I finally found the time to come back with the news, keep updated after 10 days of turbulence and my editor application has changed a bit since then. Here is the news of yesterday 11 March 2023. Meta will disable the news access for Canadians on Facebook or Instagram if Canada’s federal government makes the Online News Act into law. This reaction follows the move of Google who rolled out tests that block news content for some Canadian users last month.
Meta’s decision
According to The Canadian Press, Meta spokesperson Lisa Laventure stated the decision in an email on Saturday March 11, saying the bill would put the company in an untenable position. “A legislative framework that compels us to pay for links or content that we do not post, and which are not the reason the vast majority of people use our platforms, is neither sustainable nor workable”, she wrote.
Source: https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/03/11/blocking-news-facebook-instagram-canada/
What is Bill C-18 (Online News Act)?
This is an Act introduced in April last year, proposing a regime to regulate digital platforms that act as intermediaries in Canada’s news media ecosystem in order to enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news market. It lays out a bargaining framework, ensures fair compensation for news media and the sustainability of local news when the dominant digital news intermediaries make their news content available which generates economic gain. It seeks to support balanced negotiations between the businesses operating dominant digital news intermediaries and the businesses responsible for the news outlets producing this news content. If one party initiates it, a final offer arbitration process would be a last resort if they cannot reach negotiated agreements.
Sources:
https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-18?view=about https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/pl/charter-charte/c18_1.html
Giant techs’ response to the bill
In May 2022, Google expressed its concerns over the consequences of this bill. According to their statement, it could create a lower standard for journalism in Canada. It would benefit spammers and peddlers of misinformation. It would break the way search and the internet have always worked by requiring Google to pay news businesses, known as a “link tax”. Meanwhile, in reality, the publishers always try to index their pages on Google search results without any fee required and readers pay for their searching results by watching the ads. It would also give regulators unprecedented influence over news.
Source: https://blog.google/intl/en-ca/our-concerns-with-bill-c-18-the-online-news-act/
Last October 2022, Meta also shared their concerns regarding the Canadian Online News Act. Facebook (now Meta) underlined that they do not scrape content or links to news content. Meta argued that news content is not a draw for their users and not a significant source of revenue for their company. Furthermore, Facebook considers that posts with links to news articles make up less than 3% of what Facebook users see in the feed and Canadians want to see less news and political content. The company also raised before the Heritage Committee the following concerns about:
- the true division of value between platforms and publishers;
- the unintended consequence of payment for free marketing;
- the stifling of innovation; and
- the need for a broader list of witnesses.
Source: https://about.fb.com/news/2022/10/metas-concerns-with-canadas-online-news-act/
As a result, this new bill will change the landscape of news businesses in Canada. I’m not sure that it will be efficient since the publishers rely also on the search engines to make their news reach the audience. Moreover, some digital content creators are also afraid of the impacts of this bill which prevent their content reach other users outside Canada.
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