In sweden private newspapers are threatening to sue public service because they are to good at delivering written news online... It is truely a horrific society where people can learn about what is happening in the world without paying for it 😩
https://www.svt.se/kultur/tu-tidningsutgivarna-hotar-anmala-svt-till-eu-kommissionen
Nyhetshemsidor är verkligen sämst. Det sägs ju att på internet är det du som är produkten och ingenstans är det mer sant än på nyhetshemsidor. Reklam, tracking, tio sidor kakor att trycka sig igenom och sen efter allt det slå in i en betalvägg och inte kunna läsa ändå och sen efter den ändå vara spårad resten av livet.
@micke that's what happened in finland too: YLE was forced to change their online news so that it must always be accompanied with moving pictures.
the result seems to be that there are as much text articles as before, but they have unnecessary videos attached to them nowadays :|
@n8chz @micke yeah, the thing is that commercial media tried to curb the amount of freely available news reporting by YLE, but luckily that didn't happen in the end.
lots of the videos and interactive things they do nowadays are obviously there just for the new requirement, and the news wouldn't lose anything without them.
@Stoori @micke My main horror at it all is that they seem to be fishing for a precedent to the effect that a "public option" is necessarily at an unfair competitive advantage against private incumbents. Or is precedent not a thing outside the Anglosphere? Even if not, they seem to want the public image of the public sector to be the universal 800 lb (363 kg) gorilla that dominates everything it touches.
@n8chz @Stoori there has been discussions about this allready,and Swedish Public Radio (SR) has most cut down their text based news to about 3 sentences. Swedish Public Broadcasting (SVT) has allready put an anoying video on everything. SR textbased news used to be really good, so this discussion has allready had a negative effect.
@Stoori @micke well not unnecessary - for people learning Finnish language and some people may prefer watching listening instead reading. As a language learner I find it annoying that almost all news websites do not provide audio video report to their text articles as well. sverigesradio.se by the way gone opposite direction and stopped providing text articles and now publish only audio reports to their news category still very useful though but I had to switch to svt.se for text articles. and again I just do not like idea of watching whole news program I only want to watch or listen to report I specifically interested in not all of them. also had to switch from YLE for other reason because it got blocked in Russia unfortunately, I very like this website.
@micke same thing happened in Germany in 2011. The private press argued that the public media (ZDF, ARD, …) produced to much "text-focused content" in their online offers.
@micke That's not very free market of them.
@micke You do pay for it though.
@micke do they have a chance of winning?
@loveisgrief I don't know, but I don't trust the EU courts when it come to this kind of thing. I think it will have a negative effect even ifit doesn't go all the way to the court.
@micke@camp.smolnet.org
As a German I'll spoiler you about their strategy:
They will probably trick the lawmaker into passing a so-called three-step test and a so-called depublication requirement.
I hope your civil rights organisations will meet sane judges who show the private press their middle-fingers.
@darolia I don't know of any Swedish law that would dictate the length of online news text for public service, so I think this is for EU courts to decide. The private landlords did a similar thing ten years ago where they forced housing owned by municipalities to have as expensive rents as privately owned flats by going to the EU court.
@micke@camp.smolnet.org
Well, no offense but I only described our own situation to help to prevent it at least in Sweden.
@Sandra det var när MUF höll på och töntade sig tillsammans med Fotografiska om att det var dåligt med gratis inträde på museer...
@micke Similar problems here in Germany. Public Broadcasters are forced to delete material to reduce competition.
In the same vain the national weather service was no longer allowed to make weather predictions, only weather warnings (which then ballooned 🤡 ). Nowadays they at least have some basic services back. And they are now allowed to share data freely. Both destructions of public goods were to artificially prop up a commercial market.
I would say: Democracy first. Market second.
@micke I just e-mailed the newspapers that are members in TU and told them that I will cancel my subscription with them if the lawsuit moves forward. I subscribed to support journalism, but I'm not supporting suppression of public service.
@micke älskar dock att det där nog är bland de längsta artiklar jag läst på svt