As Canada Passes Corrupt Link Tax, Meta Says No More News Links In Canada
Two weeks ago, Canada's Heritage Minister, Pablo Rodriguez, who has been the main Canadian government official pushing for C-18, the bullshit link tax bill, that is just a corrupt wealth transfer from one disliked industry to a favored industry, insisted that it was unacceptable" that Meta might stop allowing links to news if the bill passed.
The interview is quite incredible. Rodriguez makes a number of absolutely laughable claims, such as acting as if the value flow is entirely in one direction: from media to the tech companies. The CBC journalist, correctly, points out that the media orgs (including his own) get value from being able to distribute their content for free online, and notes that if Meta (and Google) stop allowing links that will harm the media.
Rodriguez seems wholly unprepared for this question. As he looks stunned, he stumbles through the following:
CBC: I agree that our work has a value, but also their platforms allow us to reach an audience. We use Facebook, we use Instagram, to reach people, to help us. And if this goes through and Meta follows through on its threat, we're going to lose access to those audiences. So how is this a helpful thing for Canadian media.
Rodriguez: Well... first of all. They have to make that business decision and... they're making a lot of money... in Canada and... they would have to justify why they do that... and second they have a lot of deals with a lot of news media outlets across the country. What would happen to those deals? I think we can come to a fair deal. We can talk to each other. I always said it. And they know it. My door is always open. They have my cell phone and my staff at any time. So we're ready to discuss, we're ready to negotiate, but we'll never negotiate or accept something under threat.
I mean... what does that even mean? We're ready to negotiate, but we won't negotiate under threat"? But the threat" is simply Meta saying that news content just isn't worth paying for.
As the CBC reporter points out in response, the reality is that this is likely to harm news organizations even more (this is after a hilarious exchange in which Rodriguez, the government minister pushing this bill to force websites to pay up for links, insists that the best part of his bill is that it creates a marketplace" that the government has nothing to do with" which is... not how any of this works).
CBC: We heard at the Senate this week, the Committee studying this, Brian Myles is with Le Devoir said they get 40% of their traffic from Google and 30% from social media. And if Google and Facebook go through with this they will suffer, he says, because direct traffic is less than 20%. The Globe and Mail CEO Phillip Crawley told Senators if Facebook pulls out millions of dollars go away." Millions of dollars go away. And that's a lot in the newspaper world. I mean, I know you're saying you're trying to help newspapers and media organizations. This would not help if they follow through, if they're provoked by your legislation.
Rodriguez: But that's exactly what they're trying to do through their threat. They want you to repeat what they're saying. They want to scare people and scare politicians too. That's what they're trying to do! They want to intimidate MPs. They want to intimidate Senators, especially Senators because the bill is there at this moment...
The man seems to be in deep deep denial. This is not about threats." It's about saying that having to pay for links is just not worth it. It's a straight up cost-benefit decision. And Rodriguez seems unable to comprehend that Meta would actually stop allowing news links, or that it's just not worth paying for links.
And... that's now what Meta has decided. On Thursday, the Senate passed C-18, effectively saying that Canada is breaking the open web, and Meta announced it was officially pulling news links from Canada:
Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act (Bill C-18) taking effect.
We have repeatedly shared that in order to comply with Bill C-18, passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada.
Ooops.
Now, as when this happened in Australia, I'm sure some people are going to get mad at Meta, but that makes no sense. If you believe in the open web, if you believe that you should never have to pay to link to something, if you believe that no one should have to pay to provide you a benefit, then you should support Meta's stance here. Yes, it's self-serving for Meta. Of course it is. But, even if it's by accident, or a side-effect, it's helping to defend the open web, against a ridiculous attack from an astoundingly ignorant and foolish set of Canadian politicians.