What If It Isn’t a Bluff?!: The Consequences of the Government’s Epic Bill C-18 Miscalculation Begin to Set In
Over the past week, the reality appears to have begun to seep in. Bill C-18 was never going to solve many media sector challenges, but it might well exacerbate them.
As Bill C-18 made its way through the legislative process, the government and the media lobby groups supporting the bill insisted that Google and Meta were bluffing when they warned that legislation premised on mandated payments for links could lead the companies to stop Canadian news linking or sharing on their platforms. Proponents would point to the Australian experience or claim that links to Canadian news were simply too valuable for the platforms to walk away. Compromise amendments were ignored in favour of tough talk about not backing down, the platforms were investigated for daring to test link blocking, and MPs and Senators acted as stenographers for media lobby groups by introducing amendments that now leave the government with even less flexibility in the regulatory process.
Over the past week, the reality appears to have begun to seep in. Meta has started advertising on its own platform its intention to stop news sharing on both Facebook and Meta, steadily reaching about 100,000 users per day. While some might suggest that the ads are simply part of the company’s playbook to convince the government to change the law, Meta says it has nothing to discuss with the government since the law has received royal assent and the regulation-making process cannot address their concerns. Meanwhile, Google has excluded Canada from its Bard AI chatbot, potentially a preview of technology and services that block Canada due to a hostile regulatory environment.
The Meta ad boycott from some governments and media companies unsurprisingly does not seem to be having much effect, given that the amount at stake is small relative to the cost of global liability for linking. Further, when the Liberal party still pays for advertising on Facebook and MPs rush to create Threads accounts, it reinforces the sense that they need the social media platform more than it needs them.
The Canadian media, which lobbied for the legislation and spent years encouraging readers to share articles on Facebook or Instagram, is now racing to advise readers on how to access its content without the platform. Meanwhile, Postmedia is continuing the practice of running misleading editorials and reporters are using bad search skills to inaccurately claim that Google is already blocking news. Smaller and independent media companies are sounding the alarm, but they expressed concerns about the legislation from the very outset and were ignored by MPs and Senators. In short, panic is setting in and no amount of urging the platforms to compromise after the law has been acted is likely to change the equation.
While there are some that seem to celebrate reduced dependence on the Internet companies, the better way to address that issue is through stronger privacy and data governance rules that the government has frustratingly slow-walked for years or through competition rules that have never been Canada’s strong suit. As Chris Waddell explains on this week’s Law Bytes podcast, simply blaming the tech companies failed to appreciate the complexity of the media’s challenges. Bill C-18 was never going to solve those challenges, but it might well exacerbate them.
If both Google and Meta comply with the law by stopping news links, the result will reduced referral traffic by as much as 70%, the cancellation of existing deals worth millions, a bill that generates no new revenues, and increased presence of foreign news competitors. In fact, even if only Meta removes news linking, the bill is virtually guaranteed to result in a net loss. There were better ways to address this issue but those suggestions were ignored or ridiculed. By choosing politics over good policy, Rodriguez and the lobby groups who called the shots have created a worst case scenario in which everyone loses.
Post originally appeared at https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2023/07/what-if-it-isnt-a-bluff-the-consequences-of-the-governments-epic-bill-c-18-miscalculation-begin-to-set-in/
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In the end it serves Big Tech because it enables and normalizes its censorship as a viable tool for societal control.
Something that is a constant thread that runs through this Orwellian ‘Liberal’ Party.