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fat_salmon t1_j0objnu wrote

Therefore, are Redditors link thieves? The publishers could, in fact, simply block all incoming traffic from social media and/or Google, but they prefer to have their cake and eat it too.

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EvaUnit_03 t1_j0ogfdr wrote

Remember when they kept asking us about how we wouldn't dl/pirate a car and everyone unanimously said yes we would because the things are too expensive? This is the same thing. They want more money and its just gonna kick them in the teeth because they'll get less ad revenue hits and people just won't be getting flooded by every pointless flare attention grabbing article unless you just can't live without it. They tried it in Australia and it lasted 2 days. In two days they lost so much ad revenue vs subscribers not signing up that they quickly undid the bill.

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DamienChazellesPiano t1_j0pdwuz wrote

I’m not Australia so I don’t know the details of how this went down. You say “they quickly undid the bill”. Who did? The news sites? How does that make sense? The government did because the news sites weren’t making money? How does that make any sense? Clarify what you mean, because your comment sounds illogical.

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EvaUnit_03 t1_j0priaa wrote

Yes, the news sites recanted on the legitimacy of the bill. On other words the way the bill worked was it was based around reporting it and the social media companies would be fined and made to pay the news outlets. Once they saw their revenue stream dip harshly in those two days due to extremely low traffic on their sites due to social media sites blocking the ability to post links to those said news outlets within the code. The results were most news sites apologized and basically said something along the line of social media plays a key part of sharing information with the news outlets to the people. The major outlets made a formal apology and said they wouldn't report any social media sites. Of course those sites got written confirmation of this 'unification' because it became a sort of partnership between social media sites and news outlets thus making it legal. The bill was later dissolved by parliament.

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darkingz t1_j0w7viv wrote

Honestly, it’s probably even stronger argument on Reddit because there’s routine posting of the article text or the archive version that lets people bypass the paywall.

The bigger core problem is that people don’t want to pay for information or “easily consumable”. But journalists need money to live too. So, it’s always a cat and mouse game with this. Just enough so that media can survive with their budgets or more but people don’t want to pay for money or increasing installing adblockers. Then revenue drops so the newspapers / media can’t invest in better journalists and get more clickbaity to get people to get to their site and people view it as less worth paying for. It’s a bad cycle.

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