Based on my limited understanding after reading one article and listening to one talk show on public radio, the issue seems to be that the “tech giants” are displaying full (or nearly full) articles from news outlets without providing revenue to the content creator or links to the original article. If all news outlets disallowed full article replication through copywrite or other legal means, this whole thing would be over, but that’s hard to organize, so they ask the government to help.
To say that the tech giants are providing advertisements isn’t a fair representstill. They’re providing the whole product. The process of how we got here is outlined in Cory Doctrow’s “enshittification” essay. (I’d copy and paste the whole essay here just for irony’s sake, but I’m feeling lazy.
I’m not quite sure how to feel about this whole thing, especially when you consider that public libraries are doing the same thing.