I don't disagree there are some instances of this in other areas, but in the case of links to news websites I don't think there's a meaningful argument against customers choosing which URL to visit as it relates to competition.

fb+google have monopoly on links discovery, customers can't open news URL unless visit google or fb and watch all their ads and give them data.

That's bad behaviour against users, not bad behaviour against newspapers.

For newspapers, datapoint would be to check how many users click on URL after reading title + citation at google or fb.

Huh? What does prevent Joe User from typing in https://www.nytimes.com?

The problem is with discoverability, i.e., knowing that you want to type "nytimes.com" instead of "theonion.com", or even "amazon.com".

Most people start at a search engine with keywords because that's how we've trained them for the past 25 years.

figuring out exact "nytimes.com" address without using google, unless he has all 100M web sites in his memory somehow.

Buy a newspaper - the URL is right up there in the masthead. Alternatively there is guessing the domain, which is how we found our stuff back in the day.

Fortunately, these days if you guess wrong, the browser will just open you results of Google search for the string you just typed in (what used to be) the address bar.

sure, you can even have friends, and exchange paper letters talking about news, but 95% people use google, and that's why it is called monopoly.

There are legitimate criticsms to be made about those practices, but which exact anti-competitive practices are employed by Google/Bing against newspapers, in particular?

I guess taking title + text snippets from original authors, and monetizing them without consent.

The question if it is anti-competitive is up to legislation, which looks like may change.

The title is almost certainly fair use, but I feel that if the newspaper wants to shoot itself in the head by not sharing the text snippet, search engines and Facebook should oblige them.

fair use or not it is up to legislation to decide.