Personally I find this hilarious. The argument that Meta (Facebook) and Google are making “so much money” from Canadian News is in itself laughable. If anything they’re helping keep Canadian News relevant by suggesting it to people. No-one forced CBC to go make an instagram account etc.
So I think the law is working great. They demanded if you’re going to link to a website you have to pay them a share of the revenue you generate. So these companies have elected that it’s not worth the cost and will not link to them. Seemingly the media is going full shocked pikachu over this.
IMO the Federal Goverment went too soft. They should have made a broader law under the form of a tax, where all social medias companies are required to pay a tax to operate in Canada and properly fund journalism, no matter if they display Canadian news or not.
Don’t wanna pay? Then no operation in Canada at all.
So far C-18 only targets Google and Facebook, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it expands to other large commercial social media platforms.
I doubt it would impact the Fediverse, since at the moment the platform isn’t generating any revenue from the content through ads or clicks.
One of our senators mentioned that the threshold was set so that it only affects Google and Meta. Microsoft can share news stories without paying because Bing isn’t as popular.
That same senator also said that more people should start using Bing™, and that it’s actually a really good search engine. Not even joking. The article read like a sponsored post.
The senator saying people should use Bing was one of the most sensible reactions I’ve seen to Meta and Google pulling news from their sites in Canada. Reminding people there are alternatives to Google seems like a better way of handling this than trying to convince Google to reverse their decision.
When does bill c-18 come into effect?
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/news/2023/07/the-online-news-act-next-steps.html
Obligations under the Online News Act will come into effect no later than 180 days after June 22, 2023, the day Bill C-18 received Royal Assent. When elements of the Act come into effect will depend on regulations from the Governor in Council (GIC), and the implementation of processes by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
if you get your news from facebook… nuff said
What’s the alternative? The local CTV reporter who keeps us abreast in the local news – the news that matters most in our daily lives – also published his reports on X, but beyond that?
If I go directly to CTV they want to tell me about how the fire department was called to save a cat stuck in a tree in a city hundreds of kilometres away. I couldn’t care less. That isn’t worth my time. It is true that hidden in there are the same local reports that are posted to Facebook, but I’ll be bored to death by all the other irrelevant news before I find them. The user experience is horrendous.
To actually get at the pertinent news without needing to become a full-time researcher, Facebook was where it was at.
Try Ground News to build yourself a list of sources you like to check directly. It’s a pretty good aggregator.
Lack of local reporting has been an issue since long before these new rules. CBC exists, and it’s really weird to go directly to CTV for news if you’re going to pick only one. That’s the thing that plays silently in the dentist’s office waiting room with scrolling rage bait and, as you say, cats up trees.
Try Ground News to build yourself a list of sources you like to check directly
This particular reporter is the source. For all intents and purposes he is the only one that reports on the area (small community). Ground News seems to only pull from text sources, and it is grabbing essentially nothing. His work is presented as video.
Lack of local reporting has been an issue since long before these new rules.
Well, the reporting is sufficient enough, but not well aggregated outside of Facebook/X. If you work hard you can ultimately find it on CTV properties, but it’s hard to deny that Facebook improved access to the news.
Wow, never heard of this. Thanks!
No free option will prevent a lot of people from jumping on this though.
I lobbied hard for c-18. For those who were getting their news from Facebook, you’re free now. You can either put an ounce of effort into informing yourself and be ten times harder to program, or let an American megacorp continue to spoon feed you reality, but understand that the quality of your sources just went down the shitter
