The beaver is Canada which passed a law required the big Tech companies pay Canadian news companies for content they post on their platforms and receive ad revenue from. Facebook and Google are acting all butt hurt and refusing to post news content in Canada instead of paying for it.

[–] rizoid@midwest.social 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is what I don't get. They already pay ad rev portions or whatever to video creators. So why is it so hard to pay ALL the content creators based on ad rev?

[–] kellenoffdagrid@lemmy.sdf.org 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

See that's the cool part, they can't even sustainably pay video creators via ad revenue 🤠👍

If there's anything I've learned from the past 10 years on the internet, it's that a purely ad-supported business model doesn't work. We've gotten to a point where a significant amount of consumers use adblockers (or are just less responsive to ads/rarely click through to the advertiser), and tech companies are trying to counteract this by raising subscription prices for paying customers and trying to find ways to maximize ad views (see: YouTube testing blocking people viewing the site with an adblocker, smart TVs with software closed-off enough that the average person can't easily block ads, etc.)

At the end of the day, this is ad companies being as stingy as possible to ensure their profits don't keep dropping. To me, I just think that betting on a world fueled by ads and data collection was a mistake, and we're finally starting to see how it's even hurting the companies trying to profit off that choice.

[–] catsup@lemmy.one 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think such changes have been actually fueled by the desire for "infinite growth" that investors constantly demand from companies

[–] kellenoffdagrid@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah, absolutely. It must be exhausting to constantly aim for massive profits rather than simply aiming for a little above breaking even. But hey, we've got investors to feed!

[–] Zirconium@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago

Thank God for climbing interest rates. I want to see unsustainable business models actually crash and burn.

[–] rhelawyn@artemis.camp 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you for your analysis

[–] BirdyBoogleBop@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

But. They get free clicks from social media. How does social media get any ad revenue from them? Social media get a title and a synopis maybe.

How is it not mutually benificial?

[–] chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://youtu.be/L6A1Lt0kvMA?si=Cuhyl_9I_7AIu8bu is probably still valid today. Destin is pretty calm compared to people like Brady about it, but still, "exposure" and free clicks aren't as useful, and technically giants often steal with their own players before actually linking.

[–] BirdyBoogleBop@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

Okay that's different though. Thats stealing someones content and reuploading. It isn't posting a link to a news article which then goes to the news site.