Bill C-18 supporters snapped up another loss again. Traffic on Facebook has remained unchanged following the news link block.
Publishers need platforms more than platforms need publishers. This mantra has remained true for pretty much any link tax legislation considered. Yet, no matter how many times this concept is explained to supporters of the legislation, the responses range from being accused of being a shill for Big Tech to not understanding how any of this works. Supporters, unfortunately, are finding out that they have been living in a reality bubble built on a series of lies that they bought into. Critics like us knew what they heck we were talking about and remain steadfast in our observations no matter how many personal attacks we received (and people like us have received a LOT of personal attacks from supporters for stating the obvious over the years).
Us critics relied on this thing called “evidence”. That evidence has repeatedly concluded that people use platforms like Facebook for other reasons – the most common is connecting with each other. What’s more, those social connections are strong methods of encouraging people to stick to the platform in question. So, even if some users used Facebook to read the news, losing news had no hope in discouraging people from using the platform.
Of course, supporters had to learn this the hard way. Believing that all of Canada was behind them in their cause and that news was the only reason people use platforms like Facebook (LOL!), one lobby group FRIENDS launched a 2nd boycott of Meta, encouraging users to stop using Meta platforms for a period of 48 hours. The claim was that Meta relies on eyeballs and if everyone disappeared, Meta would have no choice but to cave to their demands. To the surprise of no one paying attention, the boycott ended in abysmal failure with no evidence that it was even noticed to any considerable degree on Facebook.
The failed boycott was a followup to the original boycott of Meta when the government encouraged advertisers to stop advertising on the platform. The boycott failed about the same time as it began when the Liberal party refused to participate in the very boycott they were encouraging. The only organizations that participated were already invested in seeing the legislation succeed and they wound up not having very big advertising budgets in the first place.
So, now that we are nearly a month into the news link blocking, the question some may have is how is Facebook’s traffic doing? As it turns out, the loss of news links isn’t even denting Facebooks overall traffic. From the Globe and Mail:
Meta’s decision to block news links in Canada this month has had almost no impact on Canadians’ usage of Facebook, data from independent tracking firms indicated on Tuesday, as the company faces scorching criticism from the Canadian government over the move.
Daily active users of Facebook and time spent on the app in Canada have stayed roughly unchanged since parent company Meta started blocking news there at the start of August, according to data shared by Similarweb, a digital analytics company that tracks traffic on websites and apps, at Reuters’ request.
Another analytics firm, Data.ai, likewise told Reuters that its data was not showing any meaningful change to usage of the platform in Canada in August.
The estimates, while early, appear to support Meta’s contention that news holds little value for the company as it remains locked in a tense standoff in Canada over a new law requiring internet giants to pay publishers for the news articles shared on their platforms.
The findings confirms what Meta has said all along. News is easily replaceable on their platforms. These comments were repeated during the senate hearing where these comments were flatly stated. At the time, such comments got push back from some senators because of the myth that all of these comments of dropping news links was just a bluff and platforms can’t live without news links. Some might have viewed my analysis as just shilling for Meta, but I believed their comments simply because all of the evidence pointed in that direction.
The findings is also incredibly devastating news for supporters of the legislation. The hope for supporters was that Facebook would take a big hit to their traffic, encouraging them to give up their position and go along with the link tax scheme after all. The traffic hit never materialized and the only thing left is media companies missing out on the traffic they might have otherwise gotten. As I’ve said many times over already, the large media companies are in the process of “finding out”. They got themselves effectively kicked off of one of the largest platforms on the planet right now and they not only got nothing out of it, but they also are seeing a chunk of their traffic vanishing in the process – critical for a websites survival.
This situation was entirely self-inflicted and predictable. Talking points can only get you so far. Reality has a way of coming back and biting you if you think you can just invent a controversy and offer a completely warped perspective – in this case, a completely backwards perspective on how copyright law works. As I’ve also repeatedly said, the only way to reverse this is to rescind the law. That isn’t likely going to happen. Google has yet to act, but they are likely to act soon. Facebook’s experience is likely only going to encourage Google to follow suit because the theories and data are proving to be highly accurate. It’s almost as if we actually knew what we were all talking about all this time.
(Via @MGeist)
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
