REGINA - Today, I am finally motivated to give my opinion, and set the record straight, on the Facebook news posting ban.
Of course, I can hear it now. “We don’t care what you think! No one is asking you for your opinion on the Facebook news ban!”
Folks, that is exactly and entirely my point. Nobody in any high places anywhere has asked for my opinion or consulted me in any way about the consequences of Bill C-18, the “Online News Act.” No doubt, they didn’t consult most of you, either.
Well, I’m going to say my piece anyway, because anyone in Canada who values living in a free and democratic society ought to be hopping mad.
Under this Online News Act, the Government of Canada is requiring the social media giants like Meta, owners of Facebook and Instagram, to pony up millions of dollars for linking to Canadian news content to compensate the Canadian news industry. Last week, the draft rules for the Act came in and will require Google to pony up $172 million, and Facebook $62 million.
Facebook isn’t waiting for this Act to be implemented. They’ve already banned sharing of Canadian news. I could have told people this was going to happen — that Facebook would leave Canada high and dry. I also could have predicted that the online traffic coming to our media websites would go right down the drain as a result, costing us a ton of viewership.
I could have predicted a lot of things, but no one in the government of Canada or anywhere else stopped to get measured opinions from the rank and file media workers about the real consequences of this bill before they passed it. I guess they only bother to consult people after the fact (like they're doing now).
What was most bewildering to me was to see so many of these big media conglomerates backing this bill. These organizations got together as part of something called News Media Canada to lobby for this change. Even Unifor, representing the unionized reporters of this country, has been supporting this bill.
They are out of their minds! It seems wild that our nation's media would support a bill that could jeopardize Facebook traffic coming to their websites, but that’s what they did.
What bugs me the most is there are still people out there who believe Facebook is to blame for this situation. This impression is being largely propagated by media organizations who are now littering their airwaves and newspapers running announcements about the Meta "ban on news" in your social media feeds, and encouraging you to get around this “ban” by visiting your favorite media outlet’s websites and downloading their apps. These announcements leave people under the impression this was all Facebook’s fault.
Folks, this is not a “Facebook news ban.” What this really is is a “Trudeau news ban.”
Never forget that the entire reason this is happening is because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez (now ex-Minister) brought in Bill C-18, and it passed in Parliament. If Bill C-18 didn’t happen, Facebook wouldn’t have done what it did.
What’s worse, if full implementation of this Act happens in December, we will face an even worse spectacle of possibly even more online platforms banning Canadian news including Google. That would be a total disaster and render Google basically useless for Canadians.
The other thing I need to point out is this is not something other countries are experiencing. Most people in the free world are still able to post their news links on Facebook, no problems.
This situation in Canada is exactly what you expect to see happen to people living under authoritarian regimes in places halfway around the world, where governments like to put up "firewalls" to prevent their own citizens from accessing other countries’ apps and websites.
It reminds me of the days when the Soviets would jam foreign radio signals to prevent their citizens from accessing the real news of what was happening in their own country.
Except, in those countries the governments are direct about what they are doing. Here in Canada, this is more like a Mafia-type extortion attempt gone wrong, as many news folks have pointed out.
In this case the target isn't the media, but Facebook, except Facebook has called the government's bluff and is refusing to pay up, and is now refusing to allow any Canadian news on their platform. This is so messed up!
In fact, there are even more misconceptions about this debacle that I feel the need to rant about. Such as: this portrayal of Facebook and Instagram as sites whose primary mission is to deliver important news to Canadians.
Have these folks actually seen these sites? Instagram is where you go to look at photos from supermodels, athletes, and “influencers” who want to sell you stuff and bring attention to themselves.
As for Facebook, it seems primarily a place where your friends and relatives post silly photos of themselves having fun on vacation and stuff like that.
In fact, when Facebook started, the whole initial idea for the platform was so college kids at Harvard could stay in touch with one another. It was about “social networking,” it was not about delivering news or any of that.
As it turned out, Facebook became popular, and as it became popular, people started to realize they could share news links on the platform. That’s how it ended up being a “news” platform: it was user driven.
What’s more maddening is that media organizations were encouraging this, going so far as to place Facebook sharing buttons on their news stories on their websites, even putting up Facebook pages themselves.
I was continually hearing, mainly from other media, about how we as reporters were supposed to embrace Facebook and social media as news platforms to get more exposure for our output.
Now I see these same people turn around and accuse Facebook of being villainous and stealing content. The Canadian media was encouraging this behaviour, even actively participating. Now, they are crying about it.
Here’s another thing I was really annoyed about this summer: all those accusations that Facebook was preventing Canadians from getting their important information about wildfires and evacuations going on in B.C. and the Northwest Territories.
Trudeau went ahead and accused Facebook of “putting corporate profits ahead of people’s safety.”
Which is true, except — if getting the important wildfire news was really that important to the Prime Minister, he had the power to extend an olive branch to Meta and call off Bill C-18. A quick phone call to Mark Zuckerberg was all that was needed.
They could still, in fact, do that and end this nonsense, but remember — this is Canada.
What the Feds are realizing fast is that the “big tech” companies aren’t all that altruistic, and not that vested in delivering the important news that Canadians need to know about.
Big Tech cares about one thing and one thing only, and that’s money. They will do business anywhere where they can make money, and that means the entire world. If the market isn’t important enough and the hassle factor gets too high, they simply won’t do business there. They can go anywhere and everywhere else.
That’s exactly what’s happening here, with Meta making clear that delivering news isn’t a core part of their business anyway, and that Canada can take their Online News Act and shove it.
In the process, this federal government has finally encountered an adversary that they can’t lecture to or push around, and they are getting schooled fast about the amount of clout Canada really has in the world. It’s Facebook 1, Trudeau 0.
