You may or may not have heard, about the EUCD, European Union Copyright Directive – or Article 13 as it is being referred to. Well, its a load of documents wrote by old people who think the internet is evil, and it seems at NO POINT have they spoken to anyone that actually makes bits of the internet to see if their ideas are a load of horse sh!t or not.
Well, im afraid it is mostly horse sh!t.
The bit of Article 13 that left me absolutely speechless was the part about the “Link Tax” and how the EU want to see social networks and other platforms pay a licence fee to publishers, for the privalige of showing a snippet of their work in the link preview that we’re all so used to seeing;
So lets look a little closer at this link preview melarkey…
A random article from the Daily Fail;
And if I go to post a link to this on Facebook;
Hmm, I dont see that title on the image of the Daily Fail… so where is it?
“But what is that code gobbledegook, Olly?” I hear you say?
It is the source code of the daily mail page, and the highlighted elements are the exact title Facebook used, and the title is specifically created and applied by the Daily Fail… themselves…
So wait, publishers have COMPLETE CONTROL over the content that social networks use in the link previews?
Pfft… surely not for smaller publishers, though… right?
Wrong.
Admittedly, this preview uses the post title, BUT;
This publisher has full control over the content used in link previews.
Which means the point of the link tax, is to STOP the social networks from using the specifically-written-for-social-media link preview content that the PUBLISHERS THEMSELVES CONTROL and place on their websites…
Am I the only person that finds this absolutely unbelievable?
I wish people would let the internet be the internet.
If it aint broke, dont fix it.
EDIT: Posted a link to Twitter, and Twitter uses the meta description, which I HAVE FULL CONTROL OVER!
