Hakaku
Alien.
- 6 Posts
- 35 Comments
You’re misunderstanding the reporting on that. Articles like this state that Meta is not negotiating, but what this actually means is “Meta is not negotiating contracts with hundreds of Canadian news publishers”.
Three takeaways:
- These negotiations have nothing to do with discussing the terms and wording of Bill C-18 prior to its royal assent;
- These articles are all published after Bill C-18 received royal assent;
- Meta isn’t required to enter negotiations until (a) the Online News Act comes into force, and (b) the CRTC explicitely names Meta as a “digital news intermediary” per the terms of the Online News Act. (Not that they intend to either way, at least for the time being.)
As for discussing the terms of Bill C-18 prior to its royal assent, both Meta and Alphabet have equally and, in both Meta’s case and Alphabet’s case, publicly shared their concerns, feedback and recommendations on the Bill. No amendments to the legislation were ever made.
The only reason Meta is getting more flack from Canadian News is because they acted now, while the topic is hot, whereas Alphabet will act later. Articles like the one OP linked to can’t be used to villify Alphabet because they’re not yet blocking news.
Please stop rehashing the same dead argument over and over and whining about Facebook being a bully when they’re very clearly following the terms of the legislation and this outcome was very clearly predictable. News publishers are not victims of bullying, they’re victims of their own legislation. And no Meta never once asked for the bill to be dropped, they expressed concerns around wording and requested some amendments; so did Alphabet. Ask yourself why Meta is fine paying news organizations in Australia but not Canada.
Further, as others have already pointed out in this thread and in others on this topic, the bill has received royal assent. The only next step is the Coming into force, which will happen 180 days after that. So whether Meta pulls news now or in 180 days really doesn’t matter: the effects, the impacts and the results will be the same. Others have also given the extreme example that if a country that had no legislation around murder were to pass a bill making murder illegal, you wouldn’t run around murdering as many people as possible until that act came into force. It’s the same idea here.
Keep also in mind that the Online News Act grants the CRTC the ability to name any company it wants at any point as a “digital news intermediary”. So this act could have far reaching consequences on much more than Meta and Alphabet in the long term. And it’s very likely that any other platform they name will also drop Canadian news for the simple reason that Canadian News needs social media, but the reverse isn’t true at all.
There’s only one country with even a remotely similar legislation, that being Australia. Facebook got the amendments it wanted before the Australian Code received royal assent.
If you’re going to cry foul about how Facebook is following the legislation Canada is putting in place, you’ll need to try harder than that.
CBC is grasping at straws trying to put the blame on Facebook for the very bill they pushed through, that had very predictable consequences. Canadians news publishers have no one to blame for this but themselves.
The article basically reads as though they’re upset for not being paid by Meta during emergencies and sad they can’t profit as much off people glued to watching emergencies (it’s absolutely not because they’re truly concerned for the actual ppl facing the emergency). It’s quite tasteless for them to pull the misinformation card when news publishers aren’t always known to spread accurate or helpful information – they’re mostly there for the fear mongering. And Meta’s response on that front is the correct one: they’re not blocking government sites and government sites should be considered the sources of truth and information during emergencies.
That said, unrelated to news link sharing, there’s a larger discussion to be had around emergency broadcasts over the internet: should the government create legislation to have an emergency notification tool in place that can be triggered on Canadian websites and websites catering to Canadians (social media included)? Many institutions, including universities, have their own systems for doing exactly this so why can’t the government?
Sensational news articles like this are also expected in the fallout. Most news companies in Canada lobbied for the change and simply hoped that big players would cave right away. But now that Meta and Alphabet have announced that they’ll block news in Canada (a predictable response), news companies are realizing the impact it’ll actually have on them and the amount of lossed revenue it’ll entail if things don’t work out the way the want them to. They’re basically crapping their pants and writing up these types of headlines to pressure Meta/Alphabet as a last-ditch effort.
Got pretty big hail out west
The amendments were passed and enacted before the Australian media code ever received royal assent. Meanwhile Bill C-18 already received royal assent in Canada, so amendments won’t be anytime soon. You’re right that it can happen, but if the government or our news publishers cared to avoid any fallout, then they would have negotiated on agreements and possible amendments prior to royal assent (which is what Australian news corporations did), not after.
And so as long as a difference exists, we can’t expect the Canadian situation to develop in the same way as Australia. And the interim fallout in terms of lost revenue for our own news publishers is actually very significant, despite everyone saying ‘good riddance to Meta and Alphabet’.
I’m just here with the popcorn for when Canadian media finally realize they made a terrible decision with this bill. Everyone consumes American media anyway, so nothing lost.
Australia implemented amendments that were sought by Facebook, not at all the same.
Why wouldn’t they? Microsoft operates the largest search engine used in Canada after Google, owns LinkedIn which is one of the top 10 social media platforms with a heavy news aggregation focus like Facebook, provides a default news aggregation feed pre-installed on all Windows computers, etc.
By the wording of the bill, there’s no reason they can’t be labeled as having a “prominent market position” or “a strategic advantage over news businesses”. And this applies especially so if Alphabet and Meta recuse themselves from the Canadian news market.
If the spirit of the bill is to get money from big corporations to support Canadian news organizations, then there’s no reason not to target Microsoft. And the fact that MS has already been consulted on the bill and released a statement about it strongly suggests they’ll be on the list.
The bill itself doesn’t name any specific company. It has a clause saying that the CRTC will publish and maintain a list of “digital news intermediaries” to which the contents of the bill apply. The official list isn’t yet available.
The official list of digital news intermediaries hasn’t yet been published by the CRTC. Although Alphabet and Meta have been in the news, it’s very likely Microsoft will also be impacted and by proxy all services that use Bing (including Yahoo and DDG).
DDG which uses Bing to power its results will also have to comply by the same law or drop Canadian news results if they don’t want to negotiate and pay.
Have our premiers done anything themselves?
On Chrome/mobile, select the “Remember me” field before entering your account username and password. If you do the opposite, it’ll start auto-signing you in and ignore any action you do after (like checking that box).
Of course it’s Manitoba
I have no clue what you’re arguing anymore to be honest, because ultimately it has nothing to do with anything I wrote initially. The article you linked to was written on July 6th and, as the very quote you provided states, “[Alphabet] travaille à « trouver une solution » avec le gouvernement”. Yes, it’s true Alphabet is continuing to discuss things with the government and that was also included in the link I provided if you bothered to take 2 seconds to read it. It’s also true that Alphabet has not yet blocked news as they weigh their options.
As for Meta, yes, you’re right that they’ve chosen not to pursue discussions or negotiations after Bill C-18 received royal assent. This is correct. However, it still has absolutely nothing to do with discussing amendments prior to Bill C-18 receiving royal assent.
À la fin de la journée, une loi stupide demeure une loi stupide. Si tu veux faire la victime et brailler parce qu’une plate-forme de réseau social (que tout le monde déteste de toute façon) décide qu’elle veut retirer les nouvelles plutôt que de payer pour des liens partagés par ses utilisateurs – ou si un jour un moteur de recherche dont le but est d’indexer les pages Web en ligne décide de faire la même chose parce que ça va à l’encontre du fonctionnement du Web, vas-y fort, braille. Ce n’est pas défendre Meta d’affirmer qu’ils suivent la loi comme elle est prescrite. Et ce n’est pas non plus défendre Meta (ou Alphabet ou quiconque) de dire que la loi est stupide, qu’elle pourrait avoir un impact néfaste sur d’autres entreprises nommées par le CRTC sans les mêmes moyens financiers, et que de forcer les entités (entreprises, organismes et, un jour sûrement, les individus) à payer pour le partage ou l’indexage de liens sur internet établit un très mauvais précédent.