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RE: Link Tax & The Slow Death of Small Businesses...
Why are you shilling for Facebook and Google? They don't need your help, they can lobby for themselves. It's not a tax and it doesn't ban links. Snippets are a sneaky way to copy an image from the original article, without paying the photographer or the publisher.
You are aware that these types of platforms that allow snippits, do so automatically -- because it's built into their code base -- right? The end user has zero control over whether or not a snippit will appear once they post a link.
If these centralized platforms want to tax what is automatically appearing because of something built into the code (the user has zero control over) then they need to make a code change so that images don't appear by default or they at least allow the end user to choose whether or not the image appears.
Otherwise it's the death of these platforms if this garbage comes to pass and is enforced.
You are so right @miklkent, I keep forgetting about the IT aspect. If the authorities have a problem with previews they should just ask those platforms to switch the preview function off. The internet would become uglier, but the problem would be solved. Of course if they do that, they remove their opportunity to charge us taxes, so that's not gonna happen.
I'm afraid lots of small businesses will die before those large platforms do.
OK, targeting the end user isn't the most elegant method, but you still have the choice whether or not you use platforms that create snippets.
It's not targeting the end user (maybe I'm misunderstanding you.) From a programming standpoint, I just know from a programming stand point, making this optional is possible. And I think it would be wrong to force people to be subjected to it after the fact. The people have no control over it.
As you said, you can choose at that point to not use the platform that creates it. But it's just a crappy choice in my opinion. It's crappy to be put in that position in other words.