MENZIES: Canadians could be without news on Facebook until 2025

This just in from our news overlords at the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission – news might be off of Facebook for a year and a half, maybe two. 

If you haven’t heard, news cannot be posted on Facebook or Instagram as Meta has responded to the federal Bill C-18, known as the News Act. They have to pay an uncapped amount of dollars to these news companies for the privilege of hosting their articles. 

Meta and Google are being scapegoated for people’s want to access news in the ways they want, and so they’ve said, to hell with it. No news at all. 

It’s been a tumultuous few weeks watching this play out so far. But in Canada, we call it “the new normal.” 

On Friday, the CRTC released its plan on the next steps for how negotiations between news companies and the tech giants will go. 

And don’t worry, by 2025 it will all be sorted out. 

This fall, the CRTC will do the oh-so-needed consultation process. Are you affected by the News Act: we want to hear from you!

Oh, do you? Do you really? 

All these comments will guide the framework – comments received will form part of the public record and will inform the CRTC’s decision on how bargaining will work, the eligibility of news organizations, and addressing complaints, etc, etc. 

That report will be done by next summer, they say, no need to rush anything here, everything’s working so well. 

Then once those “eligible news organizations” (their words not mine) are selected, along with independent arbitrators (I’m not sure Trudeau has enough family members for this), then the mandatory bargaining will begin. 

Around that late 2024/early 2025 mark. 

What’s the hurry? There haven’t been tremendous emergencies where the need for useful information to spread rapidly could’ve helped via Meta. Nor shootings at the country’s biggest mall. Hell, did you hear the Edmonton Elks even won a game? 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has shown no sign of backing down, while the world looks at us with alarm. 

He said that Facebook is putting profits ahead of people’s lives during these disasters. 

This is a little rich, since it’s his government that enacted a bill which put no limits on what Meta would be charged for every news link published. 

CBC could publish every news link on its feed and make x amount of money per every link – that’s what the tech giant is worried about. Where is the cap? 

Look, Meta is not some angelic company. But if we’re going to pick a fight, let’s pick one about censorship on the platform, algorithm malfeasance, dubious fact-checkers, and fake accounts, if anything. 

This is also a gentle reminder that many of the small outlets that are exclusively digital are vehemently against this bill, the same ones that are supposed to benefit the most from this. 

Why? Because two years of waiting to negotiate something is enough to crater many businesses, and the government interfering with their business hurts business. 

The legislation throws untold amounts of uncertainty on the exclusively digital platforms. 

By the way, Meta does pay the top Facebook pages, or at least did before this bill. 

This is purely for the major telecoms, particularly the upper echelons in those companies, to claw back money they’ve lost as the world has evolved, plain and simple. 

It also allows the government to dictate what an “eligible” news outlet is. 

There is no guarantee by any stretch that journalism is being protected here. How many new journalists were hired by the legacy giants when the feds handed out hundreds of millions in grant money the last time around? 

Forgive me if I seem a little skeptical here, for this government’s track and record of paying lip service, wrapping itself in the flag of Good and Right, while not looking at the real-world impacts their laws have on the people they’re supposed to help – is crystal clear in my eyes. 

Let’s end this silly turf war and get to the bargaining table tomorrow. This bill only hurts Canadians, and I fear, only further lines the pockets of execs who abandoned local news coverage years ago…