Facebook and Google will beg and plead for content. They must have it to survive. Yet they do not want to hire journalists and create news content. They take all the ad revenue that news media would take, they spread the "news", but they do not produce it. They are middlemen. Rent collectors. Middlemen who want to "self-regulate".
Yes they are platform providers for user generated content, which competes against traditional news media, and they take their cut by placing advertisements.
I don't see why they shouldn't have a right to earn money or should be obligated to hire journalists. That's like saying social media shouldn't be allowed to compete with traditional news media.
Technological change is about disruption and this is just disruption. To oppose it is to oppose technological progress in order to protect incumbents' market shares.
_To oppose it is to oppose technological progress in order to protect incumbents' market shares._
Sorry, that is not correct. That is one of many reasons to oppose technological change. Some technological change introduces undesirable side-effects, like pollution. Can we not oppose that change on the basis of its pollution?
People are trying to disrupt the automobile and trucking industries with autonomous vehicles. If they are in the habit of killing their drivers or pedestrians, can we not raise our hand and say, "Whoa, not so fast, let's make sure they're safe?"
There are many reasons why people might oppose a particular disruptor, it may be that as a side-effect of their opposition that the incumbent is favoured, but that isn't necessarily why they oppose the disruptor, and the disruptor doesn't get a pass on their concerns just because we bow to the almighty God Of Technological Progress.
>> That's like saying social media shouldn't be allowed to compete with traditional news media.
Social media companies could be allowed to compete with traditional news media, if they were obliged to abide by the same standards, principles and legal regulations that apply to traditional news media companies.
In most EU countries, any newspaper spreading the kind of garbage you see on Facebook could (and probably would) be called to a public hearing in parliament and risk being shut down, and further legal action, if it was proven that it was publishing stories without doing proper due diligence.
>In most EU countries, any newspaper spreading the kind of garbage you see on Facebook could (and probably would) be called to a public hearing in parliament and risk being shut down, and further legal action
Can you give some evidence for this? Because I see media in the EU lying through their teeth sometimes. We all know about the daily mail and its ilk, yet they've existed for many years as news organizations. I've not heard of these kinds of limitations you're talking about.
> Technological change is about disruption and this is just disruption. To oppose it is to oppose technological progress in order to protect incumbents' market shares.
Do I take it you are in favor of Sci-hub and against Elsevier's efforts to protect its market share?
After all, what could be a greater disruption than using zero-marginal cost data to do an end run around a publisher restricting access to journal articles?
I don't know what should be done about intellectual property. My first instinct is that it legal protections for intellectual property shouldn't exist.
