Using the Online News Act to Talk to Canadians about Tech Policy
By Mahtab Laghaei - September 21, 2023
This past June, between 13.8 and 30 million Canadians (representing a sizable chunk of Canada’s population) received notifications from Meta on Facebook and Instagram informing them that they would no longer be able to access or post Canadian news on their platforms.
Blaming the recent adoption of Canada’s Online News Act, Meta’s short message links to a longer official statement explaining that Meta will now block Canadian access to news content ‘to comply’ with the Act. In the lobbying efforts that ensued, Meta has aggressively blamed the Canadian government for an outcome that harms Canadians across the board. Canada responded by canceling $10 million in annual advertising from Meta platforms, which is just a drop in the bucket for the social media platform.
Before Canada, Australia enacted a similar policy in 2021, to which Google and Meta also responded by threatening to restrict media content on their platforms. In August 2023, a compromise was reached that has so far led to the establishment of over 30 individual commercial agreements between Google and Meta with Australian media organizations worth an estimated $200 million. Whether or not Canada can come to a similar arrangement remains unclear.
Yet these arrangements are not without concern. First, media organizations that fall outside of this deal receive nothing. Second–and more importantly–all agreements have been made individually and in secret with no transparency on what incentives are embedded in the contracts. It seems entirely possible for example that contract terms could make it harder for news entities to criticize Meta and Google, placing the independence of their reporting at risk. If Canada is contemplating adopting Australia’s compromise, it should also consider whether or not this policy provides Google and Meta with even more control over the independence of both digital and print news, an outcome that is clearly not in the public’s interest.
What is the Online News Act?
The Online News Act came into effect in June 2023 with the aim of “fairly compensating” Canadian media outlets that have lost revenue over the last 15 years of social media’s meteoric rise. The government argues that social platforms benefit from advertising revenue by freely linking and sharing Canadian news content and that outlets deserve access to the wealth accumulated using their work. The Act requires social media companies with annual revenues over $1 billion to pay fees when sharing news from Canadian outlets. Currently, only Google and Meta meet this criteria, and both argue that the Act leaves them with no choice but to restrict news altogether to avoid an estimated $234 million in fees.
Reaction to C-18
Even before Meta’s decision to block content, this bill provoked controversy. For one, as enacted, C-18 theoretically only helps large media entities, including CBC and Postmedia (National Post), while smaller companies are excluded. Additionally, the Internet Society warned that C-18 would ultimately harm Canadians by restricting and fragmenting access to media. OpenMedia and Sue Gardner (a visiting professor at McGill and the former Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director) further argued that C-18 failed to address obsolete business models employed by contemporary Canadian media outlets and would only lead to more ‘low-quality news.’ While concurring that supporting robust media ecosystems is clearly in the public’s interest, Gardner wrote that "if the market won't support quality journalism, we need to find some other way to do it." What that might be was left uninterrogated.
Impact on Canadians
Regardless of intent, Canada’s attempt to save its media has been met with a response by Meta that significantly impacts the online experience of millions of Canadians across provinces, political leanings, and class by blocking access to news and profiles indefinitely. These impacts disproportionately affect young people, who represent the biggest share of Instagram users in Canada, and who routinely rely on social media as their primary news source.
The impact of this decision came into stark focus only weeks after this policy came into effect when Canada experienced one of its worst environmental emergencies in history. When wildfires threatened the safety of thousands of Canadians in Kelowna and Yellowknife, many were outraged that Meta continued to block potentially life-saving news. A request from the government to make an exception during this emergency was rebuffed. Instead, Meta attempted to leverage this tragedy to pressure the Canadian government into reversing its policy.
Meta’s decision also significantly impacts Canadian news entities, especially small and independent outlets that are particularly vulnerable to disruption and who can no longer reach their audiences through social media platforms. If a resolution is not identified, this policy could have the unintended but entirely possible effect of putting already under-resourced media outlets out of business.
What Now?
Canada’s attempt to save its media sector is understandable, if perhaps misguided. Yet whatever the shortcomings of Canada’s policy process, Meta’s response raises significant concerns and is indicative of the asymmetrical power held by the social media behemoth. By deploying its citizen-focused lobbying through its platforms where it can control the narrative, Meta’s efforts to influence public policy decisions–in which it is clearly in a conflict of interest–represents the latest chapter in a long-standing battle with governments worldwide to stifle policy that could affect its bottom line.
Moreover, Canadian entities who theoretically stood to benefit from the millions in fees that will likely never come are worse off today. In addition to not receiving any benefit from fees, traffic to Canadian content and news websites has declined and poses a further threat to the already tenuous sustainability of Canadian media entities. Indeed, several media organizations have called on Canada to investigate Meta for ‘abuse of dominance’ for its efforts to influence policy.
Yet these stories point to a larger issue of business models in the digital age. Meta and Google employ business models that actively contribute to a wide range of societal harms, including the decline of independent media, mental health impacts, polarization, and disinformation. These and other harms are part of a large and growing range of societal issues for which there are few if any market solutions. This situation is by definition unsustainable.
This is a challenging moment. Yet handled effectively, it also represents an important opportunity to engage Canadians in the importance of tech policy conversations toward building healthier information ecosystems. Organizations working in the responsible tech sphere depend on public saliency in order to advocate for stronger regulations that can mitigate the influence and harmful impacts of tech oligopolies. This moment is an opportunity to get the ball rolling.
These issues echo a key finding from GoodBot’s discovery research with Canadian technology experts who highlight that effective tech policies are hindered by a lack of coherent processes to strengthen awareness, engagement, and saliency among Canadian citizens and policymakers. It also echoes a key recommendation from leading US nonprofit All Tech is Human in its more recent Responsible Tech Guide on the importance of public engagement in tech policy processes. Meta’s attempt to stranglehold the government creates a window of opportunity for government and civil society to engage Canadians on the development of effective and comprehensive tech policy.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) which previously indicated that it would hold public consultations this fall on the impacts of C-18’s implementation on Canada’s digital news marketplace has yet to announce any further details.
Whatever else might be true, there is broad consensus that no one should have their access to news blocked and that Canadians can and should be agents in building a regulatory system that works in their best interest. There is also consensus that Canadian policy should not be dictated by Big Tech. The question now is how to get there.