princhester: jjorsett: That description of what happened sounds like being trapped on an escalator. Did people really lack the ability to find news in other venues when Facebook suddenly stopped supplying it?

I'm sure they could have, but the level of outcry was nonetheless high.

Having said that, the media outlets had a stake in whipping up anger at Facebook.  But there did seem to be real popular anger also.

Copying a point over from the other thread here, but the problem wasn't just that Facebook pulled links to newspapers people (including government) were relying on, they pulled official pages from government services and charities that had nothing to do with journalism as such.  So in their magnificent competence, they got rid of...

- most, but not all news sites
- several state health departments in the middle of pandemic lockdowns
- pages for a number of charities, including women's shelters
- the leader of a major state political party's official election campaign page, but not that of the leader of the other major state political party. (The election result was a record-breaking landslide, and this is unlikely to have moved the needle, but still, holy shiat you dickwits.)

And after all that, Facebook backed down, the law passed with minimal changes, but nobody appears to be enforcing it.

We don't need Facebook to stop linking to or start paying for news. We need it to die in a farking fire.  Then try, convict, and hang by the neck until dead any survivors from its board and C-level pour encourager les autres.