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Comment by fwlr | Hacker News Reader

If you analyze news as a product, it’s entirely reasonable for Facebook to refuse a price they don’t think is worth it. If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”, as it was taught to me in school - then it does start to look unreasonable. The Canadian government is simply equivocating between these two analyses as it suits them (one could ask, if access to news is so important, whether it’s irresponsible and unreasonable for a government to try to charge a fee for it).

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Even if you think newspapers are vital to democracy, that doesn't oblige other businesses to sell newspapers. These newspapers own their own distribution mechanisms (websites) that are unaffected by the decision of one third party website to part ways with them.

Okay, but facebook is really ubiquitous so that makes it different... How is this any different from... the one grocery store in town removing their newspaper rack? It's the one grocery store, everybody in town shops there so that makes it super important or something. But the newspapers are still free to mail their newspaper to everybody's front door. They still have their websites too, anybody who wants to read those newspapers can still do so.

It is, however, an interesting hypothetical to ask: if journalism itself is entirely unprofitable, such that all the newspaper companies eventually shut down, and private journalism stops being done — then what should we, as a public, do to retain our duty to be informed? Can there be such a thing as "non-partisan state-sponsored media"?

> if journalism itself is entirely unprofitable, such that all the newspaper companies eventually shut down

CBC and many other are backed by tax money. Some (many) Canadians think that we overspend on CBC and other media subsidies.

> Can there be such a thing as "non-partisan state-sponsored media"?

It supposed to be CBC. Some (many) believe it fails its goal.

> Can there be such a thing as "non-partisan state-sponsored media"?

You can add enough layers of indirection and semi-elected committees and cultural expectations to make it mostly non-partisan (Think the process for awarding government-funded research grants)[1], but a government devoted to turning it into a partisan organ can, with enough effort, eventually corrupt any such system.

That's why you need to push back, and punish governments that are trying to shift cultural expectations that prevent weaponization of various public institutions.

[1] The incentives for corrupting this are far greater for media than they are for science, so I can't expect it will work well in practice. PBS, NPR, CBC, BBC are always a political football for this reason.

If there were any enforceable duty to be informed. People would be buy newspaper subscriptions already to keep them running.

> If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”,

I don't get it - in this analysis would my local coffee shop have to buy and provide free newspapers to me?

I'm all for access to free press being a fundamental right. Where you lose me is the part where a private corporation is supposed to subsidize the production of news for me.

Between 1949 and 1987, US private companies were forced to pay for and produce high quality news content under guidelines set by the federal government.

One of the conditions of ABC, CBS and NBC being given access to the airwaves was that they had to produce and distribute high quality news broadcasts. News was considered a public good.

From wikipedia:

The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited as a contributing factor in the rising level of party polarization in the United States.

This is because the technology of the time severely limited the number of available channels. You’ve enumerated only three, but there weren’t many more than that. Clearly there are more than three points of view, so these laws helped balance things out until the technology for more channels arrived.

“The technology of that time severely limited the number of available channels (broadcast channels being six megahertz wide due to severe interference etc)” is actually very comparable to “the market forces of our time severely limits the number of available distributors (network effects mean everyone is on Facebook and Twitter)”. To a government this is genuinely a strong argument for fairness doctrines.

I personally don’t think the Canadian laws are like fairness doctrines, to me they are more like rent-seeking on valuable Canadian eyeballs, but if the Canadian government does see their laws as something like fairness doctrines, they have a pretty good case for it!

Canada is a pretty small market. Google and Meta have come in and (perhaps unintentionally) destroyed the tiny Canadian news media sector.

I don't think it unreasonable that these companies, (largest on earth), pay a tiny fraction of a percentage of their Canadian revenue to help support that sector.

Without our own news media, we are particularly vulnerable to the toxic influence of American right wing media, billionaire funded astro-turf media and any other foreign entity that wishes to push their agenda.

There's this understanding of rights that implies that the government/some other entity has to provide everyone willing with the object of the right. Usually applied to healthcare, education and sometimes dwelling, errors out on right to bear arms.

Even still, typically that looks like - if you run a hospital you have to treat everyone who comes in. It does not usually mean you as a private citizen are required to run a hospital if you dont want to. You are still allowed to shutdown your hospital.

> errors out on right to bear arms.

Lol, in canada that is definitely not a right you have.

Which is funny, as Canadians inherited it from the UK and squandered it just like their ancestor.

Meta is not your local coffee shop.

But your local coffee shop probably does have a newspaper rack, so why is Facebook removing theirs such a big deal? Grab a newspaper the next time you get coffee. I don't use any meta property at all and it hasn't impeded my ability to read the news.

It might be worthwhile to point out which bits of an analogy you take objection with when trying to refute an analogy. Meta is not my local coffee shop, but for the sake of the argument it might be fine to interchange them. If it's not fine to compare them as such, pointing out what aspects you think break the comparison is helpful, since it lets others in the discussion try to come up with a better argument/analogy and elevate the discussion overall.

What is the relavent distinction?

Size + market share.

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