How did the federal government and Meta get into a deadlock over the Online News Act?
Tensions between Ottawa and tech giants escalated further Wednesday over Canada’s recently passed Online News Act.
Also known as Bill C-18, the new law requires tech giants to pay media outlets for content they share or otherwise reuse on their platforms, drawing the ire of Google and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
Here’s how the situation got to this point.
What happened Wednesday?
Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez announced that the federal government will stop advertising on Facebook and Instagram after Meta pledged to block Canadian news content on its platforms in response to the legislation.
Rodriguez slammed Meta for refusing to negotiate with the federal government, calling the company’s decision “unreasonable” and “irresponsible”. He said Ottawa spends about $10 million annually on advertising on its platforms, which will be reinvested in other ad campaigns.
Earlier in the day, news and telecommunications company Quebecor Inc. also stated that it would immediately remove ads from Meta’s platforms, saying “any attempt by Meta to circumvent Canadian law, block news from its users, or discriminate against Canadian media content on its platforms, by its algorithms or otherwise, could not be tolerated.”
Following Rodriguez’s announcement, Quebec Premier François Legault tweeted that the province is suspending Facebook and Instagram ads until Meta resumes talks about implementing the bill.
“No company is above the law,” Legault tweeted in French.
Why didn’t Google get the same treatment?
Google has also pledged to block Canadian news when the bill takes effect in six months, saying last week that Bill C-18 “remains unworkable” and that the government “has given us no reason to believe that the regulatory process in will be able to solve structural problems with legislation.”
In February, Google Canada conducted a five-week test in which it restricted access to news content for about four percent of its Canadian users.
But Rodriguez said the government remains in talks with the company and believes its concerns will be allayed by upcoming regulations if the bill is implemented.
Why are the companies objecting to the law?
Ottawa has said the law creates a level playing field between online advertising giants and the shrinking news industry.
But at a Senate Judiciary hearing in May, representatives for Meta claimed that news is a small part of its business. The company said users clicked more than 1.9 billion times on publisher links through Facebook feeds in the past year, which the company estimates is worth $230 million.
“It’s the publishers who benefit from being on our platforms, not the other way around,” Rachel Curran, Meta Canada’s chief public policy officer, told the committee. She said that posts linking to news articles make up less than three percent of what people see in their Facebook feeds, and that more than 90 percent of views of news publishers’ articles on links are posted by the publishers themselves.
“We lose no revenue, or very little revenue, if news content is replaced by something else,” she said.
Google’s president of global affairs, Kent Walker, said the legislation would require “two companies to pay for simply displaying links to news, something everyone else does for free.”
“The unprecedented decision to put a price on links (a so-called “link tax”) creates uncertainty for our products and exposes us to unlimited financial liability simply because we facilitate Canadians’ access to news from Canadian publishers,” said he said in an online post on June 29, adding, “we’re disappointed it’s come to this.”
“We already pay to support Canadian journalism through our programs and partnerships – and we’ve made it clear that we’re willing to do more.”
Can I get my news from Facebook or Instagram today?
Most users should still be able to access Canadian news links and account pages for now.
Meta did not provide details on the exact timeline for the move to block news for Canadian users, but said it will do so before the Online News Act takes effect in half a year.
But a small number of Canadian users may have already noticed a change in recent weeks. That’s because Meta, like Google, launched a temporary test last month, blocking news for up to five percent of its 24 million Canadian users on Facebook and Instagram.
Some users have reported seeing a post on Canadian news pages stating “people in Canada can’t see this comment”, citing “Canadian government law”.
Has there been another outage?
While it will be another six months before the regulations are resolved, the law’s ripple effects have already begun.
For example, Meta announced last week that it would terminate contracts with several Canadian media outlets, including six Quebec dailies that are part of a coalition called Coopérative nationale de l’information indépendante.
It also ended an agreement with The Canadian Press in which the digital giant supported the hiring of a limited number of up-and-coming journalists with the national news service.
Bill C-18 was also at the center of Bell Canada’s stated rationale last month when it announced it would cut 1,300 positions, including six percent of its media arm. Robert Malcolmson, Bell’s chief legal and regulatory officer, blamed the job losses on a challenging government policy and regulatory environment, raising specific concerns about the Online News Act, as well as Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act.
Malcolmson, who called Bill C-18 a “great piece of legislation,” said in an interview that it came too late and warned that it would be ineffective if Google and Meta followed up on their threats to block Canadian news links.
“We still won’t be able to monetize our news content because Meta is just going to shut it down,” he told The Canadian Press. “Public policymakers need to think about how to deal with this. Let’s kind of dictate to the global technology platforms Canada or are we saying, ‘No, we have to do something?’”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on July 5, 2023.
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Meta funds a limited number of grants that support emerging journalists at The Canadian Press.
