Meta Restricted News in Canada One Year Ago ⇥ mediaecosystemobservatory.com

The Media Ecosystem Observatory:

On August 1, 2023, in response to Bill C-18, Meta blocked Canadians from viewing, accessing, and sharing news article links on its platforms. Over the past 12 months, our team of researchers has closely monitored the effects of the ban particularly on Canadian news organizations and how Canadians engage with news and political content online. 

“Old News, New Reality: A Year of Meta’s News Ban in Canada” is the first data-informed analysis on what happened in Canada after Meta banned access to news on its platforms for Canadians. […]

I read the report; I was underwhelmed. Its authors provide no information about how news websites and apps have performed in the past year. Instead, they use the popularity of news outlets on social media as a proxy for their popularity generally and have found — unsurprisingly — that many Canadian publications have reduced or stopped using Meta platforms to promote their work. This decline was not offset by other social platforms. But this says nothing about how publications have fared in general.

Unfortunately, only publishers would be able to compare the use of their websites and apps today compared to a year ago. Every other source only provides an estimate. Semrush, for example, says it has a “unique panel of over 200 million” users and it ingests billions of data points each month to build a picture of actual browsing. Its ranking, which I have preserved in its current June 2024 state, indicates a 6.7% decline in traffic to the CBC’s website compared to June a year ago, a 6.2% decline for CTV News, a 4.2% decline for Global News, a 12.3% increase for City News, a 27.8% decline for the Star, and a 20.4% increase for the National Post. Among the hardest-hit publications were French language publications like Journal de Montreal and TVA Nouvelles. Some of these traffic losses are pretty large, but none are anywhere near the 43% decline in “online engagement” cited in this report.

I could not find a source for app popularity in Canada over time — or, at least, not one I could access.

To be sure, it would not surprise me to learn traffic had dropped for many publishers. But it is a mixed bag, with some indicating large increases in web visitors. The point I am trying to make is that we simply do not have a good picture of actual popularity, and this Observatory report is only confusing matters. Social media buzz is not always a good representation of actual readership, and it is frustrating that the only information we can glean is irrelevant.