Meta Begins The Process Of Ending News Links In Canada

This is not a surprise, because the company made it clear it planned to do exactly this, but Meta has now begun the process of stopping links to news sources from appearing in Canada, something that Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez insisted would never happen. The company says it will take a few weeks to roll out fully, but in the meantime, Meta explains what this will actually look like.

For Canadian news outlets this means: 

News links and content posted by news publishers and broadcasters in Canada will no longer be viewable by people in Canada. We are identifying news outlets based on legislative definitions and guidance from the Online News Act. 

For international news outlets this means: 

News publishers and broadcasters outside of Canada will continue to be able to post news links and content, however, that content will not be viewable by people in Canada. 

For our Canadian community this means: 

People in Canada will no longer be able to view or share news content on Facebook and Instagram, including news articles and audio-visual content posted by news outlets. 

For our international community this means: 

There is no change to our services for people accessing our technologies outside of Canada. 

The details mention Facebook and Instagram, though it’s not clear if Threads is included as well. Perhaps as a subset of Instagram it is, but that also might damage Threads viability even more.

This is disappointing in all sorts of ways. Not being able to post, view, or discuss news is not a great result, obviously. I especially feel bad for the media orgs who bet big on Facebook as a delivery channel, who are hurt by this (as many people know, Techdirt basically ignored Facebook other than setting up an auto-posting system, and while others mocked us for this decision, in the long run, I still stand by it).

But the blame for this disappointing result needs to go fully on the Canadian government. This law is bad. The entire structure of it is an attack on the open web, suggesting that governments can force some companies to pay other companies for sending them traffic. That makes no sense in any world.

Throughout this process, the media orgs that supported this bill, and the politicians behind it as well, have vastly (embarrassingly) overestimated the importance and value of news to Facebook and Google. Even in what they’ve talked about, suggesting that these companies were “profiting unfairly” off of news, just never made any sense if you had any idea how any of this actually works. Google and Facebook make very little money off of news links. At best, they served as a way to get some users to spend a bit more time coming to their platforms as part of their feed, but it was never a central part, nor particularly valuable.

I did, however, want to respond to a few comments (often screamed at me on Twitter) directed at me regarding my opposition to these laws. There’s this weird, dangerous, belief that because these laws “tax” Facebook and Google and lots of people (reasonably!) dislike Facebook and Google, so they must be good laws. And, relatedly, they claim that anyone who doesn’t support these laws, must be doing so in support of Facebook or Google.

But, that’s both silly and shortsighted. I’d be happy to see both Meta and Google cut down to size, and have said so for years, and have even suggested many ways of making that a reality. But these kinds of laws are dangerous, on principle, in taxing something that makes no sense to tax, forcing payments for something that should be fundamentally free, and undermining the basic structure of the open web.

But, worse, they represent an acceptance of a fundamentally corrupt principle that will undoubtedly be abused to much greater lengths going forward.

In establishing the principle that the government can look at one industry and force another industry to pay it, is a recipe for very dangerous corruption. That’s doubly true when, as in this case, we’re talking about one industry that mostly failed to innovate, rested on its cash cow laurels, and spent years mocking the innovation occurring around them. And then going after the industry that did innovate, that built products and services that customers actually used, with better business models, and basically telling them they have to cough up cash for the industry that failed to do that?

That creates incredibly skewed incentives for literally everyone involved. It creates terrible incentives for legacy industries. Terrible incentives for innovative industries. Terrible incentives for politicians. It’s a lose-lose-lose proposition.

Am I concerned about the plight of media today? Absolutely (I mean, for fuck’s sake, I run a media site!). Am I concerned that Google and Meta are too powerful, and prone to abusing that power? Absolutely. That’s why I constantly push for plans that lessen their power and move people to alternative approaches.

But you have to do it in a way that doesn’t fundamentally mess up literally everyone’s incentives in a manner that isn’t just obviously corrupt, but so blatantly so that it diminishes everyone’s trust in our institutions.