To the folks getting worked up about link taxing and proposing the solution of news paywalling themselves,

I'll speak for the like-minded side since I know I'm not alone in this. We were advocating against link taxes when we had this debate a decade ago when news threatened the survival of the emerging platforms. Back then the platforms weren't oligo/monopolies and the market power balance was very different. Today Meta has a monopoly on social media and Google does on search. Those are the two most common activities taken online. And with that the market power is firmly within the hands of the platforms. More importantly they have also monopolized the online advertising business. News do not have the required market power to paywall themselves and survive, especially not in Canada. The platforms, through little fault of their own have managed to take the revenue streams and to a large extend the position as platforms from news media. It's how things shook out. Unfortunately this platform success is self-destructive and we think in need of correction. A financial correction that can ensure the viability of news, which will ensure that platforms can keep profiting from it without destroying it, along our democracy with it. If we end up overcorrecting and as a result the platforms face the risk of failing, we'll have another discussion over that.