A recent decision by Meta to not renew their link tax ransom payments in Australia has the media their hitting the panic button.
In recent weeks, it seems that Meta has finally had an epiphany of sorts when it comes to the whole business of link taxes. That epiphany is that it’s not worth it to go along with link taxes. The company certainly had the right idea when it suspended news links in Australia back in 2021. Yet, after a week, both Google and Facebook surprised experts when they both eventually caved and started signing deals.
In the weeks that followed, observers and experts alike started looking for answers. Why would the platforms cave to something like this? The decision, ultimately, made no sense. The platforms don’t rely that much on news links to support their business models in the first place, so why pay the ransom payments?
In banding about ideas, one working theory stood out among the rest. That is an effort to solidify their market dominance and protect themselves from any possible competition in the future in their respective industries. The idea is that if it costs $100 million to even enter into the Search market or the social media market, then future possible competitors would balk at even trying. It was ultimately the best working theory to describe their motives people like us had at the time.
Now, just because we had a plausible working theory doesn’t necessarily mean we thought it was necessarily wise thinking. After all, this is a short term solution fraught with long term problems. The biggest long term problem, of course, is that other countries, and their respective publishing monopolies, would concoct a similar link tax scheme in their own respective industry. It would only be a matter of time before people in other countries actively seek their pound of flesh in all of this as well. After all, it’s basically free money they are seeking in the end.
Well, fast forward all these years later and that’s… precisely what happened. Countries like France, the UK, the US, and Canada all are either pushing for or passing their own respective link tax laws. All this under the obviously false thinking that platforms are somehow “stealing” news content from publishers and that publishers are demanding a license for that use.
The reality is that publishers have been reaping huge benefits for posting their own news links on these platforms as they hope to garner as many eyeballs on their web pages as possible. For platforms like Meta owned platforms, news publishers posting their content onto their platforms was just a nice side benefit of allowing anyone to communicate on their platforms. A sort of “nice to have”, if you will.
Somewhere between after Meta and Google agreeing to pay the Australian ransom payments and when the Canadian government tabled Bill C-18 is when Meta realized that those critical of their move to cave to the Australian link tax may have been right all along. The dollar signs of going along with this scheme was quickly adding up by the hundreds of millions. Although a company like Meta is huge, sooner or later, the math is going to catch up to them. Meta ultimately chose to do what it should’ve done in Australia: drop news links should any further link tax laws get passed.
Lobbyists insisted that this was all just a big fancy “bluff” and Meta would never do such a thing. Those pushing that conspiracy ran head on into the brick wall of reality on August 1st of last year when Meta dropped news links.
Dazed from the impact, the lobbyists pushing the Canadian link tax went into full denial and said that the block wouldn’t last a week because, you know, they did this in Australia and they folded there. All they needed to do was just believe hard enough and hold on and things will just magically work itself out. After all, Meta won’t last even a week before they cave. It’s just their playbook, after all.
Yeah, that didn’t happen.
All these months later and Meta still hasn’t come back to “negotiate those deals”. Angrily pounding the table, the lobbyists insisted that Meta is totally hurting from this decision. They shouted how they are “cutting off their noses to spite their faces”. Yet, Meta didn’t budge. The end results of all of this were highly predictable. Meta’s traffic remained unchanged, the users didn’t miss the presence of news links, and traffic to the media companies pages collapsed.
It’s almost as if publishers needed platforms far more than platforms needed publishers. Who would’ve thought?
Either way, the impact on users was actually quite minimal. For most users, the lack of news links is, at most, a little odd, but users continued using Meta, carrying on this business as usual. The truth in the matter is that users just casually flip through the posts on their feeds. If they see something interesting, they’ll click on it. Otherwise, they just keep scrolling. News was just one of many kinds of posts in their feeds and not something they actively seek on the platforms. It is clear that they aren’t really bothered by the lack of the presence of news links in the first place.
More recently, however, Meta followed through on their earlier comments about how the deals they made in Australia probably won’t be renewed. As we noted, Meta announced that they would not be renewing their deals. Instead, they are opting to just drop news links in Australia like they did in Canada.
The decision has apparently spooked Australian publishers. We were tipped off by Dylan Lindgren to an article published on The Guardian Australia about how Canada’s version of Meta has apparently turned completely toxic:
Misleading viral clickbait dominates Facebook and Instagram in Canada after Meta pulled news from its platforms nine months ago, according to an expert. Now Australia could face a similar scenario online with the company preparing to battle the Australian government over payments to news organisations.
These are pretty wild claims. As a Canadian, the news that this is happening is, well, news to me as well as a vast majority of Canadians. We’re, of course, assuming there is evidence of this, right?
Non-news content created by viral content makers has filled the space left by news stories.
“A real-world, newsless Facebook turns out to be more toxic than I had anticipated,” Quebec University journalism professor, Jean-Hughes Roy, said.
In 2022, Roy conducted a simulation of what users would see on Facebook if news was banned, but said he found the reality of the ban worse than his simulation predicted.
“Viral content producers feed on news content, make it more sensational by adding misleading or false details and publish it on their Facebook pages or Instagram accounts. Such content isn’t blocked by Meta, while actual news is.”
So, apparently, the answer is “no, there’s no evidence to support the claims”. This is just the rantings and ravings of some random guy.
Of course, the outlet is financially motivated to push these conspiracy theories in the first place. After all, it’s major media outlets that hoovered up the cash that has been flowing from Meta in the first place. So, as a result, no conspiracy theory should be left behind.
Here’s the reality of the situation. Let’s assume this crazy scenario is really happening. Let’s pretend for a minute that sensational click bait is dominating everyone’s Facebook feeds. What do you think would happen? People would leave. Exactly.
Large media outlets have built up this thinking for years that the entire world revolves around their news content. They are the centre of attention and no one lives outside their respective reality bubbles of news content. Now, let’s burst that bubble by pointing out that people who use Meta are just people in the general population with differing interests. Some people are into sewing. Some people are into talking it up with their family members. Heck, some people might be interested in fishing and hunting.
The reality is that there is (and always have been) a segment of the population who have no interest in following politics. For some, politics is divisive and they want no part of it. For others, politics is just not something they are interested in and will just tune it out. Then there are those who are into politics who choose not to engage in the most extreme political hot takes.
Now, visualize these kinds of people being hit with a bombardment of far right conspiracy theories. We’re talking non-stop anti-vaxxer posts, constant grift “donation drives” for Trump, racism, bigotry, hot takes that turn off 90% of people, and so on and so forth. How do you think they are going to react? They are going to leave the platform and look for alternatives.
This is consistent with what research shows on why people use platforms like Facebook. There have been multiple studies that concluded that people most frequently use platforms like Facebook to communicate with friends and family or to share photos or videos. News content trails both of these. Depending on the study, news content either trails by a bit or is way off into the list of random other things people use Facebook for.
As even the Guardian Australia admitted, people are still sticking with Facebook:
But the move does not appear to have dented how Canadians use Facebook.
Figures from two digital analytics companies, shared with Reuters, show the number of daily active users on Facebook, and time spent on the social network, are largely unchanged since the news block began.
People I know personally know me as someone who is into tech and is following stories like this closely. The only things I’ve ever had people say to me about Facebook are that they personally saw the ads warning that news link support is ending and that they discovered that they really can’t share news links after all since the ban took place. That’s it. No bombardment of conspiracy theories, no bombardment of click bait headlines, nothing. Just that Facebook seems a little different now that there is no news links visible.
It’s unclear where this guy came up with the conspiracy theory that Canadians are completely inundated with click bait and misinformation, but one thing is clear: Canadians haven’t noticed.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
