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United States News Technology

Over 200 Papers Quietly Sue Big Tech (axios.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Newspapers all over the country have been quietly filing antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook for the past year, alleging the two firms monopolized the digital ad market for revenue that would otherwise go to local news. From a report: What started as a small-town effort to take a stand against Big Tech has turned into a national movement, with over 200 newspapers involved across dozens of states. "The intellectual framework for this developed over the last 3-4 years," said Doug Reynolds, managing partner of HD Media, a holding company that owns several West Virginia newspapers, including the Charleston Gazette-Mail. Reynolds, along with a group of lawyers, filed the first newspaper lawsuit of this kind in January in West Virginia. As a part of the first lawsuit, Reynolds worked with a coalition of lawyers that has agreed to represent newspapers all over the country looking to file similar lawsuits. The lawyers include experts in antitrust litigation and lawyers with a personal interest in newspapers from Farrell and Fuller, Fitzsimmons Law Firm, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP and Herman Jones LLP.
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Over 200 Papers Quietly Sue Big Tech More

Over 200 Papers Quietly Sue Big Tech

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  • Dead Media Sues New Media (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2021 @12:10PM (#62055785)

    It's all about the Benjamins.

    Maybe horses can collectively sue auto and farm equipment manufacturers for putting them out of work?

    • Re:Dead Media Sues New Media (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2021 @12:24PM (#62055825)

      It is, however these sites use to be Content Distributors vs Content Creators.

      The new Media doesn't give a rats ass about what is happening in the local, they offer buzz worthy local news, but no real detail news, because they only care about getting the links and ad revenue in. When a news worthy event happens they don't give you a link to the actual story from the paid journalist who put it up. The problem is that they are Data aggregating the work from old Media, to create the new Media stories.

      If the news papers die, then we are not going to get much in terms of local news. We will not know why our road from home was blocked off, or if our small town has a boil water adversary.

      • Re:Dead Media Sues New Media (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2021 @12:29PM (#62055845)

        Yes and adults now have the attention spans of 2 year olds. You used to be able to read a newspaper and actually learn something. Sure, there were ads but you could browse around them. In New Media, the ads interrupt you almost constantly.

        I also don't trust anybody who calls themselves a journalist that started in the 21st century. So much of the news is shallow drivel and if printed news wants to survive it actually needs to start reporting and seeking the truths, not just regurgitating sound bites and political propaganda.

        • You don't actually read printed news, do you.

        • Prior to going online, I'd read a newspaper every morning. It's been more than 20 years since I last held a paper.

          Newspapers used to be funded by classified and display ads. Craigslist offered far better terms and reach which destroyed classified revenues. Display ads were disrupted by Google's adwords. Google's adwords also told advertiser which ads worked and which didn't meaning advertisers could spend more effectively.

          The bottom line was newspapers were unable to compete so they've turned to lawsuits

      • We will not know why our road from home was blocked off, or if our small town has a boil water adversary.

        I get information like that from nextdoor.com. Either posted there directly by the city government or posted by a neighbor.

        The local paper is worthless for emergency information.

      • boil water adversary.

        That sounds like an interesting adversary. Kind of like Heat Wave.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by sabri ( 584428 )

        It is, however these sites use to be Content Distributors vs Content Creators.

        No, it is about the slow, dying past, vs the future.

        "News"papers are losing subscribes and ad revenue because their readers are sick and tired with reading propaganda. "Journalists" these days are not reporting news, they are creating news and embedding it with their own opinions.

        My last newspaper subscription ended a few months ago because I, too, was sick and tired of being fed propaganda and paying for it.

        Digital news and media is the future. The "papers" were/are too slow to adapt. They lost.

        Wha

      • AFAIK, Google doesn't report news, they simply republish &/or link to newspapers' news. In fact, most of the national news depends on local newspapers. Without actual journalists, at the local level, going around investigating events & writing reports about them, there wouldn't be any news in the first place, just re-iterating official sources, opinions & posturing. Useful, substantial journalism with integrity has been the first casualty in this conflict.
    • In 1994, I talked to the management of our major city newspaper. Our environmental activist group was trying to ask them to use less old growth forest for their newspaper. We also helpfully pointed out that there was this world wide web (www) thing and they should move to it instead of paper, because that's the way things were going. They scoffed.

      I'll say no more.
    • Dude, do you seriously want to live in a world with only 3 news sources run by only one political ideology. If you don't perceive if YouTube as a monopoly, please b describe what you would say that about. Even YouTube 's lawyers admit that there is only one like them. When Rumble sued them, YouTube' s lawyers made a motion in court to dismiss the case. In that motion, the claimed that Rumble "only thought that they competed"... with YouTube.

    • It's all about the Benjamins.

      Maybe horses can collectively sue auto and farm equipment manufacturers for putting them out of work?

      And as this story develops, we won't be seeing the newspapers' side of it because it will be paywalled.

  • duopoly (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2021 @12:12PM (#62055791) Homepage Journal

    Journalists have way more education in speaking and writing English than I do. So I'm willing to concede that I don't know what I'm talking about. But it's my understanding that mono means one, and duo means two. Are these papers seriously arguing there is a monopoly and suing two different companies?

    • Journalists have way more education in speaking and writing English than I do

      Really? You seem quite literate. That's well in advance of most journalism I've seen. Where are you getting your news?

      • Re:duopoly (Score:4, Insightful)

        by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2021 @12:38PM (#62055893)

        Where are you getting your news?

        I don't know that I really want to be informed on every single little last thing that grabs clicks across the planet. While it may be an ignorant approach, I really only want to know about things that will directly affect me. As such, I have been keeping off news sites, and unfollowed the news-centric twitter and Facebook profiles, and I couldn't be happier. I really realized I do not care what Elon named his child, how hard it was for Adelle to deal with body issues, or if EmRata is upset that she wore lingerie and became sexualized. I. Just. Don't. Care.

        There are things I do care about that will affect me. Because I am in the tech field, I read this: Slashdot. I also follow certain groups for things I care about.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bjwest ( 14070 )

          Where are you getting your news?

          I don't know that I really want to be informed on every single little last thing that grabs clicks across the planet. While it may be an ignorant approach, I really only want to know about things that will directly affect me. As such, I have been keeping off news sites, and unfollowed the news-centric twitter and Facebook profiles, and I couldn't be happier. I really realized I do not care what Elon named his child, how hard it was for Adelle to deal with body issues, or if EmRata is upset that she wore lingerie and became sexualized. I. Just. Don't. Care. There are things I do care about that will affect me. Because I am in the tech field, I read this: Slashdot. I also follow certain groups for things I care about.

          The entirety of news networks have turned into a mirror of the National Enquirer.

      • I think I can fake it well, I'm more of a reader than a writer. I failed American Lit and English classes. After that I managed to get my high school principal to agree to let me take electronics at a nearby vocational school instead of retaking English. He was fine with the idea as long as the total credits were enough to graduate. Once I got into college, well I don't know why my parents were so worried, the engineering students didn't have to write papers. We only had to solve math problems and do labs (

    • Communication is about what the reader understands, not what the writer says. If the reader got the right impression, the right words were used.

      Plus, "monopolized" may apply to a group. Journalists have this tool called a "dictionary" that tells them what words mean:
      monopolize /mnäplz/ verb
      past tense: monopolized; past participle: monopolized
      * (of an organization or group) obtain exclusive possession or control of (a trade, commodity, or service). "they instituted press censorship and monopolized the

      • A quick search found this article: Digital Ad Spending - 2020 [cnbc.com], which says that Google's share of the digital ad market is 28.9%, FB's share is 25.2%, Amazon's share is 10%,
        and the top ten control 75.9%.

        That doesn't seem monopolistic. Anyone wanting to run ads has plenty of choices.

    • Because many readers would be confused by the phrase duopoly. They're not being sloppy it's the exact opposite. When you're trying to communicate you meet people where they're at.

    • It's Antitrust law. Antitrust law has a long history of cases, is confusing, contradictory, and hard to understand.

      Being a monopoly isn't illegal (there have been plenty of examples of legal monopolies), violating antitrust law is illegal, and there are lots of unexpected ways to do it.

      • If, for example, Facebook and Google had a back channel to agree to a pricing model for ads. That would be an antitrust violation (and unethical).

        I think a lot of legal stuff is needlessly convoluted. They should probably go back to using Latin because the English the attorneys use isn't the English that we all use.

        • I think a lot of legal stuff is needlessly convoluted.

          Indeed, it's almost as if lawyers were making the law for their own benefit.

      • Anti-trust 'laws' shouldn't even be called that. You don't know ahead of time if your behavior is going to be labelled 'monopolistic' because it's decided on an 'I will know it when I see it,' case-by-case basis. The 'law' just codifies and justifies the schadenfreude-inducing thrills people get denouncing out-groups - like those evil fat-cat rich folks who are deliberately affronting us all by providing us with cheap internet search and to-your-door delivery services!
    • Yes, in fact, multiple companies can create a monopoly -- if they work in collusion to create the "mono" you refer to.

  • If I was a local paper and wanted to sue someone for a drop in ad revenue, I would sue Craigslist. The nerve of those guys just giving ads away (mostly).

    OK, outside of Craigslist, the real reason newspapers have a loss of revenue is the fact that they fired all their reporters and just ran AP articles as a way to maximize profits. Now you can find almost all of those AP articles online, so there is no need for the local newspapers.

    So there you go, don't offer anything anyone needs, don't make money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Burdell ( 228580 )

      And they fired their editors and journalists, maybe contracting some "gig worker" bloggers to cover the local stuff, so speeling and grammer went so bad its hard to read a local stories.

    • Maybe - But now that's facebook marketplace... Craigslist/offerup.whatever other online classified have all gotten destroyed - I can rarely find what I'm looking for there. Facebook marketplace on the otherhand? Boatloads of stuff I buy off there now (I tried to avoid facebook like the plague for the longest time, but for classifieds I had to break down this past year... marketplace is really the only decent option)

      • Craigslist/offerup.whatever other online classified have all gotten destroyed

        I found this claim shocking, so I checked. Turns out it's false.

  • Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet... (Score:3)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Tuesday December 07, 2021 @12:36PM (#62055875)
    I'm hunting tech firms.

    • I'm hunting tech firms.

      With undoubtedly the same level of success as Mr. Elmer Fudd. Unlike Australia, US courts tend to think winning in the marketplace is not the same thing as leveraging a monopoly unfairly. "Attracting eyeballs" is not a monopoly that is being leveraged unfairly into advertising revenue. Advertising is the core business of these companies. Attracting eyeballs is called doing their jobs, no illegal monopoly behavior required.

      Do I wish they weren't so good at it? Yes. Do I think society would be better of

  • Board walkers (people walking with ads on board) are suing newspapers for stealing their revenue.

    And runners and criers have been suing the board walkers for doing away with advertisements as direct verbal messages.

    When will this end?

  • [Exec 1] Here's the plan. Let's get rid of all the professional investigative local journalism that airs the dirty laundry of business, government, and any other groups that are behaving badly. Instead, we'll just have random unpaid schmucks publish whatever the hell is on their mind with no regard for verifiability or even basic decency. Since we don't have to pay journalists to write articles, we can keep all that advertising money for ourselves. On top of that, we'll track the bejesus out of these poor

  • See how so and so got savaged on social media for their views and you wont believe what happened next.

  • When a on line site is aggressive and annoying in their advertisement or paywall,

    function try_again()
    {
    read -p "domain: " url
    echo -e "${url} \t127.0.0.1" >> /etc/hosts
    echo "Issue SOLVED"
    }
    try_again

  • I cannot sell any horse buggies because Ford is selling cars to people.

  • I'd think that the simple service of putting 'old media' content in front of literally millions more eyeballs than it would have had before was worth it, I mean they can show their own ads if they like. Sure not everyone clicks through, but a whole lot more than would have before do, thanks to google.

  • Google Print Ads now available to AdWords advertisers (2007) [googleblog.com]

    Google kills Print Ads program (2009) [hollywoodreporter.com]

    Turning the page on Print Ads (2009) [blogspot.com]

    This was actually a solved problem, before Google turned evil. No anti-trust lawsuit (or prior pain) required. Greed is the first word that comes to mind. This stuff just seems to have inspired Facebook to try harder, to earn what profits remained.

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