Facebook and Google will ban news links in Canada. Image: Shutterstock
Meta and Google are promising to block links to Canadian news on their platforms in response to new laws requiring the tech giants to pay publishers for content shared on Google Search and Facebook.
Canada has followed in Australia’s footsteps in trying to force the big companies to the table with local news outlets to address a “significant imbalance of bargaining power” between the people who produce the news and the digital platforms that enable news content to share online, tackle.
Bill C-18 made it through both houses of Canada’s Parliament and received royal assent last month, leading to both Google and Meta stating they would follow through on threats to block all news links for their Canadian users.
In a blog post last week, Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said Canada’s law was “unenforceable” for the tech giant and that it was “ready to do more” to support journalism in the North American country.
“We just can’t do it in a way that destroys the way the web and search engines work and creates unsustainable product and financial insecurity,” Walker said.
Meta has also stated that it will stop all messaging for its Canadian users once Bill C-18 goes into effect.
“We have repeatedly communicated that in order to comply with Bill C-18 passed in Parliament today, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada,” Meta said in a public Opinion.
The company has already begun testing a way to block certain news links to and from Canadians and is committed to rolling out the full feature before the new laws take effect.
In 2021, Google threatened to ban Australians from searching altogether if the News Media Bargaining Code were passed.
Facebook went a step further by deleting Australian news entirely, in a deliberately clumsy protest against the laws that ended up blocking pages from organizations like the Bureau of Meteorology and Domestic Violence Awareness Australia.
The law eventually passed, albeit with additional exemptions for news companies that struck deals with Meta and Google – leading to secret agreements signed by Australian media heavyweights News Corp, Nine Entertainment and Seven West.
Canada’s laws also allow exceptions when Google and Meta do business with Canadian news outlets, but that has obviously not been enough to keep the companies happy.
Walker said there had been further discussions with the Canadian government on the eve of the bill’s passage, during which Google “requested clarity about the financial expectations platforms face if they simply link to news.”
“They have not given us sufficient assurance that the regulatory process will be able to resolve structural issues with the legislation (such as compulsory payments for links and unlimited financial liability),” he continued.
Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said after the passage of C-18 that “a strong, independent and free press is fundamental to our democracy”.
“The Online News Act will help tech giants negotiate fair and equitable deals with news organizations,” he added.
The Australian Treasury described our Code as a “success” in a report released late last year.
That report states that the Code of Negotiation for News Media “encouraged digital platforms to strike a significant number of deals with news companies that would not have materialized without the code.”
According to the Treasury, more than 30 commercial deals were struck between Australian news outlets and the tech giants in the first year of the code.