German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller wrote a pretty famous poem called, “First they came…” It goes like this. First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew….
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Almost five years ago to this day, the folks in Australia’s legislature had had enough of online violence. They believed it contributed to the Christchurch massacre that killed 50 people. So, they took a radical step.
“Today we passed world-first legislation to punish individuals, websites and social media platforms that publish and host abhorrent material,” Australian Senator Mitch Fifield.
The law made executives of internet companies personally responsible if their platforms spread violence. Execs would go to jail for up to three years and the companies would pay a hefty fine.
I have no idea what the intended behavior was supposed to be. But, the folks who run big companies like Facebook did exactly what I would have done. They closed up their news shop and they went home. “No news for you.” Traffic to news publishers dropped making news publishers miserable. So, two years later, the Aussie government bent the essence of that law into a way to get Facebook – and Google – to pay Aussie publishers. Sweet.
Canada noticed the hammer that led to money. Two years later Canadian legislators passed Bill C-18. It was meant to strongarm Google and Facebook to pay Canadian publishers something for their content. Facebook and Google shut down Canadian news for Canadians. Canadian publishers got pummeled.
Village Media is, “One of the largest digital media networks in Ontario.” Ontario is a Canadian province. Kinda like Utah is a U.S. state. VM owns and operates local news in 15 communities most people have never heard of. Jeff Elgie is the CEO. He spent the better part of six months railing against the traffic his news sites have lost in the wake of C-18. A few days ago, he pointed out this very sad story. C-18 meant the Trent Hills news outlet couldn’t reach the audience of 18,000 followers. It’s traffic dropped by 90% and now it shut down. Years of audience building flushed.
You see, unlike what happened in Australia, this time, Google and Facebook didn’t bring news back to Canada. In fact, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg took a different path.
Last December Facebook shut down news in the UK, France, and Germany. Zuck told everyone, that news makes up, “Less than 3% of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed”. Which matches Muhammad Ali fanciest footwork for saying, “Less than 3% of what the Facebook algorithm shares with Facebook’s users is news.” Still, Zuckerberg is right. News is a hassle, makes Facebook no money, and makes up a disproportionate amount of their agita. So, why bother?
A few weeks later at the end of this March, Facebook and Google decided to end news in Australia and stop paying Aussie news publishers.
Which brings us to April 12th and the California Journalism Preservation Act. Or the exceedingly boring, CJPA. It’s a bill pending in the California state legislature, that would require Google (and others, yeah Facebook they’re looking at you) to pay a “link tax” to publications when links are connected to news articles. This is how Google sees it.
Here we go.
Jeff Jarvis, an associate professor of journalism at CUNY for nearly twenty years wrote this 41-page analysis of the sitch. You’re welcome to peruse it here. It was tl;dr for me. But I skimmed it. He reaches no conclusion. His goal is to jumpstart a discussion about ways government can step in to help news.
Here’s my take. Every time a government has stepped in to “help news” by creating laws that let publishers whack Google and Facebook to extract little bits of money from the companies that roam the big tech heavens the way parents hand kids sticks at parties to whack a piñata, they fail.
This bit is an excerpt from the Syndey Morning Herald (the one in Syndey, Australia; not Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada) about a Canadian business in Ottawa.
Piñatas don’t know how to fight back. Facebook and Google do.
One person I follow suggested that government hand out news coupons to everyone. We can use them to pay for news we want to share on social platforms and on Google. Which is silly in so many ways. First, if it’s even going to be considered, the government should stop all funds for public news. I mean, this would be a decentralized and democratic way to allocate government news funding. Second, if you give equal dollars to each person, and news consumption is asymmetric, you’re going to get news beggars. News organizations literally begging you for your news bucks. Which turns this whole thing into a black market situation. Give me your five-dollar news stipend for a free alarm clock that looks like a football. Didn’t we get enough swag like this from Sports Illustrated back in the day? Or totes from WGBH? No, this is not a better solution. Government funding and involvement in media rarely is.
They came for social news in Australia and no one cared. They came for social new in Canada and no one cared. They put legislative options against social news in California. And, now, Illinois is considering it. Soon, there won’t be a way to share news anywhere. Which makes news mute.
Niemöller’s poem ends like this. Then they came for me // And there was no one left // To speak out for me.