Search Results for: c–18

The Salvaged Bill C–18 Is a Compromise That Sucks for Everyone ⇥ michaelgeist.ca

Michael Geist, responding to the news that Google and the Canadian government have struck a deal for the Online News Act:

I’ve been asked several times today if the Canadian approach will be a model for other countries. While I suspect that many may be tempted by the prospect of new money for media, the Canadian experience will more likely be a cautionary tale of how government and industry ignored the obvious risks of its legislative approach and was ultimately left desperate for a deal to salvage something for a sector that is enormously important to a free and open democracy.

For how critical journalism is, it is myopic to keep pushing its business model from one unsustainable option to another. At least Canadian publications will not be losing Google referral traffic, but this seems like a bad compromise for everyone.

This CBC Article About the Online News Act Is a Real Stinker

Today, Meta announced it is beginning the process of ending Canadians’ access to news publications as a consequence of Bill C–18, now known as the Online News Act. This is an entirely predictable consequence of the Act, which requires big tech companies like Google and Meta to decide between having an unpredictable bill for all their news links, or having a fixed cost of zero dollars. In the fullness of time, we will find out if fewer Canadians are using their services because they cannot use them for news coverage, but it seems to me like a safe gamble on the part of Meta and, soon, Google.1

When I tried finding third-party coverage of this announcement, I turned to Google — DuckDuckGo’s news results are filled with articles syndicated at MSN and Yahoo — and had a hard time finding a non-wire report from a Canadian publication. Many were either from Canadian Press or Reuters. Happily, CBC News’ Darren Major filed an original report, but it did not take me long to find problems with both the reporting and the subjects it profiled:

Social media giant Meta says it has officially begun ending news availability on its platforms in Canada starting Tuesday.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has been signalling the move was coming after the government passed its Online News Act, Bill C-18, in June.

Those “signals” include the company stating outright that “news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada”, which is not so much a nod as it is a direct confirmation. The news here, as it were, is that Meta followed through on things it said repeatedly.

The law requires big tech giants like Google and Meta to pay media outlets for news content they share or otherwise repurpose on their platforms.

This is not accurate. It requires operators of large social media businesses and search engines to pay for news links either shared by users or which publishers have permitted to be indexed. The tech company does not meaningfully share links itself. This is more fuzzy around links found through search engines, but publishers have control over whether they want their articles to be included in results.

Major’s introduction to this story is not great. Perhaps even more objectionable material can be found in quotations from various elected officials. For example:

Newly appointed Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said Meta has refused to participate in the regulatory process.

“This is irresponsible,” she said in a statement. “They would rather block their users from accessing good quality and local news instead of paying their fair share to news organizations.”

This legislation demands preposteriously that publications are owed some kind of “fair share” of revenue from referral sources, but nothing about that reflects how the web works. This feels like the “Mad Men” clip where Don tells Peggy “that is what the money is for”, except it is links.2

The Canadian media landscape sucks. The online ad marketplace sucks. I concede that publications regularly post links to their own work on social media and permit search engines to index their websites out of an expectation that we will find them there, and that it is currently hard to know the true value of these third party referrals to the revenue streams of publishers. But this legislation is a bad way to address that imbalance, and the dichotomy St-Onge presents is wrong. Canadians are not being blocked from accessing news, and there is no “fair share” to be had.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre put the responsibility squarely at the feet of the Liberal government.

“It’s like Nineteen Eighty-Four,” he said. “Who would ever have imagined that in Canada the federal government would pass laws banning people from effectively seeing the news?”

Predictably, Poilievre is just plain wrong. Even the most charitable reading of this statement — one which moves the word “effectively” to between “would” and “pass” — is a ludicrous bad faith reading of this Act and it is embarrassing that political rivals use this sort of language instead of trying to navigate the nuances of a particular topic.

Martin Champoux, heritage critic for the Bloc Québécois, accused Meta of trying to intimidate parliament into rescinding the law.

“This deplorable decision serves no one. In fact, the big losers are the users who will be deprived of their news on social networks,” Champoux said in a statement in French.

It is no secret that Meta has been arguing against the Online News Act since it was first proposed. But what is missing from this criticism is that Meta has actually been making good points all along, and the law is very bad. I am obviously no fan of Meta’s and I trust policymakers more than seemingly most people in the technology commentary space, but even I can acknowledge this Act is poor and these are reasonable concerns:

“In order to provide clarity to the millions of Canadians and businesses who use our platforms, we are announcing today that we have begun the process of ending news availability permanently in Canada,” Rachel Curran, Meta’s head of public policy in Canada, said in a statement.

[…]

“In the future, we hope the Canadian government will recognize the value we already provide the news industry and consider a policy response that upholds the principles of a free and open internet,” Curran said in her statement.

This is completely fair. As Casey Newton wrote earlier this year, there are plenty of other ways the government can support Canadian media without resorting to a link tax.3 But they decided to go after a fundamental component of the web in a way that will, as the Liberal Party acknowledges, create a precedent:

St-Onge said the government will continue to “stand its ground” and suggested other countries are considering drafting similar legislation.

This is a dangerous piece of legislation — one which the government has dug in its heels for and pushed through despite protests from open web activists and major corporations alike. You do not have to be a fan of Google or Meta to recognize how flawed it is. You only need to see the obvious conclusion that requiring sources of web traffic to pay up is going to make them less likely to play that role.

  1. This is entirely unrelated to the topic at hand, but I think it is fascinating how successful the “Meta” brand has become compared to, say, Google’s attempt to introduce Alphabet. To be fair, the commitment to the “Alphabet” branding is pretty weak; the Meta website is more than just a landing page for investors. But something I noticed last week is how Meta still uses “Facebook” branding on its quarterly earnings statements (PDF). Place your bets now on whether “X” takes off. I think everyone except the Elon Musk fanbase will keep calling it Twitter, and keep calling posts “tweets”. ↥︎

  2. It is truly unfortunate that crappy Instagram gurus of business and men’s advice take “Mad Men” literally. ↥︎

  3. A paid link, unfortunately, but I believe you know where to find a workaround. ↥︎

Canadian Officials ‘Must Call Google’s and Facebook’s Bluff on News’ ⇥ latimes.com

Brian Merchant, of the Los Angeles Times, with a different take on the Bill C–18 fallout:

California and Canada must absolutely not give in to the tech giants’ tantrum. This is a bluff, and not a particularly convincing one. For the sake of the beleaguered news industries in both places (yes, including this media outlet), the Canadian and Californian governments must absolutely call it.

For assurance, we should look to Australia, where a like-minded bill went into law in 2021, even after Google and Facebook made the same exact threats. Facebook did initially restrict access to news, but the ploy lasted barely a week before it backfired wildly, and Facebook agreed to comply, albeit after extracting some concessions.

Merchant makes a compelling case, but it does not sway me. For one, the proliferation of similar bills around the world will cause Meta and Google to dig in more. For another, it is still a link tax — it still means a fundamental component of the web is subject to fees and bureaucracy even this government- and regulation-loving writer cannot agree with.

Canadian Media Is Looking Bleak ⇥ niemanlab.org

Casey Newton, in a paid issue of Platformer which I was able to access freely via a link in yesterday’s Tabs:

I have suggested before some of the alternate ways in which lawmakers could choose to address declining revenue for news publishers: tax the platforms’ ad revenue; fund public media; or offer tax incentives to small and medium-sized publishers, who have been hit hardest by the transition to digital media.

Unfortunately, those proposals lack the emotional satisfaction that comes with kicking an unloved tech giant in the teeth. And so instead we have this: a tax on displaying links, the kind of thing that if extended to the rest of the web could effectively break the internet.

And it would be one thing if we knew for certain that this law, no matter how ill conceived or harmful to the web, would actually offer sustainable funding for journalism. But neither Australia’s law nor Canada’s requires that a majority of the money given from publishers to platforms goes to support actual journalism. (Canada’s law requires only that “an appropriate portion of the compensation will be used by the news businesses to support the production of local, regional and national news content,” whatever “appropriate” might mean.)

Newton’s ideas for keeping media aloft, in the first quoted paragraph, sound alright to me. Unfortunately, they are not the things being attempted in Canada. Years before Bill C–18 — the Online News Act — was passed earlier this month, tax incentives have been provided to consumers who purchase Canadian news subscriptions, and another incentive for print media organizations. So, how are they working?

Sarah Scire, of Nieman Lab, reporting on a new paper (PDF) by Issie Lapowsky and Jason White of the University of North Carolina:

One finding that stood out to the research fellows was just how big of an impact the 25% labor tax credit has had in small Canadian newsrooms. The publisher of The Tyee in Vancouver, British Columbia, told Lapowsky that the news org expects to receive $200,000 in credits, or roughly 10% of the publication’s overall budget. Similarly, the CEO of Canada’s Village Media — which operates local news sites across Ontario — told the researchers, “It’s impossible to say that it has not made a significant positive impact on us.”

The digital subscription tax credit, meanwhile? As Nieman Lab reported last year, it’s been a bit of a bust. The researchers blamed a few factors, including a gap between point of sale and reimbursement for the new consumer, the size of the benefit (a paltry 15% of the subscription price), and the fact the credit only applies to written news, excluding audio- and video-based news publishers.

The Tyee and Village Media both meet the criteria established by the Canadian government for these incentives, but the qualifying process was controversial when it was introduced. From the paper (still a PDF):

The package quickly came to be referred to as a “bailout” for legacy newspapers, including major publishers like Torstar and Postmedia, the latter of which is majority-owned by the New Jersey hedge fund Chatham Asset Management. Critics pointed to a meeting between “press barons,” including Postmedia’s CEO Paul Godfrey, as evidence that incumbent players, responsible for so many journalism layoffs, were using the policies to enshrine the power of legacy newspapers to the detriment of smaller upstarts. News Media Canada, a top industry trade association, was also represented on the panel that drafted criteria for [Qualified Canadian Journalism Organizations].

Torstar was acquired in 2020 by NordStar Capital, claiming in a news release the new owners would “ensure a future for world-class journalists and world-class journalism”. Then, yesterday, news broke that NordStar and Postmedia were talking about merging.

Josh Rubin, Toronto Star:

In a press release issued Tuesday afternoon, NordStar described a potential deal that would see NordStar and Postmedia each having a 50 per cent voting stake in an as-yet unnamed company which would control most of the combined assets of both companies.

As the bigger Canadian media conglomerates are slowly merging — seemingly into a single company — it is increasingly important to support local and independent publications. Where I live, there are plenty of list-makers and wire service republisher, but there is a dearth of local reporting.

Update: NordStar and Postmedia might be calling it off.

After Royal Assent of Bill C–18, Meta Reaffirms It Will End News Sharing in Canada ⇥ thestar.com

Raisa Patel, Toronto Star:

Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, is making good on its threat to block news sharing on both platforms across Canada in response to Ottawa’s online news bill, which became law late Thursday.

“Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act (Bill C-18) taking effect,” a blog post from the web giant notes.

As with what happened in Australia, Meta is negotiating. Whether this change will be permanent after C–18 is enforced is worth watching, but it is impressive how much media coverage the company has been able to get by announcing the same thing every couple of months.

Meta’s Position on Bill C–18 ⇥ about.fb.com

Meta says Nick Clegg — its president of global affairs and the former Deputy Prime Minister of the U.K. — would have spoken before a Canadian committee in response to Bill C–18, but:

Late on Thursday, the committee notified Meta that the title of the hearing had changed to ‘Tech Giants’ Current and Ongoing Use of Intimidation and Subversion Tactics to Evade Regulation in Canada and Across the World’. Clearly, it would be a very different hearing to the one Nick Clegg was invited to. As such, we have notified the committee that he will no longer be appearing. Meta representatives in Canada will attend the hearing.

Amazing. I appreciate the pointed title change.

In lieu of Clegg’s appearance, Meta published his full prepared remarks. They are roughly what you would expect, but I think this is worth quoting:

I spent 20 years of my life as a legislator, so I understand how difficult it is to craft good policy and sensible legislation. In this instance, I believe C-18 is flawed legislation which would deliver bad economic policy too. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that most of the funds generated by the Act will go to broadcasters, not the local and regional publishers it was supposed to support. It’s Robin Hood in reverse. The Act would subsidize big broadcasters at the expense of independent publishers and digital news sites, skewing the playing field so it’s even harder for smaller players.

Should this link tax pass, Clegg reiterated Meta would prevent links to news articles from being posted on Facebook and Instagram.

Canada Breaks the Internet ⇥ theglobeandmail.com

Justin Ling, the Globe and Mail:

Individually, all these ideas are bad. Taken together, they’re worse.

Mr. Trudeau’s plans amount to a Rube Goldberg machine, shaking down Silicon Valley companies for cash while subjecting them to a gauntlet of Ottawa-based Star Chambers every time the platform’s users act badly. In trying to Canadianize the internet, it will destroy what makes it incredible: Its neutrality, its supranationality, its chaos.

Much as I agree with the premise, it is Ling’s conclusion that leaves me feeling hollow — that the two opposition parties should collaborate and vote against legislation like Bill C–18. Those three parties are the Conservatives, the Bloc Québécois, and the NDP. While members of the former overwhelmingly voted in opposition to C–18, the very concept of a link tax on media is part of their party platform. As for the latter two, they have more-or-less voted in agreement with the Liberal party.

These policies should absolutely be opposed. However, it is necessary for the Liberal party itself to recognize how damaging they will be to the open web and Canadians alike. We need principled internet policy which stands for an open web, and rejects attempts to compromise that. Canadian political parties may differ in the details, but they are aligned in internet outcomes.

Link Taxes Like Canada’s Bill C–18 Represent an End to an Open Web ⇥ techdirt.com

Mike Masnick, Techdirt:

These “big tech pays news” schemes break this fundamental idea. They announce that some companies, these big companies who apparently no one likes, must suddenly pay to link. And sure, you can easily state (1) these big companies can afford it, and (2) no one likes them any way, so maybe you think that’s good. But nothing good comes from breaking the fundamental principles of the open web.

Once you break this concept of the freedom to link, you’re flinging open Pandora’s box to all sorts of mischief. Once industries learn that the government has no problem stepping in and forcing companies to pay for links, does anyone really believe it will stop at news organizations? Of course it won’t. Then the whole internet just becomes a food fight for lobbyists to argue with politicians over which industries they can force to subsidize other industries.

It’s pure unadulterated crony capitalism at its worst. Those with the best connections get to have the government force those with weaker connections to subsidize their own failures to innovate and compete.

Regardless of what merits anyone sees in a link tax for companies like Google and Meta, this is the only argument which truly matters. It is the best explanation for why any site must be permitted to link to another without cost or penalty.

These two companies — which Masnick insists on calling “tech companies”, even though they are “advertising companies” in this context — take a disproportionate share of digital ad spending through, allegedly, no small amount of collusion. It is very difficult, almost impossible, to advertise on the web without giving money to Google. Even if media sites actively crave traffic from Google’s search engine and news aggregator by employing search optimization experts, for example, the resulting ad views will also benefit Google. Even if a Canadian company wants to advertise to a Canadian customer, there is little getting around paying a U.S.-based company something like 30% of the cost of the ad. This is not just the story of legacy systems failing to adapt to a new reality; it is the story of incumbents being crowded out at scale.

Even so, this is a bad bill and sets a terrible precedent. The issues above are at least partly addressable through enforcement of competition laws, not by putting a fee on links. The Canadian government is making it even worse through, as Michael Geist puts it, a “fishing expedition” in the communications of these platforms. This needs to stop.

Update: Marc Edge, Canadian Dimension:

The irony, noted The Line, was that the Heritage Committee was demanding by month’s end to see documents from Google and Facebook which, if journalists sought them in an Access to Information request to Ottawa, “would take years to get such a request fulfilled, and half if it would come back redacted.” It concluded that the politicians had things backwards. “The government is subject to this kind of transparency and disclosure because the government works for us. Not the other way around.”

Ignore the headline on this article — which I think takes the concerns a few steps too far — but do focus on what is written here. It is shameful.

Bill C–18, After Facebook and Google ⇥ ricochet.media

Andrea Houston, Ricochet:

Then there’s the question of what would happen down the road if Google and Facebook were no longer profitable? [Senator Paula] Simons told Ricochet that when she raised that question with staff in the Heritage ministry, she was told they “would turn to TikTok.”

“I said, ‘Wait a minute! TikTok doesn’t share news links,’” Simons recalled. “And staff said, ‘TikTok shares news stories in other ways. It talks about the news.’ I said, ‘Woah, wait a minute! That’s a fair-use argument.’…Then the official said to me, ‘Lots of Canadians get their news from TikTok.’”

Ominous.

Google Tests Removing News Results in Canada in Response to Bill C–18 ⇥ michaelgeist.ca

Marie Woolf, the Globe and Mail:

Google is testing ways of blocking Canadians’ access to news websites in response to the federal government’s online news bill, which would force the company and other tech giants to compensate news organizations for using their work.

The restricted access to global and Canadian news sites, which began earlier this month, will continue for five weeks, according to Google spokesman Shay Purdy.

To be more specific, it is not the case that Google is “blocking Canadians’ access” to news sites, only that it is not linking to news results for a small ratio of Canadian users.

Michael Geist:

The report that Google is conducting a national test that removes links to Canadian news sites for a small percentage of users sparked a predictable reaction as politicians who were warned that Bill C-18 could lead to this, now want to know how it could happen. None of this week’s developments should come as a surprise. Bill C-18 presents Google and Facebook with a choice: pay hundreds of millions of dollars primarily to Canadian broadcasters for links to news articles or stop linking. Both companies are doing precisely what they said they would do, namely considering stopping linking (Google conducted the same tests in Australia several years ago). Indeed, strip away the hyperbole and the bottom line is this: the costs of Bill C-18 are enormous (the government’s Senate representative suggesting the bill could result in revenues to cover 35% of news expenditures of every news outlet in Canada) and the revenues from news for the platforms are not (Facebook says news only constitutes 3 percent of posts and Google does not even run ads on its Google News product). As some have noted, the government says the companies are stealing content if they link and blocking content if they don’t.

I am apprehensive about bills which require companies like Facebook and Google to pay media outlets for linking to their stories; I disagree with the overall concept and Bill C–18, specifically. But I think it is disingenuous to call out Google’s similar experiment in Australia without acknowledging it ultimately agreed to the government’s terms. Also, while Google may not run ads on Google News, it has disproportionate and possibly illegal control over the advertising on any of the websites it links to.

This link tax scheme seems like a bad idea that will further enrich Canada’s media monopolists. Smaller publications will not benefit. Yet, I get the justification behind these policies from places like Canada, Australia, and countries in Europe: the online advertising market consolidated around a handful of American companies who pivoted to targeting the specific individual viewing a given page. It does not matter if that page is on a local news site or some blog on the other side of the world because it is possible for advertisers to reach the same reader, and for a dramatically lower cost. Advertisers seem happy and big ad companies profit handsomely, but it comes at the expense of smaller publishers. And if one of those ad companies has been tilting the global online ad market in its favour, it changes the calculation for how much we should credit it for linking to so many third-party news sites.