Canada's "Online News Act" wants social media companies to pay for shared news content

[Jimmy2x]

Why it matters: The power, reach, and resources available to social media have made it a dominant force in the news and advertising industry since day one. Many traditional news organizations have made calls to level the playing field in hopes of stopping the cycle of ever-increasing budget cuts while increasing their legacy footprint. A recent bill passed by Canadian Parliament is looking to provide that support, but major social media companies have already made it clear that they aren't interested in cooperating.

Earlier this week, a bill proposed by the Canadian Government to limit social media's ability to rebroadcast Canadian-published news content received royal assent. The Online News Act, also known as C-18, proposes that social media giants Google and Meta are required to pay media outlets for any news content shared and repurposed on their respective social media platforms.

According to a press release from the Government of Canada, the act will close the growing gap between news organizations and large online media platforms, enhancing fairness and sustainability across the country's news industry. The bill claims to encourage voluntary commercial agreements between Google, Meta, and news organizations to "preserve the independence of the press" with minimal government involvement. Not surprisingly, Google and Meta aren't quite as excited about the decision.

WATCH: After Canada's senate voted to pass Bill C-18 on Thursday, social media companies are one step closer to having to pay Canadian media outlets for news content they share on their platforms.

Read more: https://t.co/vsVEEujlsg pic.twitter.com/IfagSsvs5v

– Globalnews.ca (@globalnews) June 23, 2023

Following the bill's passage, Meta confirmed that it plans to comply with the bill, but likely not in the way that Parliament intended. The company has instead stated that rather than establishing paid agreements, it plans to end news availability on Facebook and Instagram for its Canadian users.

The move is one that likely won't sit well with Canadian social media users. According to Lisa Laventure, head of communications for Meta in Canada, "...we have repeatedly shared that in order to comply with Bill C-18, which was passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada."

The bill will become law six months after receiving royal assent, the method by which a bill becomes a formally approved act of the legislature. While no timeline has been provided, Meta has confirmed that it will remove any local news from its platform prior to the act taking effect and being enforced.

Google is yet to make any official statement on the bill, though the company has also hinted that removing news links from its search engine and results is a possibility.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/99186-canada-online-news-act-wants-social-media-companies.html

 

[RudyBob]

Canada does not make the news. They pay people to report it and mostly from other sources that they are not paying

 

[WhiteLeaff]

This is the same as charging people for each time they talk about news they have read. Stupid act.

 

[3volv3d]

This is the same as charging people for each time they talk about news they have read. Stupid act.

I dunno, see, as I see it, anything with a canadian news logo on it is therefore their version of events, there workers retyping of words and articles, their stamp on it. Their work.

And as much as this is not their reason cause their reasoning is greed probably, they want their clicks


No longer can people copy and paste this stuff to their facebook page, to any other page / account of theirs to share with others, sure a link but no articles or videos for example.

This is brilliant. Because most video and pictures on the net are, found in many a location, many a server, and cluttering data centers storage space, with copies of stuff, which is available elsewhere. So yeah, if it means less space needed and less energy sucked up by a data center, which yes it wouldnt have much of an effect but if everyone had to tear down their plagarised copy and pasted BS, then yeah, less space needed for copy n paste bloat.

 

[Kashim]

Canada does not make the news. They pay people to report it and mostly from other sources that they are not paying

You have no clue what you're talking about, as usual. Just posting for the sake of posting. Apparently in America "freedom of speech" means you can take other people's work and re-post it on your social media site free of charge. Conveniently enough both social media giants listed are American companies, and they deserve to take other people's work for free. That's how capitalism works now.

This is the same as charging people for each time they talk about news they have read. Stupid act.

Posts like this give me a headache. Did you even read the article? A person posting something about news they've read is not the same as a giant mult-billion dollar social media company like Google or Facebook re-posting news that someone else worked on and paying nothing for it. By your logic Google and Facebook should be able to post all music and movies for free too without paying anything for it. News articles cost money to produce the same way music and movies do, it doesn't just magically appear out of thin air for everyone to grab a copy and do with it as they please.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

You have no clue what you're talking about, as usual. Just posting for the sake of posting. Apparently in America "freedom of speech" means you can take other people's work and re-post it on your social media site free of charge. Conveniently enough both social media giants listed are American companies, and they deserve to take other people's work for free. That's how capitalism works now.


Posts like this give me a headache. Did you even read the article? A person posting something about news they've read is not the same as a giant mult-billion dollar social media company like Google or Facebook re-posting news that someone else worked on and paying nothing for it. By your logic Google and Facebook should be able to post all music and movies for free too without paying anything for it. News articles cost money to produce the same way music and movies do, it doesn't just magically appear out of thin air for everyone to grab a copy and do with it as they please.

Facebook and Google don't post anything, both are virtual squares that index content. Places where people socialize and spread the word.

 

[RudyBob]

You have no clue what you're talking about, as usual. Just posting for the sake of posting. Apparently in America "freedom of speech" means you can take other people's work and re-post it on your social media site free of charge. Conveniently enough both social media giants listed are American companies, and they deserve to take other people's work for free. That's how capitalism works now.

Thank You Kashim. You are a gentleman and a scholar. See you down at the bistro and we will share a beer

 

[FF222]

Some people seem to be very confused about who is bringing the value in the news-aggregator ecosystem, and who is the parasitic entity that lives off the value produced by the other. They think hat social media sites or Google News "send" (and not just merely capture and redistribute) traffic to news sites, and that the latter should be thankful to that.

There's however a very simple test to determine who's bringing the value, and who's living off the value the other has created. Who's the host, and who's the parasite. Just ask yourself the question which site would still deliver value to users/readers/consumers, if the other entity was gone. Because obviously the one that creates the actual value would be able to continue to do so even in the absence of the other, but the one that just leeches off the other entity would not be able to deliver any value in the absence of the value-generating host.

So, would be Google News or Facebook, as a news source, still be useful or even usable (or could be even considered as a news source) if there would be no news sites that produce the news content? And would news sites still be able to provide value and news to readers, if there was no Google News or Facebook?

If you answer these two questions you'll know who creates the value and who's the parasite living off the value created by the other entity. You'll also know who should pay who.

 

[Puckmanoz]

They tried to do this in Australia as well. Just remember the news posts are links to articles that re-direct the user to the paper/ site.

 

[mrvco]

I nuked my Facebook, Instagram, etc. accounts nearly a decade ago now, but didn't Facebook already start deprecating 'news' in an attempt to reduce toxicity and get back to a more ugc-centric focus? I think it makes perfect sense for the 'social media' sites to remove 'news' content and let the 'news' sites get a better understanding of the value that social media brings to their business (if any).

Maybe a more ad-centric model would be better where the social media platforms are incentivized to have users click-thru to the source content, actual click-thru traffic is far easier to monetize than government-mandated 'negotiations' between social media platforms and news outlets. But I get it, the intent here is more about news platforms tapping a revenue stream that isn't solely dependent upon the quality and/or relevance of their own content and efforts to sell ads and/or subscriptions on their own platform.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

They tried to do this in Australia as well. Just remember the news posts are links to articles that re-direct the user to the paper/ site.

True, but nowadays they’re also distributed with a title and image sourced from the target page (which the target page advertises for clickability). But copyrights and hyperlinks have over 20 years of history of litigation—this is just a continuation of that.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Billionaires don't exist by playing fair....

 

[rmcrys]

- one thing is to compile small info (incomplete, just a title) and share the links, a win - win (win for the compilation website, win for the news website as they gather more readers) situation.

- the other is, the parasites like some private, small and giant corporations: they gather and share the info and put a link to the source BUT if I already read the news on Facebook, Google, whatever... will I click the source?! Of course not!

So, on the second situation, if I can read completely the news (extended or summarized), that website should pay a fee to the source because 99.9% of the readers won't go to the source, it's much more convenient to read a compilation from many websites than going to all of them...

Fun fact: most US- citizens think that it is fine for their companies to "gather" info or sell items online in Canada, Europe, etc but just pay taxes in the US (so win-win for their country); but as soon as the EU, Canada, etc makes them pay taxes locally "ohhh they are so bad boys, they don't know how to play....".... so... who doesn't know how to play fare? Think about it...

 

[VitalyT]

That's pretty dumb. I don't see it working.

 

[DSirius]

Facebook and Google don't post anything, both are virtual squares that index content. Places where people socialize and spread the word.

Not exactly, I am sure that if you are curious what kind of corporate companies are Facebook and Google, you will find more, but definitely they are not just virtual square that index content. For example, Google and Facebook-Meta were caught violating the law and were fined too many times all over the world, and in US too. Cambridge Analytica, Instagram evil influence on teenagers mental-health and much, much more.
And governments all over the world began to take measure because of this. UE also took measures.