Canada has been left out of a recent expansion of Google’s artificial intelligence-powered chatbot known as Bard as the big tech giant continues its fight with the federal government over the Online News Act.

  • JshKlsn
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    1 year ago

    I switched to duck duck go a year ago and honestly I get my news quicker and more reliably from Lemmy, TikTok, and previously Reddit.

    It’s actually scary how much I see from 50 different angles on TikTok before any news outlet even covers it, if even. Saw a stabbing in Toronto from multiple angles a few HOURS before I even seen an article about it.

    I know Lemmy hates TikTok, but can’t deny it’s great for being up to date ASAP when it comes to news. At least for right now.

    • Hakaku@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      DDG which uses Bing to power its results will also have to comply by the same law or drop Canadian news results if they don’t want to negotiate and pay.

      • JshKlsn
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        1 year ago

        Right. Which isn’t DDG wrongdoing. I’m not going to give DDG a strike for being caught in the crossfire.

        I’m already only using the basic necessities from Microsoft because they are a shit company, just like the rest lol.

        But we will also see what Microsoft does. They may comply and make Google look even more childish.

          • Hakaku@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            The bill itself doesn’t name any specific company. It has a clause saying that the CRTC will publish and maintain a list of “digital news intermediaries” to which the contents of the bill apply. The official list isn’t yet available.

        • Hakaku@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          The official list of digital news intermediaries hasn’t yet been published by the CRTC. Although Alphabet and Meta have been in the news, it’s very likely Microsoft will also be impacted and by proxy all services that use Bing (including Yahoo and DDG).

          • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Microsoft doesn’t have a dominant market position in anything news-related, though. Why would they get targeted?

            • Hakaku@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Why wouldn’t they? Microsoft operates the largest search engine used in Canada after Google, owns LinkedIn which is one of the top 10 social media platforms with a heavy news aggregation focus like Facebook, provides a default news aggregation feed pre-installed on all Windows computers, etc.

              By the wording of the bill, there’s no reason they can’t be labeled as having a “prominent market position” or “a strategic advantage over news businesses”. And this applies especially so if Alphabet and Meta recuse themselves from the Canadian news market.

              If the spirit of the bill is to get money from big corporations to support Canadian news organizations, then there’s no reason not to target Microsoft. And the fact that MS has already been consulted on the bill and released a statement about it strongly suggests they’ll be on the list.

              • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                Bing has like 5% market share lol

                And LinkedIn? The amount of link volume coming out of LinkedIn is negligible.

                Microsoft’s core businesses are Windows, Office, and Azure. They might be “big tech” but they’re not “big ad tech”.