After Canada Starts Taxing News Links, Canadians Are Upset That They Can’t Follow News Of Wildfires On Facebook
from the blame-your-stupid-government dept
Let’s start from the basics here: if you tax something, you will get less of it. That’s how taxes work. If you want less of something, you add a tax to it. In Canada, some very, very clueless politicians (pushed by the news media) passed a tax on Facebook and Google linking to news. Both companies have long made it clear that news is not a revenue driver for either company, so Canada’s decision to make it more expensive basically priced both companies out of the market, and both have announced a discontinuation of links to news for Canadian users.
Meta began removing links to news at the beginning of this month, and people are already realizing how messed up things are when you can’t link. Up in Canada’s Northwest Territories, there are wildfires happening, and people were relying on social media to share news… but they can’t do that any more.
Like many in Canada’s Northwest Territories, Poul Osted has been relying on social media to keep in touch with loved ones as they scramble to evacuate from nearby wildfires.
But Mr Osted said he has been left frustrated by his inability to share news articles on Facebook during the active emergency situation, due to Meta’s ban on news content for Canadian users.
“Instead we have to screenshot parts of a news story and post that as a picture,” Mr Osted told the BBC.
“Oftentimes this means you don’t get the whole story, or have to go searching the web for verification.”
I’m sure some will blame Meta for this, but this is 100% on the Canadian government. As we’ve explained over and over again, no matter what you think of Meta, this law is breaking one of the fundamental pieces of the open web: you never have to pay to link to someone.
Meta may be a terrible messenger for this, but we should be happy that the company is taking a stand here, even if it’s doing it for selfish reasons. If link taxes like this are allowed to sweep the globe, the fundamental internet that we rely on will have changed in a very bad way. There is no way that these kinds of taxes stop at just news providers. Once other industries catch on, you can expect link taxes for all sorts of other “struggling” industries.
If people are frustrated about not being able to share important information about wildfires, that’s totally understandable, but they should be asking their government why they’ve made linking too expensive.
Meanwhile, others are complaining that Meta is blocking sites that aren’t really news. This isn’t a surprise. The same thing happened in Australia too, when that country launched its own link tax. I know when that happened some people got mad at Meta, but that was silly. When the penalty for not paying for a news link can be massive, you can bet Meta is (reasonably!) going to err on the side of overblocking.
And, as the company has to go through tons of sites to figure out which are and which are not allowed to be linked to, of course some borderline cases are going to get caught in the crossfire. According to this article, it includes things like a satire publications and a music radio station that doesn’t really publish any news.
In both cases, it’s fairly understandable. Both publications look pretty close to news, and there’s no way for a human to carefully vet which “news-looking-sites” are actually news vs. those that are not. At least this round of overblocking resulted in a funny situation:
The Beaverton, which describes itself as a “satire and parody publication,” was blocked by Meta on Facebook and Instagram a week ago after the technology conglomerate mistakenly lumped it in with news providers in Canada. Its readers, however, could once again see its content online by Thursday.
Luke Gordon Field, editor in chief of The Beaverton, said the blocking prompted him to act. The blocking was no joke, he said.
Field wrote an open letter to Meta threatening CEO Mark Zuckerberg with a fake lawsuit for defaming the publication by calling it a news organization. That letter was posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Then there’s the music radio station:
Dan Lovranski, the volunteer host of Dr Mouth’s Rock and Roll Lunch Party on CIUT 89.5 FM Tuesdays at noon, said CIUT-FM, the University of Toronto’s radio station, is being blocked by Meta on Facebook and Instagram. He said CIUT-FM, which mainly produces music-based programming, is a community-based university-run radio station.
“It’s affecting a lot more things than just news agencies,” Lovranski said on Tuesday.
Lovranski said he’s amassed a global audience by promoting his show — “rock and roll, lots of fun, loud and boisterous, crazy music” — on Facebook and Instagram. He said Facebook is a “great promotional tool,” but no longer.
Now, listeners cannot be alerted to the show on Facebook and cannot be given information on how to download the show so that they can listen to it later, he said.
Again, you could argue that this doesn’t belong in the block, but Meta can’t afford to make mistakes here, so a radio station seems close enough to news that you can understand why it would get blocked.
Don’t like it? Complain to the Canadian government who pushed for and passed this very dumb link tax.
Filed Under: c-18, canada, journalism, link tax, music, satire, wildfires
Comments on “After Canada Starts Taxing News Links, Canadians Are Upset That They Can’t Follow News Of Wildfires On Facebook”
To the Canadians who are sad about this.
If you want to channel that anger towards something, channel it at kicking any and all traces of News Corp out of your country.
Rupert M<urdoch is the one harming your loved ones, land, and whatnot, and it’s HIS money that authored and successfully doomed your country by getting that heinous thing passed in Australia.
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I think the politicians who bowed to Murdoch’s pressure deserve most of the blame. They had a job, they have agency, and they decided to do their job shittily.
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Off-hand, neither News Corp. nor the technically separate Fox Corp. might have any direct, specific holdings within Canada.
Still, Canadians could stop supporting their Australian, British, and American holdings.
Maybe I should read all the articles on the topic, but I am lazy. FB/Meta would be taxed if they link to Canadian news, but does this also apply to Canadian users of FB/Meta who post a link to Canadian news?
They can still talk about the fires on FB/Meta, right? The story makes it sound like not.
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If you read the article carefully:
The users can talk about the wildfires, but they can’t link to news articles about the wildfires. They are resorting to posting screenshots of news articles, which are not linked.
The links to the news articles are blocked because the law taxes Facebook for any such link, whether Facebook posts them or users post them. The users wouldn’t be on the hook to pay, despite them being the ones to link the article – Facebook would be.
Re: Re: posting screenshots of news articles...
It’s likely that they [the news sites] will be totally stupid and shut down the screenshots too eventually. Copyright, blah, blah, blah…
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That would require them to find the screen shot and other images first, and any attempt to automate that would create a massive overclocking.
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Canadian news media: “Hold my beer.”
If there’s something you can count on copyright holders, it’s to be intensely stupid, spiteful and vindictive no matter the cost. After all, the cost can always be passed on to someone else.
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Hmmm, does this mean that if I post screen shots from a wide enough array of news sources, my laptop will become faster than a Cray Y-MP?
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I read the article, but it sounds like Facebook went above and beyond what they needed to do to avoid paying this tax. I thought I was up on the whole topic, but perhaps I was wrong.
I THOUGHT that what they wanted to tax was a separated “news” section of Facebook, that aggregated links to news from various other sites. In doing so, it was either an automated process or manually done via Facebook employees. Some work may have been done to take bylines or text of the first paragraph to generate a short synopsis of the article’s content. This synopsis is what ticked off legacy news orgs, as Facebook was essentially “copying” the content of their articles, making it so that users on Facebook might not ever click through to the actual articles.
With Facebook news shut down, I thought that people’s own personal “posts” (tweets) with a link to a news article should still work. It may not generate one of those link “cards”, but a link is still a link, and the hyperlink should still be visible and clickable. If this latter part has been disabled, this is way too far a step for Facebook to take, since the taxed part ought to be the “summaries” that Facebook was making money off of by placing ads around.
But this article here today sounds like people’s personal posts about wildfires with links to real news are disabled? Is the link not clickable (but still copy-able), or is it intentionally edited out of people’s posts (such as a [LINK REMOVED] line where the link was)?
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No they did not go above and beyond what is needed.
Any link triggers the link tax, whether Facebook itself does the linking or a user does the linking.
Further the snippets (or synopsis as you call them) are normally written or allowed to be extracted by the news organizations themselves. This is what most agreements between news organizations and Facebook & Google do, regulate that so that the news organizations can put up those snippets.
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What version of Facebook have you been using that contains a separated section completely dedicated to news?
The entire complaint by news companies and other properties has been that social media and search engines “unfairly” benefit from having bonus eyeballs and metrics by sharing and linking to the former’s content. Whether it’s from your grandma or the conspiracy theory group she follows is irrelevant. Canada news wants that sweet sweet SEO money. And now it’s burning up along with their wildfires.
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The publishers narrative is entirely driven by the fact that they have seen a decline in referrals over the last couple of years. To make up the loss in that traffic they are turning to the big referrers, Google and FB, wanting them to become money piñata’s.
Meta appears no to actually give a fuck about news at this point, it’s just a headache for them these days with all the debate about misinformation/disinformation and how they are supposed to deal with it and were you have politicians butting in and dragging Zuck to congressional hearings. So it makes sense for them to turn the tap off.
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What about posting article URLs as non-links?
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Facebook gets fined, and you loose your account for violating the recently-updated TOS.
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The block really only applies to Canadian news in Canada. Users outside of Canada can still post the links, but they won’t be accessible in the country
Here’s the second act twist:
A site can be one thing one day, and a different thing the next, and a third thing the day after.
How does Meta moderate (block) sites that are news sites only on odd-numbered Tuesdays in months that have 30 days?
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Same way it blocks anyone else. If the law can’t define news well enough to distinguish between music listening, music education and news, I doubt it has any mechanism for a company that reclassifies what industry it is in on a daily basis.
More seriously, the same way it blocks everyone else. a muisc theory blog that occationally touches on news? Is it news? edge case. Block it. Thats what a tax with expensive fine for non-compliance brings you – over enforcement.
Re: Re: UofT Radio
The MetaBot decides if a site says “radio” or “TV” or “newspaper” then unless some other tags indicate it is NOT a news source, then it is autoblocked by MetaBots.
Where's the money?
Mr. Trudeau, you promised us tens of millions of $$$ to support your link tax. Why are we instead losing eyeballs?
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Not Trudeau, Pablo Rodriguez minister of Canadian Heritage (what is considered a training position to see if you are qualified to be a minister).
Re: Re: Yes, Trudeau
Trudeau is pushing these link taxes. He’s been front and center lambasting Google and Facebook. Some cheesy minister isn’t driving this – they’re just going to be the scapegoat when this craters.
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Of course. As we say in Yiddish, Der Fish shtinkt fun kop, or “The Fish stinks from the head.”
Here’s something I don’t understand from a technical point: I imagine many news sites use opengraph tags to generate previews (headline, short description, image), and for some the url alone may give away the headline. If they’re so annoyed with Facebook/Google/etc, why don’t they just…..not do that for scrapers? Then people can share links with no context and if people want more they’ll be forced to click on it. Unless they realize that’s a terrible idea and mostly just want money
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Because they want to eat their cake and have it too.
Linking drives traffic, traffic increases revenue, traffic results in people taking subscriptions (digital and/or physical).
So why not get Facebook and Google to pay in addition to bringing the above benefits.
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The simple version of why a link tax is: they have money, make them give us some. The slightly more complex version is: they have out competed us for advertising revenue, so make them give us money.
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Like others have said, the news media companies want their cake and eat it too.
When the debates were in their early years, the media companies said that linking to them was “theft” and ran multiple campaigns proclaiming that the platforms were stealing from them.
When the warnings came later on that news links will be blocked, the media companies said it was a “bluff” because the platforms are wholly dependent on news and would shut down tomorrow if news links will get blocked (insert audience laughter here). When the warnings started becoming real to them (they were real from the beginning), the media companies started complaining about “censorship” (which it really wasn’t) and contorted the truth by proclaiming that the platforms are blocking Canadians from accessing the news (which is a bald-faced lie because they can’t block people from going directly to a news source or using a third party app).
At the moment, some are calling for users to boycott Meta platforms for two days (which has a snowballs chance in hell of working). The publishers are grasping at straws of trying to think of anything that will reverse the situation, but people who know better know that no last minute scheme is going to work in this situation. The media companies are screwed in this.
Their position never made sense beyond this being pure unchecked greed – greed that’s biting them in the rear right now.
Ignoring the real issue
Obviously, Meta started the wildfires. They needed a hot topic Canadians would want to follow in the news to highlight the link tax issue, and since nothing newsworthy actually happens in Canada they started the fires to get that one big example story.
do we still use /s for sarcasm or is there a better symbol now
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Hold up .. I was told it was Spaaz Lazerz or some alien tech beam of flame from outer space.
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No that was a misfire by the 6th Jewish Space Laser Division that hit Maui after their commander asked if someone could light their cigarette.
Re: Re:
Cue time lapse shot of a Falcon 9 leaving Vandenberg for space, offered as evidence of an energy weapon starting the Maui fire.
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Don’t be silly, the Challenger space laser was for setting off the Hawaii volcano. Unlike the normal Canadian fires, the fire in the island of Hawaii spread very fast so it had to be a magma flow instead of a wildfire.
This was told to me by a very serious person who didn’t know there is more than one island in Hawaii
AND NOW?
Now the internet can Charge the agencies to link to those sites.
Charge the agencies or charge the consumer, or BOTH. MORE MONEY, it the perfect storm.
CA already provides the info for free
Canadian Wildland Fire Information System | Interactive map
I for one don’t understand the reliance on social media when we can go to the sources for news. A link to the source would provide self reliance.
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It may have something to do with people that have not discovered bookmarks. I know someone who always uses Google to get to Facebook, because the browser starts up with google as the home page.
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I have a friend who no matter how many times I try to explain how to change her default search engine always ends up typing “google” into Bing, to get to google via its search results.
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Same thing for weather (at least in the US). The vast majority of our weather info come from the National Weather Service (https://forecast.weather.gov/), yet people inexplicably go to other, for-profit sites for info.
I assume it’s lack of information literacy mixed with design preferences.
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Or maybe because of simplicity. I mean http://www.weather.com? That seems simple enough, innit?
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Perhaps if those direct sources had nearly 2 BILLION fellow uses, they’d be in a better position to claim eyeballs?
IOW, birds of a feather flock together, and all that.
Re: I can't stand social media either
…but people have the habits they have. I guess it’s easier to have news stories shoved at you in a single location. The link tax notion is still stupid. Governments need to butt out of people’s lives unless there’s some overwhelmingly huge reason to butt in.
a somewhat clunky workaround
I’ve found that (at least for now) that I can get around FB’s blocking of news links by first submitting the URL of whatever article I want to post to archive.org, and then posting the resulting archive.org link. (I’m pretty sure you have to have an account with archive.org to do this, but I’m not 100% sure.)
I fully recognize that this is not likely to be an approach that is feasible for most users because of the extra step involving archive.org, but I thought I’d pass it on.
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A better Idea would be to summarize the important parts of the news in your own words and post that. That way the desired information is passed on, and no traffic is sent to the greedy news sites.
Canuck here. The link tax is driven by the large media companies here just like Australia and the push in California. Sadly this link tax was pushed through even though large public outcry. I get the large media companies really want more of the advertising dollars that Google and FB suck up yet this will kill traffic to their sites (seriously this is a myopic, short sighted view by them as long term going to feel the pain in loss traffic which helps them). Google and FB are not the internet (yeah I know they have large scale impacts on the landscape and are influential, not naïve to think otherwise) per se so this approach is just a pure money grab by businesses that are too lazy to compete.
Another twist to this is now the news/media organizations are demanding the Canadian Competition Bureau to investigate FB for removing the news.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/competition-bureau-online-news-act-meta-1.6930081
That just pisses me off as FB (and soon to be Google) removes the news links (which they can do, their platforms, not public utilities or been defined essential) as not wanting to pay the link tax (bad enough did it in Australia) the media orgs start screaming “hey that is not fair!!! How dare you remove links to our content that we want you to pay us for and oh yeah drive traffic to our sites”. At this point all the power to FB/Google and screw those media companies who wanted a short term cash grab.
Note what is sad is the smaller, independent news orgs are caught in the middle and feeling the impact. I have sympathy for them on this. To me though this an opportunity for them to find new/better ways to engage their existing viewers and find new ones.
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I’m sure FB would be surprised to find out that the news orgs consider them a competitor. I personally would never have considered FB a news entity.
But then again, that’s not what it’s about. This is, quoted from the linked article:
And the news orgs want a piece of it. So what though? Advertisers are going to place their ads where they think they will have the best reach. If choosing between a news org or another method of reaching customers makes two companies competitors, then doesn’t that mean that billboards and the sides of buses are also competitors? Are we going to see the City Bus system suing Facebook because their ad revenue has gone down?
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News companies generally have a web site with a list of news articles; often, many will be obtained from elsewhere (such as the Associated Press). Facebook has a web site with a list of news articles, all of which are obtained from elsewhere. If you want to learn the news (and are not in Canada), either will work. Each has certain biases.
Generally, people don’t care where an article comes from. While this annoys the news companies, it was kind of the point of the world wide web: to present a unified view of information without regard to location or hierarchy.
Middle Men
I’m curious if link shorteners work to bypass this. Also link shorteners could direct you to another redirect page with ads, further obfuscating the link’s ultimate destination.
When politicians don’t understand tech, they create the worst internet possible.
This Will Last a Long Time
I’ve noticed people increasingly asking how long this whole thing will last. The media companies said that the blocking will last all of one week before they cave. That didn’t happen as we are into week 3 of this.
There’s only two scenarios that could put an end to this: the government rescinding the law or the platforms folding.
The government has been stubborn and the current Heritage Minister, Pascale St-Onge, has tripled down on this and said that she isn’t backing down on this one and refuses to be “bullied”. The large media companies are actively cheering this on and shouting for the government to not “give in” despite the whole media sector being in the process of burning to the ground by their own stupidity. Either way, the rescinding of this law isn’t happening any time soon.
Meanwhile, the platforms have all the motivation in the world to not back back down. They may plenty of money in other countries, this affects a small percentage of their users, other countries are trying to pass similar laws and they don’t want to make the same mistake they made in Australia by just folding under pressure, and the news content means very little to them in the first place. The news link blocking lasted for 8 years in Spain and that was only when the Spanish government rescinded the law (situation is far from perfect over there, but that did happen).
Once news links blocking takes place, it’s going to be a very long time before Canadians get them back (if at all). Like the hope that platforms cave, those wanting a faster resolution are wanting a miracle.
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As to that…. it’s been stated many times that it costs Facebook (and other platforms) effectively nothing to provide news, or links to news. For them, it’s like the (very) old “quote of the day” mechanism – it just works without much effort. Now, though… instead of Facebook squandering unprofitable money on figuring out how much to pay to whoever, they are obliged to take the ‘easy’ way out and just trim out the troublesome parts. (Obliged, as in, don’t screw with Wall St’s projections. Wall St. doesn’t care about laws getting in the way of profits, don’t you know?)
Re: the social media platforms won't blink first
So if you’re Google or Meta, here’s what you’re thinking: we can’t cave in to Canada because that will open the floodgates. Why would every nation on earth (except I guess America) not pass similar laws if they saw Canada was successful? Giving up on Canadian links is a small matter compared with the massive downside.
What they want is more outcomes like Spain: the law was rescinded. They’ve learned how to do this now and I don’t see why they’d change. Dig in your heels and wait out the governments.
Re: Re: Short-term thinking can cause companies to be really dumb at times
Unfortunately they’ve already shown that they will fold with enough pressure via australia so the canadian government would not be unreasonable to think that if they just keep up the pressure the companies will fold again and pay if not the entire amount currently being demanded then ‘just a little’ dane-geld.
Social media platforms shouldn’t blink first for the reason you noted but whether that will hold fast is still up in the air.
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The problem is a little Dane geld here and a little Dane geld there rapidly grows into you having no geld left to pay the Dane’s next demand, or the demands of the next set of Danes to come along. Remember all those media taxes, well if the newspapers win, guess which other sets of Danes will come along demanding Geld.
Re: Re: Re:2
Not-so-fun fact: “Geld” in English also means “castrate”.
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Well, that is what the legacy publishers would like to do to the Internet.
I deserve to paid for each and every advertisement they send my way, double charge for the phone calls. If I demand to be paid they will stop sending that carp?
lol, no.
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It’s like if advertising companies started charging youtubers for the privilege of having ads on their videos.
Re: you are getting paid
Your payment for watching ads is to get to use Facebook etc for free. If the ads really bug you, install a good ad blocker.
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Some time ago there was this dude that claimed your bathroom breaks during the advertisements is stealing tv.
'No news' means no news, imagine that
‘The leopards! My face! Who could have ever seen this coming?!’
I posted this quote on the last link tax post, but Canada news deserves it again:
“If you don’t want to pay for linking to our content, do without. Otherwise, it’s stealing.”
“Okay then, we’ll do without.”
“Wait, not like that.”
I think news companies should pay me for reading their news. The logic is for such payments is as sound as the logic for forcing Meta and Google to pay to host the links of news stories that they don’t even post themselves.
Making the situation worse.
I was watching a Canadian YouTuber express joy at Meta blocking links. He made it sound like the conservatives enacted the law to stop the liberal media from meddling in Canadian elections.
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So… conservatives up in Canada don’t use the news?
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For too many of them, Rebel News is all that matters.
governments need to learn to leave people alone
I personally hate social media and when there’s a disaster I have other news sources (such as my local government’s text alert system, hello! why do we need to go to corporations for vital public safety information at all?) but governments should limit themselves to keeping people from killing each other and other such necessary functions.
work with them
If you want FB to post links to news articles couldnt you temporarily suspend the link tax?
Emergency alerts?
Is the Canadian government not providing up-to-date information about emergency situations?
I regularly check NOAA, CalFire, USGS, county fire and police,, and other government sites for not only breaking news, but the very latest and often live reporting of emergency situations.
On the News
I listened to a smaller news outlet complaining online traffic was down 15% since the block went into place.
So… Facebook or Google sending people to their website (where they are welcome to figure out how to profit off them) would require Facebook to send them money? What’s wrong with this picture?
On top of that, most of the major newpapers – Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, etc. – those with more in depth articles rather than rewritten AP wire feed – are all paywalled. Sorry, I’m in Canada and the only news source I susbscribe to is the New York Times. Do you really think I want to spend close to a hundred dollars covering half a dozen leading news sources?
(FYI – people complained if they posted a link that indicated it was news – radio or newspaper or whatever – the link was replaced with “content blocked” message. Satirical sites like The Beaverton had to rejigger their web to not claim they were news, because – MetaBot…)
Election 2024
News sources are being pay walled and locked down just in time for this election, I mean Dominion revenue-generating event. Its not a coincidence. Canadians may be nice people but they have no rights and don’t seem too bothered by it.
I’m just pleasantly surprised the tech platforms didn’t jump straight to charging users a ‘news linking fee.’
“Hi! It looks like you’re trying to add a hyperlink to a news site hosted in Canada, “[site]”! Unfortunately, Canadian law requires a fee for all links to Canadian news sites. Please enter your credit card information to add your hyperlink! *Facebook processing fees may also apply.”
Though I suppose that’s still on the table if fighting this bill doesn’t work out.