{"id":11356,"date":"2023-08-03T17:42:27","date_gmt":"2023-08-03T17:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=11356"},"modified":"2023-08-03T17:42:27","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T17:42:27","slug":"meta-and-google-are-blocking-links-to-news-in-canada-the-us-might-be-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=11356","title":{"rendered":"Meta and Google are blocking links to news in Canada. The US might be next."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The government legislation that both companies are protesting is called the Online News Act<\/a>, or C-18. The intention is to give the long-suffering journalism industry a little cash boost, likely at the expense of two companies that are partially responsible for its woes. It accomplishes this by compelling them to pay Canadian news outlets if they host links to their content. (Fenlon\u2019s employer, which is a public broadcaster, officially supports the Online News Act.) That\u2019s why Meta and Google are threatening to remove news links for all Canadian users, permanently, if the law applies to them when it takes effect, likely by the end of this year.”
…
“The new Canadian law is modeled on a controversial<\/a> Australian law, the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code<\/a>, which went into effect in 2021. Google and Meta\u2019s responses to that law were similar threats to pull links, but both companies ended up making payments to some news organizations. The Australian government estimates<\/a> that news outlets got AU$200 million, although it doesn\u2019t know that for sure \u2014 nor does it know how that money was distributed \u2014 because the companies were allowed to keep those figures private. Even so, other countries, like Canada, likely assumed they\u2019d get similar results with similar laws and were less apt to take Google and Meta\u2019s threats seriously.
If you\u2019re Google and Meta, this may not seem fair. Links are meant to drive people to websites, right? News sites are getting traffic through those links they otherwise may not have gotten, and the platform loses eyeballs when people click away from it. Meta contends that it doesn\u2019t even post the links in the first place; its users, including the outlets themselves, do that. In the eyes of Google and Meta, they\u2019re doing news sites a favor. And, Meta has said<\/a>, news content is a very small draw for its users. If the companies don\u2019t really need news links to attract users, why should they be forced to pay for them and be subject to government regulation, something they want to avoid at all costs?”  
…
“In the eyes of the law\u2019s supporters, however, Google and Meta\u2019s business models have taken a lot away from journalism, and this \u201clink tax\u201d is the least they can do to pay some of that back. And, yes, the internet has decimated the journalism industry. One way is digital ad revenues: They\u2019re a fraction of what news outlets commanded for their print and broadcast products, and that already smaller sum is reduced even further because online advertising companies \u2014 an industry dominated by Meta and Google \u2014 take a cut of it for themselves. One oft-cited<\/a> statistic has Google and Meta getting 80 percent of online advertising revenue in the country. While Google and Meta have programs that pay news companies, including in Canada, they\u2019re not legally required to do it, they can pick and choose who and what to support (and, by extension, who and what not to support), and they can change the terms whenever they want. Meta, for example, ended<\/a> an emerging journalists fellowship program in Canada in response to C-18\u2019s passage. The Online News Act is meant to ensure that even the smallest publications get something and that the DNIs have to pay at all. The Canadian government estimates<\/a> the law will generate about CA$330 million a year for its news outlets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s all if there are links to Canadian news outlets on those platforms in the first place, which brings us to the current game of chicken between the Canadian government and Big Tech \u2014 and the yawning gaps on the news feeds of people like Fenlon and Krichel.”
https:\/\/www.vox.com\/technology\/2023\/7\/14\/23794623\/meta-google-canada-c-18-online-news-act-fight<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The government legislation that both companies are protesting is called the Online News Act, or C-18. The intention is to give the long-suffering journalism industry a little cash boost, likely at the expense of two companies that are partially responsible for its woes. It accomplishes this by compelling them to pay Canadian news outlets if they host links to their content. (Fenlon\u2019s employer, which is a public broadcaster, officially supports the Online News Act.) That\u2019s why Meta and Google are threatening to remove news links for all Canadian users, permanently, if the law applies to them when it takes effect, likely by the end of this year.”<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“The new Canadian law is modeled on a controversial Australian law, the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code, which went into effect in 2021. Google and Meta\u2019s responses to that law were similar threats to pull links, but both companies ended up making payments to some news organizations. The Australian government estimates that news outlets got AU$200 million, although it doesn\u2019t know that for sure \u2014 nor does it know how that money was distributed \u2014 because the companies were allowed to keep those figures private. Even so, other countries, like Canada, likely assumed they\u2019d get similar results with similar laws and were less apt to take Google and Meta\u2019s threats seriously.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re Google and Meta, this may not seem fair. Links are meant to drive people to websites, right? News sites are getting traffic through those links they otherwise may not have gotten, and the platform loses eyeballs when people click away from it. Meta contends that it doesn\u2019t even post the links in the first place; its users, including the outlets themselves, do that. In the eyes of Google and Meta, they\u2019re doing news sites a favor. And, Meta has said, news content is a very small draw for its users. If the companies don\u2019t really need news links to attract users, why should they be forced to pay for them and be subject to government regulation, something they want to avoid at all costs?” <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“In the eyes of the law\u2019s supporters, however, Google and Meta\u2019s business models have taken a lot away from journalism, and this \u201clink tax\u201d is the least they can do to pay some of that back. And, yes, the internet has decimated the journalism industry. One way is digital ad revenues: They\u2019re a fraction of what news outlets commanded for their print and broadcast products, and that already smaller sum is reduced even further because online advertising companies \u2014 an industry dominated by Meta and Google \u2014 take a cut of it for themselves. One oft-cited statistic has Google and Meta getting 80 percent of online advertising revenue in the country. While Google and Meta have programs that pay news companies, including in Canada, they\u2019re not legally required to do it, they can pick and choose who and what to support (and, by extension, who and what not to support), and they can change the terms whenever they want. Meta, for example, ended an emerging journalists fellowship program in Canada in response to C-18\u2019s passage. The Online News Act is meant to ensure that even the smallest publications get something and that the DNIs have to pay at all. The Canadian government estimates the law will generate about CA$330 million a year for its news outlets.
\nBut that\u2019s all if there are links to Canadian news outlets on those platforms in the first place, which brings us to the current game of chicken between the Canadian government and Big Tech \u2014 and the yawning gaps on the news feeds of people like Fenlon and Krichel.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[761,763,612,1912,11,328],"class_list":["post-11356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-facebook","tag-google","tag-internet","tag-meta","tag-news","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11357,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11356\/revisions\/11357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}