You would think that with the failure of the catastrophic failure of Bill C-18, the mainstream media lies would slow. Evidently not.
The Online News Act (Bill C-18) is a failure on pretty much every angle. It was promised that this would be a solution to fund journalism without putting taxpayers on the hook. The subsequent bailouts proved otherwise. It was promised that this would be the be all end all solution to all of the media sectors financial woes. That didn’t even come close to happening. It was promised that it would force Meta and Google to pay for news links. That didn’t happen. Heck, even the very core idea of it being a link tax went down in flames. The Online News Act was such an abysmal failure, even I can’t think of a piece of legislation that has failed harder than the Online News Act.
What’s worse, the debate has significantly harmed the credibility of mainstream journalism. In the early parts of the debate, the mainstream media rolled out Big Lie 1.0 where they would tell readers in allegedly unbiased reporting that Meta and Google are scraping and reposting news articles, slapping ads on them, and making off with the profits after. This was a complete fabrication and the mainstream media knew it was a complete fabrication. Yet, the mainstream media pushed these lies on full blast for more than a year. Even worse, when Meta said that they would drop news links, mainstream media rolled out Big Lie 2.0 where they, again, published allegedly unbiased news articles proclaiming that Meta is “censoring” the media and blocking Canadian’s ability to read the news on the entire internet. Meta and critics had to point out that people could still access news websites through their browsers and we were told we were all lying when we say that. This was put on full blast and reposted by countless sources as if it were undisputed fact. Not only were these lies very obvious fabrications, but both campaigns were directly contradictory to each other on top of it all.
The waves and waves of lies by mainstream journalists had major repercussions. Specifically, it sent out a message to the world at large that when there is something happening in the world where they have a financial or business interest in, they will go to the extreme of knowingly publishing outright falsehoods in their reporting in order to get what they want. As a result, it put a major question mark over the credibility of all of their other coverage. This is because consumers now have to ask, “Is this report made professionally or is the reporter in question pushing an ulterior motive here?” Honestly, these days, even I sometimes have a hard time finding an answer to that these days. This isn’t just me either. Study after study shows that there is an erosion of trust in the general public which, understandably, is leading to more and more people tuning out or unsubscribing or just not reading the news entirely. There’s no question that the damage that was done to journalism as a whole is significant.
So, you would think that after the catastrophic failure of the Online News Act failing in pretty much every way imaginable that the mainstream media would finally admit defeat and admit, “OK, we were wrong”. This followed up by just ignoring the issue altogether and moving on to something else. For some outlets, that appears to be the case, but for other mainstream media outlets, not so much. You could be forgiven if you assume that the efforts to continue to push these obvious lies these days is pathological, but apparently, there was some motivation to pushing these fabrications at this point.
One of the campaign promises by Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, is to repeal the Online News Act. It’s probably one of the few positive things the guy has as that would go a long way to restoring things back to a sane norm in the world of journalism. For Conservatives, it may be a means to “own” the media, but in actuality, it would pave the way for having news links restored on Meta. Consequently, it would begin to reverse the damage caused by the Online News Act. In all likelihood, this really is a situation of a stop clock being right twice a day, but hey, we’ll take whatever positivity we can get in the world of technology policy these days. So, it’s not just some random editor pulling up the past for completely no reason whatsoever.
What is astonishing is that this editor is trotting out the same tired and long ago debunked lies as if repeating them several months later somehow makes these lies any more true. It obviously doesn’t, but it is clear he is depending on people to have a short memory. Lucky for you, we don’t have a short memory by any means, so let’s get into this one.
The “article” was published in NiagaraNow by the editor-in-chief himself. What I will give credit for is the beginning of the article which says this:
Pierre Poilievre made a stop in Niagara-on-the-Lake last Thursday.
Here is a leader who at first might seem informed, capable of holding rational arguments and making good points.
But what he’s really the best at is pandering, lying and misleading.
He panders to a crowd that’s so anti-Liberal, they’re willing to eat up and digest anything he says. He’s hoping that voters so dislike Justin Trudeau that they won’t see beyond his simplistic, bumper-sticker rhetoric.
It’s pretty hard to disagree with that because that really is right wing politics in a nutshell these days. I think the only thing really missing here is how much right wing politics is fuelled by rage farming in the process where right wing leaders intentionally lie to their audiences for the purpose of keeping their followers perpetually angry all the while not tackling anything of actual substance. Don’t get me wrong, there are things to be angry about, but most of the time, the rage farming is over complete fabrications or complete misrepresentations of the facts – so much so that they would have you believe that thinking the wrong way could land you in jail (and some go further by saying that this is already happening).
The problem with the editorial is that this is where the reasonableness generally ends. This is because he then goes into full blown idiocy, lying, and flat out publishing inaccurate information:
Firstly, we asked him what his party would do to ensure it supports local journalism.
His answer?
“Free speech.”
“I am going to repeal the censorship laws, make it possible for Canadian news to be visible again on Facebook, Instagram and all other social media platforms,” he said.
“And get rid of the terrible censorship laws that have taken those news stories down from the internet and deprived independent local media to have a voice.”
OK, let’s digest this: there’s no such thing as a censorship law. Full stop.
Yeah, the very first sentence where he response to the Conservative leader is actually not accurate.
While he may have picked up on the fact that Bill C-18 isn’t necessarily a censorship law, so say that censorship laws doesn’t exist in this country at all shows that he clearly hasn’t been paying attention.
First of all, Canada does have a censorship law in the form of the Online Streaming Act. The Online Streaming Act is designed to force platforms to completely rework their algorithms to promote government approved speech (ala “Cancon”). This is generally content that has manipulated the Cancon certification requirements to be classified as such, not necessarily content made by Canadians in general. In fact, there are huge swaths of Canadian made content out there that is not considered “Cancon”. While certain movies like Turning Red or The Handmaid’s Tale are famous examples of this, countless videos and podcasts made by Canadians posted online are also in the same boat.
As a result, the Canadian government, through the CRTC, is demanding that specific outcomes of those algorithms promote the government approved speech over everyone else. The practical affect in doing this is that other content, including Canadian made content, gets demoted in the algorithms. This is simple math. If 5 video’s can be promoted to a user, and only 2 of them can be something that is not government certified speech, then that increases the odds your content isn’t going to get promoted. As a result, Canadian speech is getting pushed down and ghettoized to a place where no one has a chance at finding out about your material because they are being promote Canadian Heritage moment pieces instead. It is specifically this that has got many legal experts and observers like myself thinking that this law is blatantly unconstitutional. Either way, when content is being suppressed by the government, if that’s not government censorship without outright removal of said speech, I don’t honestly know what is.
Second, Canada is on the verge of getting a second censorship law. Given the obviously Liberal leanings of this editor, it’s actually kind of shocking he didn’t point this out. That comes in the form of Bill S-210 (AKA Canada’s Age Verification law). The idea is to lock down huge swaths of the internet for everyday internet users because of content that might be considered “explicit”. The only way to access the full uncensored internet is to hand over massive amounts of highly sensitive personal information such as facial recognition scans or drivers licenses to every website that is being forced to censor their content. The practical knock-on effect is that right wing politicians now have a tool to silence LGBTQ+ material in the process by classifying all as material “for a sexual purpose” regardless of intent. Again, if this isn’t government censorship, I don’t know what is.
You would think that someone who has a great big long opinion about tech policy would know all of this, but evidently not. A simple explanation that can be drawn here is that he’s just really really bad at his job, but who knows.
Of course, his piece just gets worse the further you read it. Here’s the next bit that he was dumb enough to publish:
We assume he’s referring to the Online News Act (Bill C-18), which is aimed “to ensure that dominant platforms compensate news businesses when their content is made available on their services.”
In other words, when big players like Google or Meta share news content created by Canadian media companies, and benefits from the billions of views those stories produce, then companies like Google must pay for that privilege.
Not only is the description he used in quotes highly misleading, but the subsequent paragraph completely misrepresents what happens in the real online world today. So, let’s unpack the many ways the editor here either lied or mislead readers (seemingly very intentionally, I might add, considering he should know better than this given the business he is in in the first damned place).
First of all, Google and Meta don’t “share” anything without authorization.
In the case of Google, specifically with Google News, publishers have to submit an XML sitemap and equip their website with technology for Google to read the news. After that, they have to submit information to Google. In other words in order to appear on Google News, you have to get permission first. This obviously implies that consent is granted by publishers first before even appearing on such a service.
Separately, in the case of Meta, publishers have to create a page on Meta or Instagram, insert information and whatever images the publisher deems necessary, then set up something like a plugin for their website to begin automating the process of sharing news links on Meta platforms (the most common way news gets shared on those platforms). In the process, permission to use those links is basically implied by publishers voluntarily doing all of this just to appear on those platforms.
A far less common method these days is users voluntarily publishing news links. Frequently, those users are the journalists themselves trying to promote their own work, but on occasion, other users might share something from time to time. Even in those cases, this is very far removed from the comment about how “Meta share news content”. Meta is not doing the “sharing” in any of the above cases – and neither is Google.
Now, let’s examine the clearly misused phrase “news content”. When you think of the phrase, “news content”, what does that mean? If you are a reasonably sane person who knows a thing or two about the internet, you think of the page you are reading right now. You are reading the body of a news article right now. You are right to assume that you are looking at “news content” right now.
This is very far removed from what gets posted onto platforms like Google, Facebook, and Instagram (at least before news links got understandably dropped by Meta over a year ago). In virtually every post that is made, what gets posted is a thumbnail of an image, a link, the headline, a short summary or first paragraph, and maybe some hash tags depending on the platform. That is not “news content”. Never was, never will be. What that is is essentially an advertisement to click through to the publishers website to read the full article.
Publishers throughout the sector know that they have a damn good reason to do this. When users click on those links, it means that their page gets additional traffic. The knock-on effect is that their ads get more views, they have more chances to get more subscribers, and they get better brand recognition. It’s the publishers themselves that derive a benefit from this activity. Publishers are basically tapping into what is considered the second most visited website on the entire planet so that they can get additional eyeballs onto their content. Not only this, but publishers up until the news links got dropped on Meta platforms paid Meta to “boost” their posts so that their links get additional exposure. This is not earth shattering and you can look up ad spending of various publishers via their respective transparency reports.
So why use the phrase “news content” in the first place? It’s intentionally used to mislead readers into believing that the platforms are scraping whole articles and republishing them without permission. That, of course, was never a thing, but while some lobbyists have used the term “scraping” directly, others pick the safer phrase of “news content” to try and put a fig leaf of plausible deniability in the process. In the entire time I have covered the Online News Act since it’s inception, I’ve seen numerous outlets make the claim that whole articles are being republished without permission, yet none of them ever show actual evidence that this is even happening. It was just straight up defamation being employed every single time. No one has ever posted evidence that this was ever a thing. Why? Because it didn’t happen. I’ve dared everyone who said otherwise to point me to evidence that Meta and Google are directly engaged in this activity and every time, it was either them changing the subject or disappearing altogether.
Taking this a step further, let’s pretend that the platforms are engaging in this activity. What form of recourse do the publishers have? Litigation. Simply put, the publishers can file a copyright infringement lawsuit against the platforms for this activity. Alternatively, they can use the DMCA because both companies operate in the US. Simply file a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notice and you’ll see the infringing material disappear pretty quickly. They are obligated to follow the laws under the US DMCA and one of those requirements is to take down infringing material. There is literally no need for a brand new law for any of this. No need for lobbying, no need for hoping this law gets passed, just using existing law to take down infringing material. Notice that the publishers mysteriously don’t take that rout. Why? Because they damn well know that this is not a thing that actually happens.
Ultimately, the use of the phrase “news content” in this context is little more than the mentioned editor being a complete chucklefuck.
Now lets get into the last part of that second paragraph which reads “and benefits from the billions of views those stories produce, then companies like Google must pay for that privilege”. Simply put, this is false.
In copyright law here in Canada, there is an exception known as “fair dealing”. It’s a similar concept to the US more famous “fair use”. Simply put, if you use a copyrighted work, that doesn’t automatically mean that rights holders are entitled to compensation. If you are using, say, an image for educational purposes, not only does the person doing the educating not need to compensate the rights holder for the use of that image, but the educator in question doesn’t even necessarily need to acquire permission for the use of that image. There are, of course, nuances involved here, but the general idea does stand: there are exemptions to copyright law. You can read alternative sources of this like this example:
If, having taken into account these considerations, the use can be characterized as ‘fair’ and it was for the purpose of research, private study, education, satire, parody, criticism, review or news reporting, then it is likely to fall within the fair dealing exception and will not require permission from the copyright owner. In addition, if your purpose is criticism, review or news reporting you must also mention the source and author of the work. For further clarity and additional information about limits on the amount and nature of copying permitted under fair dealing in certain contexts, please see the Application of Fair Dealing under Policy R30.04. The application of these limits to teaching at SFU is outlined in the top section of the Copyright and Teaching infographic.
It’s also why I can use someone’s logo for my news reporting because it is for the purpose of criticism, review, and/or news reporting.
Now, it is obviously the publishers themselves that are frequent the ones posting these news links in the first place which really should negate this debate about fair dealing, but even if it was the platforms themselves posting the news links without any action on the part of the publishers, the use is still arguably fair dealing.
An important legal question when delving into this topic is whether or not the material in question competes with the original product. Any sane judge is going to look at the two instances and conclude that the link is not only not competing with the original product, but it actually benefits the creators of the original product (in the form of additional traffic).
Another key question is the nature of the link. Is it in the public interest that users find out about this article? The answer is going to be “yes” and it would be insane for the publisher to argue that it is against the public interest for the public to know about their work.
Also, is this use repeated or is it a one time thing? Arguably, it is a one time thing because, more often than not, it is posted once in a timeline and that’s it.
Ultimately, it is the publisher who benefits, not necessarily the platform here.
Of course, the editor doesn’t allow facts to get in the way of a good lie filled rant. He then went on to say this:
The law is simple, fair and in the best interests of Canadian journalism organizations — and something Google has agreed to, by the way.
The first part about this is highly misleading and the second part of this is completely false.
First of all, there is nothing simple about the law. The law itself contains a whopping 93 sections and contains so much legalese, it requires someone with a certain amount of background in law to read it.
Second of all, the law is not fair as it was intended to benefit the largest players in the sector (ala mainstream media). The smaller players are left screwed over in all of this. There is, after all, a very good reason why the independent press (including Freezenet) in Canada turned out in droves to sign a petition opposing the then legislation. One angle that this law is unfair is that it calculates compensation based on full time journalists. The more full time journalists you hire, the more compensation the news organization receives. Who employs almost all of the full time journalists? The large mainstream media outlets of course! At one point, the CBC was actually expected to get a whopping one third of all the revenue that did come out of this whole debacle. So much for supporting small local journalism.
What’s more, this law has proven to not be in the best interests of Canadian journalism. What proceeded the passage of this law was sky high executive bonuses, massive waves of layoffs, raising dividend payments at the expense of journalism, consolidation of the news sector, higher dependency on government subsidies, bankruptcies, the gutting of traffic to news sources, and operational slowdowns. On what planet is any of this “in the best interests of Canadian journalism”?
Now, the “and something Google has agreed to, by the way” part is actually false. The Online News Act demanded that platforms pay for linking. If a news link appears on their platform, then the publisher must be compensated for that link even though the publisher derives all the benefits. In response to the Online News Act, Google said that it intended on dropping news links. With Meta already dropping news links, the Canadian government was faced with the impending death of the Canadian news sector. In response, the Canadian government folded to Google and agreed with their originally asked for $100 million fund model. It marked the day the Online News Act link tax concept died. Google never agreed to the government’s demands. In fact, it was the government that agreed to Google’s demands.
We then get to this part:
The only “censorship” being done is solely by Meta (which runs Facebook and Instagram).
This is yet another lie by this editor. Meta is not engaging in “censorship”. What Meta is engaging in is a refusal of service which is perfectly legal under the law.
The above is basically a riff of Big Lie 2.0 which argued that Meta is stopping all users from accessing news (which never was ever true).
At no point is the government or the courts blocking access to any of the material. So, by definition, what Meta is engaged in is not actually “censorship”.
What the mainstream media and big publishing tried to do was say that Meta should be paying them whenever they post news links on their platforms. In response, Meta said “no”. In response to that refusal, Big Publishing and Mainstream Media tried to completely flip copyright law on its head and say that referencing material is compensible activity through the Online News Act. What Meta did in response was to refuse to host news links on their platform, thereby being in full compliance of the law as a result. What this editor is basically whining about is that Meta didn’t give in to their ransom demands and are paying a steep price for their unchecked greed.
Meta, obviously, is a private company. They can moderate and do what they wish on their own website. If they don’t like certain kinds of content, they can have that content removed. That is their right. It’s the same reason why bar owners can kick patrons out of their bar if they don’t want their presence. It is their private property and the can conduct business how they wish so long it is within the bounds of the law. Refusing to allow news links on their platforms is well within the bounds of the law.
The editor then ends that part of the rant by saying, in part, this:
The company has not agreed to pay its fair share and in response to the laws Canada passed to help ensure journalism organizations get paid, it has banned Canadian news on its platforms.
This show the core values of companies like Meta are not to help you, but to exploit you.
It is true that the company refused to pay the ransom payments, but the “fair share” was always zero. This is, again, because publishers derive the benefits of sharing their news links on the platform, not really the platforms themselves. If anything, a strong case can be made that it’s the publishers that are the ones that owe companies like Meta money for all the opportunities they offered to them.
To specifically address the part that says “to help ensure journalism organizations get paid”, the problem with this is that it was never the job of the platforms to pay journalism outlets in the first place. There was never an expectation, law, or obligation that says that platforms must pay news organizations. It is up to the news organizations themselves to derive revenue from the product they send out to the world. To simply outsource that revenue gathering to a company from a completely different industry and classify it as an obligation is completely ludicrous and shows just how entitled to free money this particular editor feels.
Briefly, to address the line, “it has banned Canadian news on its platforms”, I’ll just say that this is Meta’s right. If they don’t like a certain kind of content, they are free to remove it. You may not like it, but the only thing you can really do about it is complain about it. Meta made it’s decision, deal with it.
In the final paragraph, the editor makes it abundantly clear that he is not shy about projection here. While I’m not going to deny that Meta has exploitative tendencies, the publishers themselves were trying (badly) to be exploitative. Many lobbyists argued that Meta depends on news links (they do not) and felt that they can force Meta into paying their ransoms by exploiting what they thought was that dependency. Those lobbyists were very VERY wrong about this and after Meta dropped news links, users themselves ultimately decided that the loss of news links was no big deal and continued to use Meta and continue on with business as usual. Ultimately, the scheme to exploit Meta failed spectacularly.
The section then continued with what has to be the most ironic part of the whole article:
So recap: Poilievre calls Bill C-18 a censorship law, which it absolutely is not. He’s being blatantly misleading. And to the average, uninformed voter who doesn’t understand it, it could seem true.
We mean this with as little offence as possible, but he’s relying on his voter base to not be smart enough to know the difference.
Separately, the editor says this:
And secondly, the notion that any legitimate newspaper would simply print “propaganda” for any party is ludicrous.
I’ll give you a moment to stop laughing.
The parts that I’ve highlighted are, in fact, propaganda, blatant lies, misleading statements, and comments designed to mislead uninformed readers. It shows a complete lack of self-awareness.
This piece is just the latest example of how the mainstream media well and truly manufactures and spreads disinformation. I know some people will try and give this editor the benefit of a doubt and say he just doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but I’m not going to do that. You don’t go through the trouble of running a website presence, understand how to promote your work through social media, understanding how traffic and ads work, and then turn around and publish crap like this after. There is no way he didn’t know better in my mind. All of this was intentional to mislead readers as far as I’m concerned.
The ironic thing is the fact that he is defending a law that is actively hurting his own business. The reason why he can’t share news links on Meta platforms is because of this law. The reason why his traffic has no doubt crashed over the last year and a half was because of the Online News Act. What’s more, the reason why fewer and fewer people are trusting news organizations like his is because self-described “journalists” like him shoved journalistic integrity in the trash and actively and knowingly published false and misleading statements and sold it off as “news”. People like him are hurting themselves to hurt themselves. The pain they are experiencing is entirely self-inflicted.
If anyone is wondering why I’ve had less respect for mainstream journalism in the last while, it’s crap like this why I have less respect. I have to go through the process of meticulously correcting the recording and debunking this blatant misinformation by people who call themselves “credible”. If the editor in question has any self respect, he would retract that piece and issue an apology. I doubt he will because he is apparently in the misinformation business. If anything, I would expect him to double down and lie harder if there is any reaction at all. At least you know Freezenet is honest with its reporting here, so there’s that.
(Via @Pagmenzies)
