpg
32/
FTC Chair Lina Khan on the Role of the Government, Trade and Antitrust | WSJ News
YouTubeCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/33
33/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/34
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand
Then those same entertainment and news companies will train AI models and try to fire most of their workers and slash the pay of the remainder using those models' output.
34/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/35
35/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/36
Policy fights are a recurring monkey's paw nightmare in which we try to do something to fight corruption and bullying, only to be outmaneuvered by corrupt bullies.
36/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/37
37/
Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/eof
https://media-ecology.org/convention
eof/
Media Ecology Association - Convention
media-ecology.org