No more News for Canada as Instagram blocks content for Canadian viewers due to C-18 link tax, others to follow

TheOtherJake@beehaw.org to Politics@beehaw.org – 11 points –
Meta and Google are blocking links to news in Canada. The US might be next.
vox.com
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Does it, though? In the past the argument was that aggregators like Google were stealing site traffic by showing large excepts or summaries of the articles they linked to, and I could understand that, but the new Canadian law seems like it wants to attach a fee to simply showing a hyperlink. That's fundamentally contrary to the way that the Internet was designed to work, and as the examples of blocking in the article demonstrate, it seems to confuse who is providing value to who in this specific instance. I take issue with the big platforms co-opting the open Internet, but penalizing them for showing links off their sites to news organizations seems to be the exact wrong thing to do about it.

Political leaders need better tech literacy like yesterday. Legislators not really understanding the fields they’re attempting to regulate is a problem that’s only going to get worse if trends continue.

Exactly this, very much a cut the noise to spite the face situation.

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