Publishers in Canada urge regulator to prevent Meta from restricting news access
philaverse.substack.com
philaverse.substack.com
All of the media's coverage up here is disingenuously about tech overreach and not about how their lobbyists tried to double-dip on revenue (both demanding an estimated $329M/year[1] from tech companies, while also receiving the ad revenue from ++1.9B pageviews[2]).
The problem is there'll probably be some kind of settlement between the government, news companies, and tech. But while this drags on, the larger oligopoly of news outlets will come out alive, while smaller news outlets are really going to suffer financially.
If you want to read more about our government's recent brain-dead policies on technology you can look up:
C-11: A streaming services bill that mandates Canadian content on foreign streamers. Not horrible, but also a great way to have "This service is not available in your region." notices in your country.
DST: A "just because" global digital services tax of 3%, which will definitely be passed onto consumers, if not lead to service blockages in Canada.
C-18: ↑ This bill. Pretty much a shakedown by the government and media companies.
> This is coming from a registered liberal party member, who's socially liberal and is consistently confronted with the thought that I may actually be conservative.
[1] https://www.pbo-dpb.ca/en/publications/RP-2223-017-M--cost-e... [2] https://about.fb.com/news/2022/05/how-meta-supports-news-pro...
This isn't to say that multiparty democracies always function well, either. Belgium basically had no government (as in a party elected with a mandate to govern) for two years, from 2018 to 2020.
Unless you find yourself in a position of always being a victim, and are perpetually contrarian just for the sake of it, you’re not likely a conservative.
We don’t have a “conservative” party that targets slow, but calculated progress.
I don't know if this is MAD. I personally would start using facebook again if there were fewer news and misinformation.
If they blocked news in Europe as well that would be great. News and politics killed facebook and most social media. Politics are important for any society but they should not dominate every conversation platform as it currently does. Essentially, news have been transformed into a completed shitshow turning the internet into the new TV.
An example of this is where meta has basically "regionally suspended" some news accounts. Some Canadians (a/b testing) going to Instagram pages owned by a News Orgs see "sorry, blocked, bitch at the government." But the law doesn't say news orgs can't use social media unless Meta pays them.
It's not the first time Canada has seen this sort of bad behaviour from entitled companies. I've seen literally this overapplication strategy in other instances.
Perhaps the law should be tweaked. Perhaps it should not be. But this actively damages my view of Meta. maybe the fact they hate this so much is an indication the government is doing something right.
Maybe Canadians will be inspired to get their own news instead of consuming whatever viewpoint Meta deems acceptable (and yes I think actual domestic journalism is a better source than Meta).
Canadian Publishers: You have to pay us when you link to our content!
Meta: OK, we won't link to your content.
Canadian Publishers: No wait that's not what we meant...
Something does need to be done about this, this is something - whether it's the right something or not is debatable, but I find the idea that this is just smug news orgs getting their justified comeuppance silly.
Users have done that.
The definition of "news content" is quite broad [0]. It's likely that basically all content posted by a "news business" on social media would qualify. So I don't think it is an example of overapplication. If the government wanted to ensure that the news companies can continue posting on Meta social media sites, they shouldn't have gone for such an aggressive scope on every dimension.
[0] "content — in any format, including an audio or audiovisual format — that reports on, investigates or explains current issues or events of public interest"
The news organization's Instagram profile -- which contains a link to their website -- would almost certainly count as content to be paid for.
I mean, I'm sure Meta is motivated to pick an expansive reading of the bill in order to pressure the Canadian government, but what you describe doesn't sound inherently outside the bounds of "we want to avoid all activities that we're required to pay you for".
The news corps are the ones that are acting with nauseating entitlement.
Entitled to first post their links on someone else's platform to boost their reach, and then to make them pay for hosting it. Utter madness.
Well, Canada fucked around and found out.
Both sides angle to extract as much revenue as possible. That said, I don't think social media or any technology company is _obligated_ to carry news.
Advertisers and PII farmers basically use news channel posts to generate revenue, and often scrape critical parts of the article, or even just outright steal the contents in whole.
I’m not sure about the execution, but I do agree with the sentiment. Google and Facebook being allowed to steal your content just because they’re massive is a huge problem.
Ignoring how it even applies to pure links with no content ("click here"), a lot of the previews you see on Facebook are using special meta tags that're added to news articles for that purpose. If the news orgs think that using that content for a nice preview of their article is bad for them, they should stop deliberately providing it.
(I think the `og` meta tags are a better argument here than `robots.txt`, because the former is the news orgs actively helping their content get redisplayed, while the latter is Google they-would-argue saying "we're stealing this unless you tell us not to", which sounds far sketchier.)
The execution wasn’t right, but the idea of third parties being allowed to take your content just because of their size is bad.
I do have to say that I am growing more and more tired of completely tech illiterate laws being passed.
However, I don't think calling it an execution issue is quite right. The basic concept built into the law is that telling someone where to go to get the news is a thing you should have to pay to do. We can imagine a far more restrained law that just forbids or requires payment for scraping-and-redisplay of article text... but that'd genuinely be a different law with a different goal.
They are rightfully complaining that tech giants are now attempting to forcefully allow stealing content so long as you’re large enough.
It’s funny, because right now, you’re basically saying that Reddit is correct to forcefully take over subs that are locking down in protest of killing third party apps for the purpose of having better ability to spy on your activity and pump ads.
Same shit dude.
When a liberal government does it = bad
When a sub fights a corporate spy network = good
Funny how that works. Personally, I just enjoy not being a hypocrite.
I have no idea of where your reddit analogue is coming from.
Throwing in a bunch of random insults and statements about liberals and corporate spy networks doesn't make for an argument or a useful discussion. Stick to reddit or twitter if you want to go down that route.
Have you heard of robots.txt files? It pains me to read comments such as yours which display such colossal ignorance.
I'm sure glad the government is focusing on important issues like this while being dismissive of the housing crisis.
Simply beautifully put.
If you want to play nice with local companies, have it offset against income tax, so it's revenue neutral with respect to local broadcasters and billboards, but not for international companies that transfer price all their Canadian income elsewhere.
There's a simple experiment that would prove this:
Prohibit Meta from displaying any adverts on any screens in Canada. When they complain about loosing money, say; OK you can show the ads, but we're taxing you on that money/incone you said you were loosing.
The problem is that they don't want to impose a general tax, and imposing a tax on social media companies only looks suspiciously like a shakedown, so they made this rube goldberg machine to launder it.
It shouldn't be any technically different than affiliate marketing, but instead of a product being purchased, it's ads being viewed, and it triggers whenever someone shares a URL to one of the covered news agencies.
How, exactly, will that cause a reduction in competition in the market? I think it's GREAT that a cancer peddler like Meta is removing itself. Neat.
... I hate being on Meta's side, but the Canadian authorities have truly taken leave of their senses.
If a monopoly or a monopsony withdraw from a market in order to force a change to legislation they don't like, that feels like exactly the kind of thing that governments need to take a dim view of, or else risk becoming de facto puppets of the monop*y.
A company removing itself from the market creates room for competition.
FORCING Meta to provide links and also FORCING them to pay for the links they provide is absurd. They have every right to depart the market. And good riddance, too-- you shouldn't be getting your news from social media, anyway.
Not always.
Let's say, just for the sake of the argument, that people are lazy and social (so far so good), so much so that they spend all their free time on social media (that's the excessive part for the argument).
Don't allow links of category XYZ on social media? Well, now people won't be sharing them. Opportunity has ceased to exist.
You only get competition if there's a new social network that does allow XYZ. If the old social network is dominant, this may not be reasonable or effective — if FB pulls out of Canada, some other random university student can pull off what Zuckerberg did at university, but Canadabook still won't (except by luck) get the international cachet.
> And good riddance, too-- you shouldn't be getting your news from social media, anyway.
Yup, agreed.
Im fact, go further and get rid of FB and all the rest — I'd be happy for us to go back to e-mail and IRC (and I'm only 70% sure that's because I'm pining for my lost youth when everything was simple and I didn't have any important things to worry about).
That's not facebook's problem. If you want a platform where the government compels what content is provided, you should start lobbying for the government to create such a thing.
Seriously, do you GENUINELY want to live in a world where a government can compel entities to provide information then CHARGE them for that act at the behest of other private entities who directly profit from it?
Kinda neutral TBH. Governments set all kinds of rules, that's their job. Democracies somewhat align those rules with public interest, imperfectly and with partial overlap with the imperfections of the public interest alignment from free market capitalism.
Just because I can see edge cases doesn't mean I can tell what makes them systemically better or worse.
There's obviously some content the government should be involved with, like inciting violence. Usually that comes with a direct penalty to the government, in the form of a fine (the effectiveness of which is up for debate), not in the form of compelling speech AND paying a private org for the pleasure of doing it.
It's not justice, it's protectionism. Which is gross. Here in America we do similar shit, and it's just as gross here. We only have car dealerships at all due to protectionism, because it'd put them outta business if people could buy all the cars directly.
But Meta makes a lot of money from Canadians and their data, and they don’t want to lose that particular revenue stream. So they have suspended part of their offering to part of the people they serve in Canada because they don’t like a particular (flawed in one critical way, suboptimal in others) law. That’s anticompetitive behaviour, and it's the sort of thing that would get Canada's wireless companies slapped around when almost nothing else would (all three major wireless companies got slapped pretty hard when Rogers went down country-wide and 911 service was unavailable because of a lack of sharing agreements that should be the absolute norm).
Skimming that page, I think that so long as you've got a million dollars to invest in a business based in the US, and will employ 10+ people, you have a straight shot to full-on permanent residency. With other options available, depending on more complicated requirements.
Here's the discussion from 5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025233
What’s going on up there?
See Australia for another Commonwealth country that has been passing pretty dystopian laws around privacy and encryption.
That's a fancy way to say racist truckers throwing a weeks-long tantrum were made to pay for their actions.
Come now, really? Cooler heads[0,1] disagree with that assessment of the trucker protests.
[0]: https://www.thefp.com/p/what-the-truckers-want
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/stop-calling-truckers-racist-many-b...
...which were being handed out without due process. Everyone is afforded due process - murderers, rapists, and yes even racists.
We should also keep in mind that the majority of citizens were not in favour of such actions. If the Canadian public had widely supported such measures, then they would have been self-imposed, and just voluntarily happened. The governments wouldn't have had to resort to mandates and other forceful methods like they did.
Your list is woefully short.
Oppressors becoming oppressed?
A few out-of-touch boomer billionaire families who have the governance-as-a-service support package can put their thumb on the scale to create "consensus" around nonsense like this.
I hope Meta and Google never restores these news outlets. My feed has gotten significantly better already.