Online News Act, AI, Library of Babel
“There’s not gonna be news on Facebook and Instagram and maybe Google neither soon …” “Where did you get that?” “On CBC News. On Facebook.” “…” “It happened once in Australia but just for a few days.” “How can you delete news on Google? It’s a search engine …” As someone who is not much interested in news in general, I get most of my news from Facebook. Both Czech, Canadian, and international. Some news I get on Instagram, like the news on Iran. Googling news is already a bit advanced for me. This is what happened, in very simple terms: on June 22 this year, Canadian government passed the Online News Act which requires search engines and social media platforms to pay Canadian online news companies when they use their links. Meta (including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) didn’t like this and since yesterday (August 1, 2023), it started blocking all the news content, including online newspaper and broadcasts from abroad. They stated that it is actually the other way rou...