Meta's decision to block news links in Canada this month has had almost no impact on Canadians' usage of Facebook, data from independent tracking firms indicated on Tuesday, as the company faces scorching criticism from the Canadian government over the move.
I think the headline mischaracterizes the intent of the ban. It didn’t fail to dent Facebook usage. The ban succeeded, showing no reduction in Facebook traffic despite reducing access to content.
It wasn’t a ban. It was a tax designed to funnel money into the media companies that own our politicians.
It failed spectacularly because it shows that Canadians don’t visit Facebook for news coverage, and that Meta was 100% correct to not pay for access to content that its users don’t care about.
I agree that the tax was designed to funnel money into the media oligopoly to which our politicians are beholden.
But like the headline, you are conflating the tax with the ban. They aren’t two sides of the same coin, the ban (or maybe more accurately boycott) is a reaction to the tax.
Was it a tax? I thought the law simply required third parties to actually pay for reproducing the work of news outlets? Basically paying for paid work, rather than just stealing it?
You’re right I was duped by Google.
It was a ban on Meta’s side. Of course, not with an intent to dent their own user’s usage. That part does not logically follow.
The headline (and probably the article) was written by machine, is all. That has been standard practice in the news business for many years now. Just another machine-generated hallucination that we have come to know and love.
Reuters bad headline fails to dent click-through ratio