Journalists can work for free when tech people work for free.

Unfortunately for them, not publishing news will likely cost the giants less than the payments they'd have to make to keep the news.

News writers are in a supplicant position. They need the tech giants to disseminate their new way more than the tech giants need them.

By nature, it's a very asymmetrical relationship.

Didn't Canada try this in 2023?

> Online News Act (Bill C-18) in June 2023. The law was designed to make large digital platforms compensate Canadian news organizations when news content was made available through their services. It created a bargaining/arbitration framework rather than literally setting a per-link tax.

> So beginning in August 2023, Meta blocked news on both Facebook and Instagram in Canada. Canadians could no longer view or share links/content from Canadian or foreign news organizations on those platforms... As of 2026, the Canadian government still describes Meta as blocking news sharing on Facebook and Instagram

Pretty much the worst result for everyone. Newspapers get less traffic, can't use social media even if they wanted to. Inconvenience to users. Meta mostly unaffected, maybe some marginal loss in time spent on the platform.

These kinds of things eventually just face reality. Meta and Google know very well how much these things are worth to them in terms of marginal revenue or network value. And the answer is not what publishers want to hear.