Technology

Just a FYI, Canadian news agencies wanted social platforms like Facebook to pay for linking to their news articles.

The argument from Canadian news agencies was that by social platforms sharing links on their social platforms, social platforms were directly increasing their sites user traffic and benefiting with increased ad revenue. News agencies argued this decreased their own ad revenue by decrease site traffic.

Most people know a link directs a individual to the original site of the content. Since Facebook and other social sites did not want to pay a link fee they simply had chosen to remove links to Canadian news sites (as requested)

By removing links to these sites on social platforms like Facebook, news agencies decreased their surface area of exposure. Thus news agencies decreased the amount of individuals being directed to their site and news articles.

Simply put, Canadian news agencies wanted their cake and eat it too.

Now search engine like Google search for example were exempt from this mandate because they only link to the article or external site. The irony in this is real.

Obviously sites like Facebook "condensing a news article automatically" and presenting it on their own site, without a user needing to navigate away from Facebook as a example is a different issue and a valid point.

Though please be aware, generally when a link shows up on Facebook and gets formatted with a picture and a paragraph underneath it. This feature is controlled directly by the external sites integration with Facebook or social platform, and they can choose how much of the link is condensed or shown.

Also please note, some of the "Canadian news agencies" that were lobbying for this to pass are actually USA owned, and masquerading as Canadian.