Are instances of fediverse platforms going to be affected by this law? Does it apply at all to the fediverse?
Bill C-18 is a ridiculous law that’s going to harm Canadian news outlets.
Why do you say that?
Canada’s new bill forces companies who shares a link to a Canadian news outlet to pay the outlet called a “link tax”. Google doesn’t want to pay the “link tax” so they got rid of every search result to Canadian news outlet in response. This effectively ensures nobody can see the news from Canadian news outlets through Google.
If you’re depending on Google or meta for news you’re doing it wrong.
My understanding is that Canadian news outlets are already suffering specifically because of Google. Wouldn’t keeping the status quo also be causing harm to these outlets?
Hedge funds are the problem - look who owns the owners of Canadian newspapers and you’ll see why newspapers are suffering. Shareholders want to see cash flow and if you can’t get it selling subscriptions and classifieds, or getting a bailout to not cut staff or close papers, then you convince your buddies to pass a law forcing some other rich company to give you some of their cash flow. Google and FB are the current evil-du-jour so they pin this one on them.
Google prob won’t remove news from other countries tho
Heck if they only remove Canadian news that Bill C-18 defines as “news” then most of us probably won’t even notice! One thing that doesn’t get discussed enough is the narrow definition of news within C-18. Most of my news won’t see a penny, because they’re just rando web sites even though most of them are seasoned investigative journalists who lost their jobs (see my previous post re: hedge funds).
