The Australian government did actually back down on some of its requirements. Only after the concessions were added did Facebook reinstate news on the platform.
Canada has taken a harder stance and judging by this article no compromise will be happening anytime soon.
This new house hippo is "woke"
The original house hippo is "not woke" (It appears exempt from "woke", because the new hippo is not just "woke" but "super woke")
Using Bill Maher's supplied definition, it follows that the remake is now promoting "race as the first and foremost thing people should always see everywhere" [compare the original and remake to confirm this]
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I'm not a fan of votes being so public either. It almost seems tailored for potential harassment down the line. But it also seems hiding the "more" button on kbin only kicks the can down the road if this is a natural part of federating instances. The problem just comes back once a single instance makes the information available.
Without a change to the protocol, I think we're stuck with education. Maximize the awareness from users that votes behave differently here, and are entirely public.
People have moved from reddit expecting a 1:1 copy of the features, and for the most part it delivers. The comment system has all of the friendliness of upvoting, but if you click the arrows you're stuck committing to more of a retweet. This has the potential to really bite potential users who reuse their account name everywhere, and those that use their real name online.
People getting started should learn about this as soon as possible and really consider how it will affect them. Do they really want to engage with the NSFW content, or maybe a new username is in order?
It would be horrible if users were to arrive with the wrong impression, have a negative experience and regret showing up at all.
Weird Al Yankovic also had some wisdom to share on this topic:
This cheese 'round the clock / is getting me blocked
When you place all that journalistic work in the hands of a corporation to control and manipulate .... it is a real danger to democracy. Google, Meta and any other corporation should never be allowed to exercise any kind of control, manipulation or effect to any of the work that journalists produce and share
It could be said that this happened years ago in Canada. Much of what is considered under this bill as Canadian journalism is largely owned by non-Canadian entities.
For example, Postmedia, who publishes the de-facto daily newspaper for many of the larger Canadian cities, is 66% owned by one american hedge fund. The papers have a Canadian presence, but their brand and ownership are much like a modern Tim Hortons, all Canadian trappings but profits that leave the country for an international investment firm.
So, at best, even if the bill redistributes some profits from tech-bros to their umbrella of qualifying Canadian news outlets, two-thirds of any amount paid would still return to the control of stakeholders in the United States anyway.
