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Ned Smith's avatar

1. “It's not the government's job to control the dissemination of news in a democracy. This is generally frowned upon in the western world and conjures up pictures of totalitarian regimes in Asia.”

In a democracy it’s a very good idea to have robust publicly funded news media that isn’t purely incentivized by profit for its survival. The BBC in the UK is a good example, and France’s news media is very socialized. The alternative is to let billionaire industrialists like Bezos and Murdoch write our news for us, which is far more reminiscent of those totalitarian regimes in Asia.

2. Nor is it the government's job to prop up failing business models in a capitalist society.

That depends on what we call a failing business model. Is the Police a failing business model? What about health care? Or the military? There are some areas of society where profit motives don’t provide the best outcomes. News media is such an essential pillar of democracy that it falls under that category to some extent. It’s also up to us what we do or don’t bail out. If an industry faces collapse, sometimes it’s better to bail it out than to let the market do its thing and cause even more damage. It’s usually the government’s fault for not regulating sufficiently to prevent the collapse in the first place.

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Ned Smith's avatar

You say several times that you don’t understand the government’s motivations / logic - “It's hard to understand the mental processes that went into the crafting of this bill”. But we know the Australian government did this exact same thing several years ago with great success. Google and Meta are basically monopolies, they’re powerful beyond comprehension, and they will thump their chest and make threats, but at the end of the day, their business model prevents them from following through on them. Australia showed how this works and I believe the UK and EU have drafted similar laws to Canada’s. I’m not sure why you didn’t mention that.

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