The NWT government and city of Yellowknife are describing in tweets, Instagram messages etc. how to search key evacuation information on CPAC and CBC. The broadcast carriers have a duty to carry emergency information, but Meta and X are blocking links.
While internet access is reportedly limited in Yellowknife, residents are finding this a barrier to getting current and accurate information. Even links to CBC radio are blocked.
Should they? Not if we punish them with fees for linking. I mean, imagine you’re trying to warn your neighbours about an approaching fire and a police officer pulls up to tell you that you’ll have to pay $50 for each neighbour you warn. I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped, I’d blame whatever law stopped you. Similarly here, I don’t blame Meta for not linking but I blame the government that will penalize Meta the moment any link points to a news outlet, emergency or not.
The tax and the legislation is at least a half a year from coming into force, the regulatory framework to operationalize it hasn’t even been published for public consultation.
Meta has started blocking preemptively. This is a power play protest about avoiding being subject to other countries’ law. That’s it.
While I’m sure there are some messaging aspects to doing it early, it’s worth pointing out that by January, unless the government repeals the law, Meta will be penalized for allowing links during emergencies. This specific law comes into operation regardless of whether the government has published any framework or not.
This is a power play protest about avoiding being subject to other countries’ law.
Meta is complying with this law. The idea behind the law was that Meta was stealing ad revenue from news organizations by linking to them, and that if they wanted to continue linking to them they needed to compensate news organizations. Meta has thus stopped ‘stealing’ the ad revenue. That’s complying with the law. It did exactly what it was expected to do, in the same way that when you tax cigarettes you expect some people to cut back on smoking. Even better, Meta stopped ‘stealing’ before the law even came into force!
Seriously it’s like there’s nothing they can do to satisfy their critics - they get accused of stealing news so they stop it, and then they get accused of harming news sites by not stealing.
Which is it? Is Meta beneficial to news organizations or harmful to them? If harmful then there’s no problem with Meta blocking news links. If beneficial, then maybe this is a dumb law that’s akin to the government putting a tax on exercising.
They could have put on their big boy pants and done like Alphabet and send someone to talk to the government to negotiate with them so the law wouldn’t affect them… But Zuck is Zuck and he preferred to “make an example of Canada” and people are defending them for some reason…
Perhaps we’d do better to look at the text of Bill C-18.
You seem to be saying that the law itself has already laid out that Meta is who it applies to.
Instead, it says that a list needs to be established.
List of digital news intermediaries 8 (1) The Commission must maintain a list of digital news intermediaries in respect of which this Act applies. The list must set out each intermediary’s operator and contact information for that operator and specify whether an order made under subsection 11(1) or 12(1) applies in relation to the intermediary.
Meta clearly sees that the law is intended to apply to digital platforms with significant market power such as it has. But it has not yet been designated.
Timing - coming into force - you are correct that there is a hard deadline at end of year.
180 days after royal assent (6) Despite subsections (1) to (5), any provision of this Act that does not come into force by order before the 180th day following the day on which this Act receives royal assent comes into force 180 days after the day on which this Act receives royal assent.
Basically, you are justifying Meta’s actions on the basis that it recognizes that a law it doesn’t like will apply to it in future.
This is a bad take. I’m blaming Facebook for deciding they’d rather not have news than share the money they make off it with the people who need to be paid to make it.
I’m not engaging with this. Obviously facebook is monetized. I’m not gonna sit here and explain how advertising and the sale of your data makes a company revenue.
While paying 0$ in taxes on the profit they make off of Canadians, don’t forget to add that part!
@Kecessa @ram
So tax them!
C-18 is the absolute WRONG way to extract revenue. It hurts Canadians as well as smaller Canadian news and content providers.
The CBC and our oligopoly of mainstream news are pushing C-18 to cement their own status, not help Canadians to be better informed.
It’s not Meta and Alphabet’s fault that our media can’t monetize their content once people get to their sites. Taxing links is not the answer and the consequences are obvious.
