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Meta's News Ban In Canada Remains As Online News Act Goes Into Effect (bbc.com) 147

Posted by BeauHD from the time-to-make-a-deal dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A bill that mandates tech giants pay news outlets for their content has come into effect in Canada amid an ongoing dispute with Facebook and Instagram owner Meta over the law. Some have hailed it as a game-changer that sets out a permanent framework that will see a steady drip of funds from wealthy tech companies to Canada's struggling journalism industry. But it has also been met with resistance by Google and Meta -- the only two companies big enough to be encompassed by the law. In response, over the summer, Meta blocked access to news on Facebook and Instagram for Canadians. Google looked set to follow, but after months of talks, the federal government was able to negotiate a deal with the search giant as the company has agreed to pay Canadian news outlets $75 million annually.

No such agreement appears to be on the horizon with Meta, which has called the law "fundamentally flawed." If Meta is refusing to budge, so is the government. "We will continue to push Meta, that makes billions of dollars in profits, even though it is refusing to invest in the journalistic rigor and stability of the media," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Friday. According to a study by the Media Ecosystem Observatory, the views of Canadian news on Facebook dropped 90% after the company blocked access to news on the platform. Local news outlets have been hit particularly hard.

"The loss of journalism on Meta platforms represents a significant decline in the resiliency of the Canadian media ecosystem," said Taylor Owen, a researcher at McGill and the co-author of the study. He believes it also hurts Meta's brand in the long run, pointing to the fact that the Canada's federal government, as well as that of British Columbia, other municipalities and a handful of large Canadian corporations, have all pulled their advertising off Facebook and Instagram in retaliation.
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Meta's News Ban In Canada Remains As Online News Act Goes Into Effect More

Meta's News Ban In Canada Remains As Online News Act Goes Into Effect

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  • Perfect result (Score:3)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @05:06PM (#64091723)

    Canada is far better off without Meta/Facebook spreading its 'news' that's more or less garbage mixed with right-wing propaganda than it would be if they ponied up for the tax.

    May this stalemate continue.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      this is about meta embedding abstracts and linking news from canadian mainstream media publishers, so that would be not meta's but genuine original canadian crafted "garbage mixed with right-wing propaganda" you are speaking of.

      in reality it's just about milking these two big companies. that this has been possible is a sign that canadian mainstream media has a very strong alignment with the government, the judiciary and the status quo. this can't be healthy either.

      but don't fret, canadian fellows, most main

    • Re:Perfect result (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @05:51PM (#64091823)

      He believes it also hurts Meta's brand in the long run, pointing to the fact that the Canada's federal government, as well as that of British Columbia, other municipalities .... have all pulled their advertising off Facebook and Instagram in retaliation.

      What the fucking fuck? If a government agency has some information that they want to get out to people why wouldn't they just post it to their official Facebook account, which can be seen by anyone and is .... you know .... free.

      Why are government agencies paying to "advertise" on Facebook and what the fuck are they advertising?

  • Maybe they should go to a news web site instead of a propaganda driven ad site.

    That they don't strongly suggests they didn't read the news on Facebook, either.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @05:20PM (#64091759)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The premise that profit is never deserved is some weird commie shit.

      • The premise that profit is never deserved is not weird communist s***, it's absolutely normal communist s***; the premise that profit is never deserved would be weird capitalist s***.

        • Got it, no one should profit and everyone should starve.
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • If no one person, or very small group of people, got to take all of the surplus out of the means of production and it was instead equally distributed amongst those that did the actual work then it is unlikely that anyone would starve; it is when someone, or a very small group of people, are allowed to amass stockpiles of surplus beyond what they need for a comfortable survival that they have the means and the implied permission to then use that excess as leverage in the exploitation of others to obtain even

    • more than they deserve AKA profit

      Username checks out...

    • Maybe try banning making profit by corporations in Canada, only allow break even and losing businesses. See if Canadians love putting their RRSP's in companies which are guaranteed not to make any profit. No international investors will invest in companies guaranteed by law not to make any profit. The only investors left will be the Canadian government, but where will they get the money if all corporate income tax becomes illegal (since corporate income is banned)? I guess only individual income tax, sales

  • Most of the people I know use the Facebook Purity Chrome extension that already removes all of the crap the algorithm tries to spew at us, and if we want to share some news (that is probably behind a paywall half the time anyway) we simply cut and paste the text that we found to be interesting and then add our own commentary below it. You don't need to be able to share links to news to share news , you just share the news and your take on it and if people you know want to know more they can Google it.

    • You and your friends in no way reflect mass usage. That extension has had half a million users globally over 15 years.

      • Then I guess I'm really good at prostalitizing the use of that extension to my immediate circle of friends; I rarely encounter anybody on Facebook that doesn't use it, or at least doesn't start using it shortly after meeting me.

  • Good For Meta! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @05:25PM (#64091773) Homepage
    Why should Meta be forced to pay failing news agencies, who can't produce on their own? Canadian news, as a whole, isn't worth $75 million, forget annually, so what is Google doing? The reality is Canadian news agencies have failed Canadians, and instead of blaming themselves, they're lashing out and using our weak, pathetic, subservant government to force other companies to foot the bill.
    • Google likely runs the adtech on their sites and will just pay them with that revenue.
      • Ya fair, but I still think the validation is silly, unless that's what the sites are generating, which honestly sounds very high!
        • I agree more with Meta's stance that it's bad policy and shouldn't be entertained at all. I was hoping Google would pull the plug on them too and hasten a repeal of the law. Google just threw the gov a lifeline to continue their absurd messaging that Facebook are the big bad monsters robbing news media.
          • 100%, but as was pointed out, it's possible that the $75 million is just the real ad revenue they're leveraging from the ad systems from Google. That seems very high to me, but it's possible, especially when you consider YouTube.

    • This comment is essentially an op-ed piece.

      • wtf did you think comments were?

      • Okay, sure, but like the comment on your reply already, that's what a comment is. The reality is, news agencies need Meta more than Meta needs Canadian news agencies.

        To be fair, Meta's argument is that there are no real bounds around the payments they might have to make, which is a sensible problem, no matter how valuable or rich you are. If you went to a car repair shop and the quote was: "How much ever much we work out later.", but the shop was able to dictate that amount, would you take your car there

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          The bill / law was written without any real consideration for its effects, and the government knows that. When Meta refused to allow news surrounding the forest fires in BC, the government was begging them to stop following C-18, but didn't repeal it, didn't change it, and didn't fix the problem that caused Meta to reasonably react the way they did.

          It was. It's just that Meta and Google refused to participate. They were extended offers to comment, and both decided that protesting would be the best option.

          • If I ask my 11-year-old why she should or shouldn't do X, the reason is irrelevant, unless it can be independently validated. When she hurt her ankle, and had to wear a large boot, and was told by the doctor to stay off her foot for a week, sure, don't clean your room. When her reason is: "I'm tired", but she just had a sugar loaded drink, cereal or food, then get off your butt, or take a nap then get off your butt.

            The media companies gave their own reason for demanding their rich pity friend give them

    • News just isn't very lucrative and when someone scrapes your headlines it goes from not lucrative to unprofitable. Society needs independent news more than it needs Zuck to scrape a few extra dollars of profit in his drive for world domination.

      But why... well society needs laws for it to work. Without laws there would be no facebook either. This is just another aspect of the system that allows facebook to exist.

      • If the headline is good, you'll click the post and go to the site, be that CBC, Toronto Star, or The Globe and Mail, to read the article. Facebook gave substantial optics for those companies to leverage, and Facebook isn't again paying, they just want a payment system in place that clearly sets up how much they owe, in an absolute fashion. Facebook went on the CBC to explain the issues, and instead of the government commenting and showing that Facebook was not playing ball, they refused to comment, which
  • Why the hell should Meta "invest in the journalistic rigor and stability of the media"? Maybe Meta profits off news publications by inserting them in their feeds, they ought to pay. And maybe these feeds drive extra traffic to the news sites, making it a symbiotic relationship with no payment needed. Whatever the truth, the media figure that Meta owes them. Meta disagrees, does not want to pay, and subsequently removed the news from their feeds. You really cannot have a fairer response than that.

    The loss of journalism on Meta platforms represents a significant decline in the resiliency of the Canadian media ecosystem

    So who need whom, exactly?

    • Canadian news is the one who profits from the exposure Meta gives them. It's why the news sites push their users to share stories on social media by including sharing buttons and meta tags.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Vrallis ( 33290 )

      I'm not on Meta's side here, but the news sites were getting free advertising and then asked to be *paid* to get that advertising. Can you imagine if a brand got *paid* to air a TV commercial rather than the other way around?

      Meta said no and pulled all that free advertising. Now the news outlets are left going "wait, that's not how we meant for this to go..."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lsllll ( 830002 )
        I think the argument a news agency (site) can make is that it's losing visitors and thus the ad revenue that comes with it. They're losing the visitors because FB scrapes their web site and posts the headline and a picture (from their web site) on FB. Most people just read the headline and move on, never having visited the news site (which every link on FB does exactly, linking to the page it scraped). Meanwhile FB collects ad money from the ads it shows in between the headlines it scraped.

        I'm not on

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

          They're losing the visitors because FB scrapes their web site and posts the headline and a picture (from their web site) on FB. Most people just read the headline and move on, never having visited the news site (which every link on FB does exactly, linking to the page it scraped). Meanwhile FB collects ad money from the ads it shows in between the headlines it scraped.

          This describes how the news works today. Replace FB in your comment with news outlet. They can grab any image and story and just re-report it as their own.

  • to build a paywall around themselves i don't care, less noise pollution on the internet so its a win win for everyone. besides most news nowadays is just copy & paste from some upstream news source anyway, if you ask me the news outlets that do this are just making themselves irrelevant

  • Social media should NOT be... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @05:36PM (#64091799)

    ... a news source
    News should be news, on its own, separate and ideally, not controlled by mega-corps

    • ... a news source
      News should be news, on its own, separate and ideally, not controlled by mega-corps

      I honestly don't miss the news on Facebook, 90% of the time it was people trying to get a rise out of their friends with something controversial. People sharing random photos is probably healthier.

      But that does create an issue where some people, if they don't get their news from social media, they won't get it period. So do you want them getting whatever comes out of the giant game of telephone or do you want them occasionally going to an actual news site?

      • To be honest they would be better off getting their news by having conversations while waiting for their coffee at Tim Hortons then getting it from social media; at least in the physical world the people that they talk to have to consider the possibility that they might get punched in the throat for saying something controversial for the sake of saying something controversial.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Someone has to gather the news, verify it, maybe explain it for those who aren't already experts, and then write it up in neutral language.

      Most people don't work for free.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lsllll ( 830002 )
        Have you seen the news page on Facebook? It's literally a headline and an image, both of which link directly to the web page they were both scraped from. In this manner, Facebook is no more than a curated (according to what they feel you'd be interested in) search engine. So, while you're right about someone having to gather the news, verify it, etc, this is nothing more than the Canadian government trying to strong-arm a corporation. I'm very anti-corporate to begin with, but this is one instance where

      • Someone has to gather the news, verify it, maybe explain it for those who aren't already experts, and then write it up in neutral language.

        Most people don't work for free.

        The mainstream news media fails hard on both of these points. Verification is for after publication, if at all. Verification is "I saw it on Twitter".

        I also cannot track the number of times a new article "explains" something that they clearly have no basic understanding of. I have rolled my eyes countless times knowing the "journalist" had a grade school understanding of what they are writing and it all came from Wikipedia.

  • It sounds to me like if people actually wanted the news they'd go to the local news sites, it sounds like they were forcing it front and center, and occasionally got attention so they said 'Proof! They want it! Facebook is profiting off of us!'.

    Except if that was true, people aren't fleeing facebook now to their local news sites since Facebook won't show it. The reality train is coming, many news broadcasts are pushing filth out, with a complete lack of integrity, and the people have spoken. If they cared

  • Local news outlets have been hit particularly hard.

    Is it really that difficult to go to the web site of your local paper to read the stories?

    • Unfortunately most of the local papers in Canada were purchased by a couple of extremely rich old white guys and their families and basically turned into a giant bundle of ads and reprints of content from other newspapers that they own; and most of it is pop culture, entertainment, and oh look what the rich people are buying now fluff pieces.

  • I was pretty skeptical at first, but Google semi-caved and will be paying $100M into a fund to support news outlets... that's a win. And Facebook doesn't let people share news to their feeds, which is also a win... greatly improves the FB experience.

    • Google did not semi-cave. The government did. The act requires payment for links to news sites, even if the news sites themselves post those links. So government caved and removed the link tax for Google, and google agreed to pay a set amount, to a fund, tied to inflation. This is what the act should have been, but is not. If link payments are enforced in the future, then Google will block all news.

  • Thanks heavens for small mercies.

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