Facebook has made the decision to stop allowing news articles to be posted on their platform in Canada, after they were told they would have to start paying them. The efforts to force Facebook to pay outlets is being driven by corporate media outlets who know that they will win no matter what happens. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Facebook has made the decision to stop allowing news articles to be posted on their platform in Canada after they were told that they would have to start paying. The efforts to force Facebook to pay outlets is being driven completely utterly by corporate media outlets who know they want to freeze out independent voices. This is all about big media putting a lot of money into this effort to try to freeze out, well, people like us. You know, make them disappear. Right?
Farron Cousins:: Exactly. And I hate when I see people online, you know, I spend too much time online, but they say, oh no, Facebook should be paying these organizations for sharing their story. And no. I mean actually most of these organizations, certainly they’d love the money, but they also agree that no, listen, we’re using this as an outlet. You know, we have ads on our site, we have all these things. So as long as it gets shared on the network, we’re gonna get our money. But if you take that platform away, we die. And they know, especially now that it’s happening in Canada, because they’ve passed this stupid law, that’s going to happen to independent media all across Canada.
Mike Papantonio: The boneheads in California are doing the same thing. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And that’s bad.
Mike Papantonio: They don’t, it’s like they don’t get it. They don’t even know that the person running this was completely tied to corporate media in California and they, it’s just right there. Corporate media is putting in all this money hoping that they can chill independent, independent sources where they’re the only vision, they’re the only message. And you, you know, then you have to watch stupid TV. You gotta watch cable TV to hear this inane nonsense about what’s going on in the world. This is all driven by corporate media. And I, for a progressive not to have enough sense to see that, see through that, well, I don’t know if it surprises me, but it bothers me.
Farron Cousins: Well see, because corporate media wins either way. If they agree to pay, then hey, great, corporate media gets more money. If they say, well, we’re not gonna pay and we’re gonna stop article sharing, corporate media wins because independent media dies because they live on social media. If people are not sharing their articles they don’t exist anymore. So it is, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It’s, they make it sound like it’s journal, it’s protecting journalism. It’s protecting profits for big corporations, that’s all it’s doing. And it’s a train wreck, to tell you the truth.
