Meta has made the next step in distancing itself from news. This by ending the Facebook news tab in both the US and Australia.
Throughout the Bill C-18/Online News Act debate in Canada, supporters of the bill repeatedly said that Meta depended on “news content” (more accurately, news links). Many took to the extreme of saying that without those links, Meta would practically shut down as a company overnight because there would be nothing to talk about otherwise. The reality has always been that people use platforms like Facebook to communicate with friends and family. Studies have repeatedly stated as much. Yet, for supporters at the time, this reality is just what “Big Tech” want you to believe. Through clever cherry picking of data (at best), they continued to repeat claims that platforms like Facebook depend on news links, full stop. Anyone saying otherwise is just a “shill” for “Big Tech”.
Supporters of Canada’s link tax law went shoulder to the wheel on this thinking that if you just believe hard enough, everything will magically work itself out. Meta will bend at the knee and negotiate deals, Google would negotiate individual deals, the large media companies will score a huge payday, and supporters will get to shout from the rooftops “I told you so” for years to come.
Obviously, that never happened.
Instead, Meta dropped news links altogether in Canada on August 1st, 2023. Supporters immediately said how Canada’s media companies should just “hold on” because Meta wouldn’t last a week without news links. After all, it’s what happened in Australia, so obviously, it’s going to happen in Canada too.
Obviously, that never happened either.
To date, Meta has not restored news links in Canada. With only days left of the link tax coming into force, Google was threatening to do the same thing. Faced with impending doom for publishers, the Canadian government folded to Google, handing them everything they wanted and calling it a “deal”. The result, of course, was that the link tax that the media companies spent years trying to will into existence was officially dead.
Desperate to declare any kind of victory, supporters shouted about how getting the $100 million fund model (the same model that was originally asked for in the first place) was somehow a “win”. The problem is that a chunk of that money isn’t even new money with already existing deals being rolled into that cash. With the pull out of Meta, the media was actually, optimistically, operating at a loss to the tune of $130 million per year.
While all of this was a devastating loss for the Canadian media, the damage being felt would only spread further. Back in Australia, Meta announced that they would not be renewing the “deals” they inked for the Australian link tax on top of it all. Even ground zero for the global push for a link tax was no longer safe.
Faced with sharing the same fate as Canada, the Australian media went into full blown panic mode and started publishing conspiracy theories. The claims were that Facebook in Canada is clogged with conspiracy theories and misinformation thanks to the newsless environment. If nothing is done in Australia to prevent Meta’s pull out, then Australia would share the same fate. Obviously, the conspiracy theory was backed by no real evidence whatsoever save for an anecdote of some random person, but the goal was to spread fear more than anything else.
The development caused Australian politicians to scramble for solutions. Some went so far as to push for including TikTok and YouTube into the link tax scheme. If lawmakers can’t tax people for linking to news, maybe they can tax people for talking about the news to shore up those losses. The concept is as insane as it sounds and would very likely cause even further damage in Australia as other platforms would contemplate simply removing themselves from the country as well, killing even more spinoff jobs and economic benefits in the process.
Rod Sims, one of the largest players in making Australia’s link tax a reality, is now facing an incredible amount of humiliation. For a time, he was lobbying other countries to pass their own link taxes on a quest to make link taxes a global reality. Now, he was witnessing the collapse of the link tax in his own backyard. He took to Australian media to defend his link tax by engaging in finger pointing and pushing nonsense about the link tax – a rather common response for supporters of link taxes these days.
Regardless of the panic among supporters of Australia’s link tax, it is becoming increasingly clear that Australia is likely to share the same fate as Canada. Recently, Facebook dropped the news tab in both the US and Australia. From The Guardian:
Facebook has closed down its news tab as its parent company, Meta, follows through with plans to reduce news content available on its services.
The news tab was inaccessible for users in Australia as of Tuesday but the company said it would take a number of days to fully shut it down in Australia and the United States.
A Meta spokesperson said there would be no change to publishers’ ability to use Facebook.
“They can continue to benefit from our free tools and products, which they can voluntarily use, should they want to,” she said.
“We hope the government sees the many benefits our free services provide to publishers and we’ll continue to engage with them on this topic.”
To be fair, the gradual reduction of the reach of news links has been going on for years now. Gradual changes in algorithms have meant that news links appear in fewer and fewer people’s feeds. This save for paid “boosted” posts where news publishers pay Meta to have their links to appear in more people’s feeds after. For the most part, users seem quite content on seeing less news in their feeds as Meta continues to be a dominant platform in the first place. All hopes that Facebook would suffer as a result of fewer news links have been dashed long ago.
Australian lawmakers pushing the link tax now find themselves more or less roped over a barrel here. Retaliating against Meta by designating them under the News Bargaining Code would almost certainly see the company drop news links from their platforms. Because of that, Australian media companies would be on the receiving end of a double whammy. First, their source of free money is drying up. Second, all the benefits of being present on Meta platforms would get wiped out overnight on top of it all. As Canadian publishers know all too well, that can prove to be fatal for a news business.
As for the US, there have been off again on again pushes for a link tax both at the state level and the federal level. Dropping the news tab ahead of any passage of an American version of a link tax would likely head off the efforts before it gets to the point Canada and Australia find themselves in. Why wait for a link tax to de-prioritize news links? After all, waiting only encouraged link tax supporters to pass these laws in the first place.
At the very least, the move in Australia was a long time coming. On Meta’s part, signing last minute deals with the Australian government was a short term solution to a long term problem all those years ago. As we accurately predicted at the time, everyone was going to want their pound of flesh from the platforms and inking those deals was only going to encourage publishers from other countries to push for similar laws. That’s exactly what happened in the years since. Signing those deals proved to be a mistake for both Meta and Google. What we are in the process of witnessing is Meta correcting their mistake all those years ago.
