38 ms·

Ottawa pulls advertising, escalating showdown with Facebook and Instagram

149 points by bparsons 3y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
I'm not sure I'd want my government spending money on ads anyway.
- gruez 3y ago
  The government needs to get out messages to its citizens. If ads on facebook is more cost effective than sending out mailers or whatever, why shouldn't they spend money on facebook ads?
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    Who is living under a rock and not getting bombarded with political BS every second on FB but seeing FB ads from PBS? I'm just not sure that's a good forum for governments to try to get out a message.
    - throw0101c 3y ago
      If social media platforms can identify certain demographics, like those who smoke cigarettes, then why wouldn't the government use that to (e.g.) target 'Would you like help to quit smoking?' program availability ads to them? * https://www.ontario.ca/page/support-quit-smoking https://www.ontario.ca/page/support-quit-smoking * https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/smoking-tobacco/quit-smoking.html https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/smoking-toba...
      - rightbyte 3y ago
        The government can put ads on the packages of cigarettes them self for free. Without the moral defeat of benefiting from spyware. Why would you want to waste tax money on Zuckerberg's mansions. Etc.
  - everybodyknows 3y ago
    Because it selectively reaches only Facebook users. So the government can begin tailoring messages to certain demographics, for maximum "effect".
  - BluePen7 3y ago
    Because our government doesn't understand technology and generally gets fleeced anytime they encounter it. Remember the Phenix pay system? It was an IBM project that was supposed to save us 70 million a year, instead they paid IBM an additional 2+ BILLION to try and fix the broken crap they'd delivered. Never even worked, they're currently taking bids to replace it already. 80% of public servants had pay issues, many were foreclosed on because they couldn't pay their mortgages, someone even killed themselves. And we expect the Canadian government to accurately determine ROI on digital ad spend? That's hard enough for skilled people in the space (some who have found it to have no effect altogether). Our government is simply going to be fleeced for every penny they have (and then some). Remember, these are the same people who shut down the CRA website every night. Can't even access your tax info after hours.
    - derefr 3y ago
      > Remember the Phenix pay system? It was an IBM project that was supposed to save us 70 million a year, instead they paid IBM an additional 2+ BILLION to try and fix the broken crap they'd delivered. Never even worked, they're currently taking bids to replace it already. Do you really believe that this was a result of bad in-the-moment decision-making at all levels, instead of a result of being trapped by previously-negotiated long-term vendor exclusivity agreements? (In my experience, governments are generally good at cutting their losses — they're far more rational re: the sunk-cost fallacy than individual people are. So it would be surprising to me if this were true.)
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        Actually, they're as bad as everyone else at that, e.g, Obamacare website; state of Maine website; lots more. And then we have, by three or four orders of magnitude, the great Sunk Cost Fallacy of all time, by anyone ever: Not ending World War One in 1915, 1916, or 1917: "All those lives and treasure we've spent! We have to get something for it." And so we had the Spanish Flu, which killed more than the combat deaths, and of course, the combat deaths. https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu Not to mention World War Two.
    - 3y ago
  - stan3223 3y ago
    Social media companies are really in business of personal data collection. Based on younger generation being so switched on about news I think 'news' are really being force fed into your social feed (rather than you fetching the news). Governments spending tax payer money with these companies are really approving this sort of unethical behavior.
- bawolff 3y ago
  Idk, if we could bring back the heritage minutes and the canadian house hippo, I'm all for it.
- vortext 3y ago
  I don't agree with the bill, but yes, I don't want the government to spend money on Meta ads either.
chomp 3y ago
> Facebook has decided to be unreasonable, irresponsible, and started blocking news. Are they acting unreasonably though? There is a product, and the government rules it has a price. Isn't Facebook allowed to go, sorry, I don't like that price?
- fwlr 3y ago
  If you analyze news as a product, it’s entirely reasonable for Facebook to refuse a price they don’t think is worth it. If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”, as it was taught to me in school - then it does start to look unreasonable. The Canadian government is simply equivocating between these two analyses as it suits them (one could ask, if access to news is so important, whether it’s irresponsible and unreasonable for a government to try to charge a fee for it).
  - bawolff 3y ago
    > If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”, I don't get it - in this analysis would my local coffee shop have to buy and provide free newspapers to me? I'm all for access to free press being a fundamental right. Where you lose me is the part where a private corporation is supposed to subsidize the production of news for me.
    - jtr1 3y ago
      Meta is not your local coffee shop.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        But your local coffee shop probably does have a newspaper rack, so why is Facebook removing theirs such a big deal? Grab a newspaper the next time you get coffee. I don't use any meta property at all and it hasn't impeded my ability to read the news.
      - gameman144 3y ago
intunderflow 3y ago
On the plus side, if Canada double down and lose it will set a strong global precedent against these rent-seeking laws.
- canadiantim 3y ago
  The current Canadian government only knows how to down down, so that's a given.
zpeti 3y ago
Oh no... bids for impressions will decrease in canada by: $0.00001. This is just silly, this is the least of facebook's worries.
infamouscow 3y ago
Seeding control of the mainstream media narrative over this silly law is going to have hilarious implications for the future of the Canadian government. Most importantly, it's now 10x harder to control the narrative and for the government to manufacture consent.
- kneebonian 3y ago
  It's cedeing not seeding.
  - Wistar 3y ago
    It's ceding not cedeing.
- cryotopippto 3y ago
  For this alone they will backtrack really fast.
adjav 3y ago
Note: This article is by the National Post, which is owned by PostMedia, who were one of the main backers of bill C18. Just something to keep in mind.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  For those of us not from Canada[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_News_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_News_Act
  - dotcoma 3y ago
    Not a Metà fan, at all, but I don’t understand why they are being called “unreasonable” and “irresponsible” for blocking news from Canadian newspapers. As they (currently) don’t have an agreement with Canadian newspapers, or perhaps don’t want one, which also seems like a legitimate position to me, the only responsible thing is not to use or link to articles from said newspapers, isn’t it?
    - f33d5173 3y ago
      They had made agreements with torstar prior to this bill passing. They abandoned those agreements when the bill passed. Its hard to avoid the conclusion that they are specifically taking issue with being legally compelled to make such agreements.
    - friend_and_foe 3y ago
      The Canadian government thought they could just force these companies to subsidize their failing news industry, and instead, when the outcome is "alright, fine, you win, we won't pay you in order to make you relevant, we won't 'profit' off of your news any longer, have fun in the dumpster" they're "blocking news." There's nothing unreasonable or irresponsible about this decision at all, what's unreasonable is passing a law trying to squeeze money out of the only places in the world left that still make you relevant and then getting mad when they don't want to be abused.
- gloryjulio 3y ago
jklinger410 3y ago
Facebook holds all the power here. Canadian gov't ad spend is not a significant cudgel.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
regimeld 3y ago
As a Canadian, I find the current government's policy on the internet to be very 1990's. I fully support Google's and Meta's decision to remove Canadian news from their platforms. This is a complete "own-goal" by the government.
- dmix 3y ago
  Probably the biggest self-own in recent memory. I feel bad about the journos/web teams who have to suffer as a consequence of the current gov and the rich Canadian media aristocracy who pushed this through. But I can't say it's going to immediately impact my life. I'm not a particular fan of any of the Canadian media sites besides maybe the hyper local ones like CP24. Nor would I touch the Canadian subreddits with a ten foot pole to go discuss them (some of the worst parts of Reddit). Canadians are already obsessed with American news/politics anyway. They will just be fed slightly more of that than before on social media.
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    I feel similarly, but I do actually like CBC content usually. It's deeply ironic in my mind that one of the meme mantras of the PCs is defunding the CBC, good job literally every other voting MP except the PCs
    - dmix 3y ago
      Instead of defunding it the Liberals created a situation where the CBC will essentially need gov gibs to survive in it's current state, which will certainly be deemed essential for publicly funded Canadian culture projection (that essential part of modern society). Economic self-owns via gov policy driven by the same small set of private school kids in Ottawa and whining about Americans is Canadian culture 101.
      - canadiantim 3y ago
        The CBC gets a billion a year of taxpayer dollars, plus other perks, so large parts of the CBC do already depend on this largess to survive.
stewx 3y ago
The TLDR of this issue: Canadian govt: When someone posts a link to a news article on Facebook, that is like stealing from that news publisher. Facebook: Your logic makes no sense, but okay, we will stop doing that. Govt: No, we don't want you to stop posting the links, we want you to pay a fee every time someone posts a link. Facebook: No thank you. Govt: You're bullying us and behaving irresponsibly! We won't stand for it!
- jamincan 3y ago
  Isn't the issue that Facebook/Google don't just share the link, they share the content behind the link as well?
  - stewx 3y ago
    No, the entire complaint about Facebook and Google is the links themselves. It's not anything about embedding articles (which I don't think either company does). They just show the headline and article metadata provided by the news publishers.
    - tomComb 3y ago
      There are places where they embed the news itself, but that’s a separate issue that’s already been resolved - they pay the publishers for that. Ironically, one of the results of bill C 18 is that those existing deals will get cancelled.
      - 8note 3y ago
        The title is part of the article, isn't it? Especially when people tend to read headlines without reading the actual article
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Isn't the issue that Facebook/Google don't just share the link, they share the content behind the link as well The fundamental issue is they "stole" the classified section that paid for the content. (Secondarily, they commoditized the content by owning the discussion around it.) All that said, this is a solution that only makes sense to folks in media. The right one is a tax that funds a subsidy for news.
kneebonian 3y ago
> “We’ve met both Google and Meta multiple times to better understand the concerns. We believe we have a path forward and we’re willing to continue talking with the platforms,” Rodriguez said. “We’re convinced what Google is asking at this moment can be done through regulations.” This here is the most concerning part. The government is making shady back room deals with large corporations. If I had to guess the nature of the deals is "we won't enforce anything or make you pay anything if you agree to ensure that stories that paint the government in an unfavorable light don't stick around." Even if that's not what the deal is like now that is what it is going to turn into.
- adjav 3y ago
  Given that's exactly what ended up happening in Australia I wouldn't be surprised.
wilg 3y ago
Should HN pay National Post for linking to this article?
tiffanyh 3y ago
Ironically, no FB users will be able to read about this from a Canadian news source.
- wvenable 3y ago
  It's kind of weird to describe FB users as being in a cage where their browser is incapable of going anywhere else.
  - tiffanyh 3y ago
    But FB exactly wants users to stay within their "walled garden".
    - wvenable 3y ago
      There are no walls in this garden. They might want people to stay but they have to work for that.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Just the members in the media cartel. Still plenty of Canadian news sources just not ones demanding payment
- brailsafe 3y ago
  In the future whenever it actually comes into effect
jszymborski 3y ago
I disagree with a lot of C-18 as-is, but I can't pretend like I'm not happy to see the fed gov't not spending ad dollars on Meta.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  Me too. I think this law is ridiculous, but honestly I'm quite happy with all of its impacts. I view news link-sharing on social media as a negative for both news and social media. It drives news sites into hyping inflammatory and polarizing issues, and turns social media sites into a den of divisiveness and fearmongering. In the old days, Facebook was mostly photos, friends' statuses, event announcements, groups, and unsolicited poetry. If this is a step in that direction, then great! And as for Google, if this helps people realize that other search engines actually exist, that's great too! All unrelated to what the bill was actually aiming for, of course.
- bobsmooth 3y ago
  Specifically because it's meta, even though it's where a lot of people consume media? How else is the government supposed to inform people that don't watch TV or listen to radio?
  - jszymborski 3y ago
    Honestly, I'd bet that the overlap of FB's current demographics and people who listen to radio/TV is pretty high. The gov't of Canada has ad spends on bus stops, billboards, cinemas, newspapers, Spotify... I've even seen them on mobile games. If I was Pablo, I wouldn't be very much concerned about the reach of Gov't of Canada ads.
smsm42 3y ago
The funniest part: > But the Liberal government’s decision does not extend to the party. Liberal Party of Canada spokesperson Parker Lund said in a statement that the party would continue to advertise on Meta-owned platforms. According to the company’s ad library, the party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month. So: we would not deal with FB because it's evil, unless of course it could help us personally to win the elections, in which case of course we'll deal with them. Taxpayer money is another business, this is what you use for posturing.
- stubybubs 3y ago
  Honestly, it's pretty reasonable. This is what it looks like when you really treat your party as separate from governance. They are not using public funds for their advertising. Contrast this with the last Conservative government, which made all of its publicly funded announcements from "The Harper Government" instead of "The Government of Canada." https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2012/06/harper-government-announced-new-measures-benefit-canadian-consumers-678199.html https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2012/06/harper-governm...
  - smsm42 3y ago
    The point is not public funds. The point is, in public they behave like FB is so horrible no reasonable person can use their services, but when it comes to using the services not for public benefit, but for their personal benefit, turn out FB is not so bad after all. Evidently, using FB is beneficial for them. They are OK with benefitting themselves, but withhold same benefits from the public in the name of political posturing.
    - throwawaylinux 3y ago
      Yep. If they believe these platforms are cost-effective ways to advertise, then actually choosing not to use them for public funded advertising would be an abuse of public funds, unless they can explain how it is different, which I'm sure they can't.
grf27 3y ago
Isn't the issue that Google/Facebook sell ads and make money from linking to news sources? And those news sources have their costs but don't see any income? I think about this often when I read a story on some small-town newspaper, and know that the newspaper is making nothing off of me and millions of others reading their story. Didn't Australia implement a similar law and get Google/Facebook to pay something? There's a similar issues with some news sites basically copying or rephrasing the content of a newspaper story. I've seen news stories by third-parties, where the story lists their source as "The New York Times" It's tough to figure out a way to compensate the people who create the news, and the people who disseminate the news.
- foogazi 3y ago
  > And those news sources have their costs but don't see any income? Don’t those news sources have ads too ? How are they making income from local views?
  - babypuncher 3y ago
    Because very few people click through to the article, they just read the headline, summary, and comments on Facebook. Facebook is capturing most of the economic value generated by these articles.
    - ipaddr 3y ago
      Reminds me of hackernews. I'm doing it now (commenting) without visiting the site because I'm aware of the story.
    - Marsymars 3y ago
      Eh, I’d content that most of the economic value is captured by users reading the articles. The comments and ads are near-zero-sum in the aggregate, if that.
    - xdennis 3y ago
      That happens with everything. People talk about movies without having seen them, discuss what woodworking tools are best with no intent to buy them, and the relative value of random sports cars without ever being able to afford them. If newspapers would be able to charge people for referencing an article, then why shouldn't Lamborghini be able to charge people who talk about the Aventador?
Animats 3y ago
Why was the government of Canada advertising on Facebook and Instagram anyway?
- vkou 3y ago
  Same reason it, and other governments advertise programs, PSAs, etc, on television, YouTube, etc. It reaches eyeballs.
  - betaby 3y ago
    We have tax-backed CBC for that (+other tax supported media)
    - vkou 3y ago
      Which doesn't reach people who don't watch CBC/listen to CBC radio. Many young people don't do either. Most government advertising is brand/awareness advertising, which is pretty cheap when other brands aren't competing for the same keywords as you. And the cost of running a government ad on CBC is non-zero. It could be occupying space used for a program people actually want to watch/listen to.
- kernal 3y ago
  Tourism.
- Marsymars 3y ago
  This is my take. Bad law, but the government should never have been advertising there in the first place.
- version_five 3y ago
  Canadian political parties, when in power (and it's not a partisan thing, they both do it) see fit to "advertise" their party under a thin veil of pretending to advertise government programs. The example that immediately comes to mind (despite my distain for the current government) is the former government who circa 2008 had advertising everywhere for their "economic action plan" and how it was helping us. It was partisan garbage paid for by taxpayers. They all do it.
koboll 3y ago
"The party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month." Oh no! Fifteen thousand dollars?! I'm sure Facebook is shaking and crying and will reverse their decision immediately.
- VancouverMan 3y ago
  I think you should re-read the article. What you quoted seems to refer to what the Liberal Party of Canada itself was spending, and the article makes it sound like they plan to continue buying ads going forward. Farther down in the article, it also mentions recent spending by the federal government (rather than just the Liberal Party itself), and that amount is significantly larger.
kazinator 3y ago
> “Facebook has decided to be unreasonable, irresponsible, and started blocking news,” I don't feature news on my website. Am I also an unreasonable, irresponsible news blocker?
ipaddr 3y ago
I've never seen anyone appearing less qualified in parliament or interviews. Pablo Rodriguez isn't being roasted for his foolish responses and the Canadian media is losing credibility by taking sides. Seeing less national cartel linked media stories will do everyone good. The government not advertising on social media is positive.
- brailsafe 3y ago
  Hmm... have you seen the environment minister's interviews? Not great.
  - graeme 3y ago
    Funnily enough the current environment minister Guillebeault was the previous heritage minister who crafted this bill. It didn't get through on his term and then Rodriguez took over.
    - brailsafe 3y ago
      That's really funny, I do remember that. My favourite video is him basically sweating bullets when interviewed by my favorite CBC host who typically hosts Marketplace. I believe it was about C-11. Seems shady.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    The Minister of Crown–Indigenous Relations Canada is another truly awful character
qqcqq 3y ago
There was another post that was on the front page earlier today that pretty much asked: if the [Canadian] government hates [Facebook] social media platform so much, why don't they just build their own? https://loeber.substack.com/p/10-why-is-there-no-government-built https://loeber.substack.com/p/10-why-is-there-no-government-... And I agree with the author that it's sort of weird that for all the handwringing and grandstanding these governments are doing, none of them are willing to build a replacement platform for their users
- crop_rotation 3y ago
  Network effects aside, Governments can not build social media or any website competing with private markets (Even google with unlimited pockets gave up on G+). Government just trying to create a barebones micro-twitter straight from the rails tutorial will easily cost millions of dollars to the taxpayer.
  - zulban 3y ago
    Some in government are capable of that. It's the leadership building the team and designing the political and business requirements that make it impossible.
snapplebobapple 3y ago
That should just be the default setting shouldn't it? Why are they wasting a bunch of money advertising on social media?
zsz 3y ago
Although I confess I haven't completely kept up with this development (meaning, what I am about to say may be entirely due to my own lack of relevant knowledge in this case), I have noticed that there are occasional references made to a similar law that was passed in Australia (last year?). Well, I'm surprised that no one's brought up a similar case that occurred in the EU and which focused primarily on Google's news aggregation service, rather than Meta's. One significant difference was that the publisher/holding company initiated and won the lawsuit against Google at the national level (see for example this EFF article from 2014: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop-spain-thanks-ancillary-copyright-law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop... ). From what I vaguely remember about the case, Google's ability to shut down its news service in Spain only (while keeping it running in neighboring countries) was what ultimately allowed it to demonstrate that the news aggregation service had benefitted the publishers rather than costing them revenue, because once they halted their aggregation service in Spain only, Internet traffic to the publications affected was substantially reduced. I assume the lawsuits in Australia and now Canada were initiated on a similar premise, i.e. that Google, et al. Were negatively impacting revenue, rather than bolstering it by referring additional traffic beyond what they would otherwise receive. In other words, In the European case, what happened next was that publishers, realizing they couldn't win at the national level (actually, they couldn't reasonably win at any level, since their principal claim had already been invalidated at the national level) took it up to the EU level. They still wanted to be paid of course, regardless of the validity of their allegation, so they figured that if they could get a law (or amendment) passed at the EU Commission level, then this would be binding for all member states--and Google's only response would be to shut down their aggregation service completely in the EU, or accept the demand to play for each news article headline/summary that was hosted on their site. The amendment that was ultimately passed was something quite byzantine as well, since it forbade any exceptions (to prevent Google from only hosting headlines that came from blogs or other, relatively unknown news services that were prepared to "forego" revenue (due to Google reducing their visitor count, as claimed), in return for the privilege of receiving tons of exposure for being hosted on Google's aggregator. The idea was (IIRC) was that there would be a pool of funds that would be disproportionately divided based on the relative portion of total traffic that each site received--which, needless to say, benefitted the big and well known publishers, while hurting the smaller ones (blogs) that didn't receive much money from this pool, but was still forced by law to participate in this scheme. Which brings me to the final point: if the law that was passed in Canada has anything in common with the EU law (ie to force Google to pay their "fair share"), then the case against Meta/Facebook is a legal extortion racket, sanctioned by the government. There were numerous articles, legal opinions, etc posted around that time, several by the EFF (again, based on my vague recollection).
xdfil 3y ago
[dead]
web3-is-a-scam 3y ago
Nice. Less propaganda in my feed is a plus. Did they think this would somehow make me mad at Facebook? Thanks Zucc!
alphanullmeric 3y ago
If you believe in the force is only justified in response to force principle, what force is Facebook using against Canadian broadcasters to justify being forced to pay a ransom?
stainablesteel 3y ago
the retaliation is a bit... 2010s. don't they know people have moved on from this kind of thing? if you're advertising dollars are being wasted and this is just your political song and dance, that's one thing. but if this somehow drops revenue for ottawa in the long run then google and fb will forever use this as a pitchfork to milk cash from any other city
friend_and_foe 3y ago
Goodness gracious how dumb can you be? "If you want to profit off of our news articles you have to pay us some of it!" and then, predictably, these news organizations become irrelevant overnight because nobody can see their news. Now, they want to claim Facebook is blocking news? Do these people hear themselves? As much as I dislike Meta I'm 100% in agreement with them on this. They're being shaken down for money.

149 points by bparsons 3y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

I'm not sure I'd want my government spending money on ads anyway.

gruez 3y ago
The government needs to get out messages to its citizens. If ads on facebook is more cost effective than sending out mailers or whatever, why shouldn't they spend money on facebook ads?
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Who is living under a rock and not getting bombarded with political BS every second on FB but seeing FB ads from PBS? I'm just not sure that's a good forum for governments to try to get out a message.
  - throw0101c 3y ago
    If social media platforms can identify certain demographics, like those who smoke cigarettes, then why wouldn't the government use that to (e.g.) target 'Would you like help to quit smoking?' program availability ads to them? * https://www.ontario.ca/page/support-quit-smoking https://www.ontario.ca/page/support-quit-smoking * https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/smoking-tobacco/quit-smoking.html https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/smoking-toba...
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      The government can put ads on the packages of cigarettes them self for free. Without the moral defeat of benefiting from spyware. Why would you want to waste tax money on Zuckerberg's mansions. Etc.
- everybodyknows 3y ago
  Because it selectively reaches only Facebook users. So the government can begin tailoring messages to certain demographics, for maximum "effect".
- BluePen7 3y ago
  Because our government doesn't understand technology and generally gets fleeced anytime they encounter it. Remember the Phenix pay system? It was an IBM project that was supposed to save us 70 million a year, instead they paid IBM an additional 2+ BILLION to try and fix the broken crap they'd delivered. Never even worked, they're currently taking bids to replace it already. 80% of public servants had pay issues, many were foreclosed on because they couldn't pay their mortgages, someone even killed themselves. And we expect the Canadian government to accurately determine ROI on digital ad spend? That's hard enough for skilled people in the space (some who have found it to have no effect altogether). Our government is simply going to be fleeced for every penny they have (and then some). Remember, these are the same people who shut down the CRA website every night. Can't even access your tax info after hours.
  - derefr 3y ago
    > Remember the Phenix pay system? It was an IBM project that was supposed to save us 70 million a year, instead they paid IBM an additional 2+ BILLION to try and fix the broken crap they'd delivered. Never even worked, they're currently taking bids to replace it already. Do you really believe that this was a result of bad in-the-moment decision-making at all levels, instead of a result of being trapped by previously-negotiated long-term vendor exclusivity agreements? (In my experience, governments are generally good at cutting their losses — they're far more rational re: the sunk-cost fallacy than individual people are. So it would be surprising to me if this were true.)
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      Actually, they're as bad as everyone else at that, e.g, Obamacare website; state of Maine website; lots more. And then we have, by three or four orders of magnitude, the great Sunk Cost Fallacy of all time, by anyone ever: Not ending World War One in 1915, 1916, or 1917: "All those lives and treasure we've spent! We have to get something for it." And so we had the Spanish Flu, which killed more than the combat deaths, and of course, the combat deaths. https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu Not to mention World War Two.
  - 3y ago
- stan3223 3y ago
  Social media companies are really in business of personal data collection. Based on younger generation being so switched on about news I think 'news' are really being force fed into your social feed (rather than you fetching the news). Governments spending tax payer money with these companies are really approving this sort of unethical behavior.
bawolff 3y ago
Idk, if we could bring back the heritage minutes and the canadian house hippo, I'm all for it.
vortext 3y ago
I don't agree with the bill, but yes, I don't want the government to spend money on Meta ads either.

chomp 3y ago

> Facebook has decided to be unreasonable, irresponsible, and started blocking news. Are they acting unreasonably though? There is a product, and the government rules it has a price. Isn't Facebook allowed to go, sorry, I don't like that price?

fwlr 3y ago
If you analyze news as a product, it’s entirely reasonable for Facebook to refuse a price they don’t think is worth it. If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”, as it was taught to me in school - then it does start to look unreasonable. The Canadian government is simply equivocating between these two analyses as it suits them (one could ask, if access to news is so important, whether it’s irresponsible and unreasonable for a government to try to charge a fee for it).
- bawolff 3y ago
  > If you analyze news as something more like “a right to information” - “integral to the function of democracy”, I don't get it - in this analysis would my local coffee shop have to buy and provide free newspapers to me? I'm all for access to free press being a fundamental right. Where you lose me is the part where a private corporation is supposed to subsidize the production of news for me.
  - jtr1 3y ago
    Meta is not your local coffee shop.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      But your local coffee shop probably does have a newspaper rack, so why is Facebook removing theirs such a big deal? Grab a newspaper the next time you get coffee. I don't use any meta property at all and it hasn't impeded my ability to read the news.
    - gameman144 3y ago

intunderflow 3y ago

On the plus side, if Canada double down and lose it will set a strong global precedent against these rent-seeking laws.

canadiantim 3y ago
The current Canadian government only knows how to down down, so that's a given.

zpeti 3y ago

Oh no... bids for impressions will decrease in canada by: $0.00001. This is just silly, this is the least of facebook's worries.

infamouscow 3y ago

Seeding control of the mainstream media narrative over this silly law is going to have hilarious implications for the future of the Canadian government. Most importantly, it's now 10x harder to control the narrative and for the government to manufacture consent.

kneebonian 3y ago
It's cedeing not seeding.
- Wistar 3y ago
  It's ceding not cedeing.
cryotopippto 3y ago
For this alone they will backtrack really fast.

adjav 3y ago

Note: This article is by the National Post, which is owned by PostMedia, who were one of the main backers of bill C18. Just something to keep in mind.

woodruffw 3y ago
For those of us not from Canada[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_News_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_News_Act
- dotcoma 3y ago
  Not a Metà fan, at all, but I don’t understand why they are being called “unreasonable” and “irresponsible” for blocking news from Canadian newspapers. As they (currently) don’t have an agreement with Canadian newspapers, or perhaps don’t want one, which also seems like a legitimate position to me, the only responsible thing is not to use or link to articles from said newspapers, isn’t it?
  - f33d5173 3y ago
    They had made agreements with torstar prior to this bill passing. They abandoned those agreements when the bill passed. Its hard to avoid the conclusion that they are specifically taking issue with being legally compelled to make such agreements.
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    The Canadian government thought they could just force these companies to subsidize their failing news industry, and instead, when the outcome is "alright, fine, you win, we won't pay you in order to make you relevant, we won't 'profit' off of your news any longer, have fun in the dumpster" they're "blocking news." There's nothing unreasonable or irresponsible about this decision at all, what's unreasonable is passing a law trying to squeeze money out of the only places in the world left that still make you relevant and then getting mad when they don't want to be abused.
gloryjulio 3y ago

jklinger410 3y ago

Facebook holds all the power here. Canadian gov't ad spend is not a significant cudgel.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

regimeld 3y ago

As a Canadian, I find the current government's policy on the internet to be very 1990's. I fully support Google's and Meta's decision to remove Canadian news from their platforms. This is a complete "own-goal" by the government.

dmix 3y ago
Probably the biggest self-own in recent memory. I feel bad about the journos/web teams who have to suffer as a consequence of the current gov and the rich Canadian media aristocracy who pushed this through. But I can't say it's going to immediately impact my life. I'm not a particular fan of any of the Canadian media sites besides maybe the hyper local ones like CP24. Nor would I touch the Canadian subreddits with a ten foot pole to go discuss them (some of the worst parts of Reddit). Canadians are already obsessed with American news/politics anyway. They will just be fed slightly more of that than before on social media.
- brailsafe 3y ago
  I feel similarly, but I do actually like CBC content usually. It's deeply ironic in my mind that one of the meme mantras of the PCs is defunding the CBC, good job literally every other voting MP except the PCs
  - dmix 3y ago
    Instead of defunding it the Liberals created a situation where the CBC will essentially need gov gibs to survive in it's current state, which will certainly be deemed essential for publicly funded Canadian culture projection (that essential part of modern society). Economic self-owns via gov policy driven by the same small set of private school kids in Ottawa and whining about Americans is Canadian culture 101.
    - canadiantim 3y ago
      The CBC gets a billion a year of taxpayer dollars, plus other perks, so large parts of the CBC do already depend on this largess to survive.

stewx 3y ago

The TLDR of this issue: Canadian govt: When someone posts a link to a news article on Facebook, that is like stealing from that news publisher. Facebook: Your logic makes no sense, but okay, we will stop doing that. Govt: No, we don't want you to stop posting the links, we want you to pay a fee every time someone posts a link. Facebook: No thank you. Govt: You're bullying us and behaving irresponsibly! We won't stand for it!

jamincan 3y ago
Isn't the issue that Facebook/Google don't just share the link, they share the content behind the link as well?
- stewx 3y ago
  No, the entire complaint about Facebook and Google is the links themselves. It's not anything about embedding articles (which I don't think either company does). They just show the headline and article metadata provided by the news publishers.
  - tomComb 3y ago
    There are places where they embed the news itself, but that’s a separate issue that’s already been resolved - they pay the publishers for that. Ironically, one of the results of bill C 18 is that those existing deals will get cancelled.
    - 8note 3y ago
      The title is part of the article, isn't it? Especially when people tend to read headlines without reading the actual article
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Isn't the issue that Facebook/Google don't just share the link, they share the content behind the link as well The fundamental issue is they "stole" the classified section that paid for the content. (Secondarily, they commoditized the content by owning the discussion around it.) All that said, this is a solution that only makes sense to folks in media. The right one is a tax that funds a subsidy for news.

kneebonian 3y ago

> “We’ve met both Google and Meta multiple times to better understand the concerns. We believe we have a path forward and we’re willing to continue talking with the platforms,” Rodriguez said. “We’re convinced what Google is asking at this moment can be done through regulations.” This here is the most concerning part. The government is making shady back room deals with large corporations. If I had to guess the nature of the deals is "we won't enforce anything or make you pay anything if you agree to ensure that stories that paint the government in an unfavorable light don't stick around." Even if that's not what the deal is like now that is what it is going to turn into.

adjav 3y ago
Given that's exactly what ended up happening in Australia I wouldn't be surprised.

wilg 3y ago

Should HN pay National Post for linking to this article?

tiffanyh 3y ago

Ironically, no FB users will be able to read about this from a Canadian news source.

wvenable 3y ago
It's kind of weird to describe FB users as being in a cage where their browser is incapable of going anywhere else.
- tiffanyh 3y ago
  But FB exactly wants users to stay within their "walled garden".
  - wvenable 3y ago
    There are no walls in this garden. They might want people to stay but they have to work for that.
ipaddr 3y ago
Just the members in the media cartel. Still plenty of Canadian news sources just not ones demanding payment
brailsafe 3y ago
In the future whenever it actually comes into effect

jszymborski 3y ago

I disagree with a lot of C-18 as-is, but I can't pretend like I'm not happy to see the fed gov't not spending ad dollars on Meta.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago
Me too. I think this law is ridiculous, but honestly I'm quite happy with all of its impacts. I view news link-sharing on social media as a negative for both news and social media. It drives news sites into hyping inflammatory and polarizing issues, and turns social media sites into a den of divisiveness and fearmongering. In the old days, Facebook was mostly photos, friends' statuses, event announcements, groups, and unsolicited poetry. If this is a step in that direction, then great! And as for Google, if this helps people realize that other search engines actually exist, that's great too! All unrelated to what the bill was actually aiming for, of course.
bobsmooth 3y ago
Specifically because it's meta, even though it's where a lot of people consume media? How else is the government supposed to inform people that don't watch TV or listen to radio?
- jszymborski 3y ago
  Honestly, I'd bet that the overlap of FB's current demographics and people who listen to radio/TV is pretty high. The gov't of Canada has ad spends on bus stops, billboards, cinemas, newspapers, Spotify... I've even seen them on mobile games. If I was Pablo, I wouldn't be very much concerned about the reach of Gov't of Canada ads.

smsm42 3y ago

The funniest part: > But the Liberal government’s decision does not extend to the party. Liberal Party of Canada spokesperson Parker Lund said in a statement that the party would continue to advertise on Meta-owned platforms. According to the company’s ad library, the party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month. So: we would not deal with FB because it's evil, unless of course it could help us personally to win the elections, in which case of course we'll deal with them. Taxpayer money is another business, this is what you use for posturing.

stubybubs 3y ago
Honestly, it's pretty reasonable. This is what it looks like when you really treat your party as separate from governance. They are not using public funds for their advertising. Contrast this with the last Conservative government, which made all of its publicly funded announcements from "The Harper Government" instead of "The Government of Canada." https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2012/06/harper-government-announced-new-measures-benefit-canadian-consumers-678199.html https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2012/06/harper-governm...
- smsm42 3y ago
  The point is not public funds. The point is, in public they behave like FB is so horrible no reasonable person can use their services, but when it comes to using the services not for public benefit, but for their personal benefit, turn out FB is not so bad after all. Evidently, using FB is beneficial for them. They are OK with benefitting themselves, but withhold same benefits from the public in the name of political posturing.
  - throwawaylinux 3y ago
    Yep. If they believe these platforms are cost-effective ways to advertise, then actually choosing not to use them for public funded advertising would be an abuse of public funds, unless they can explain how it is different, which I'm sure they can't.

grf27 3y ago

Isn't the issue that Google/Facebook sell ads and make money from linking to news sources? And those news sources have their costs but don't see any income? I think about this often when I read a story on some small-town newspaper, and know that the newspaper is making nothing off of me and millions of others reading their story. Didn't Australia implement a similar law and get Google/Facebook to pay something? There's a similar issues with some news sites basically copying or rephrasing the content of a newspaper story. I've seen news stories by third-parties, where the story lists their source as "The New York Times" It's tough to figure out a way to compensate the people who create the news, and the people who disseminate the news.

foogazi 3y ago
> And those news sources have their costs but don't see any income? Don’t those news sources have ads too ? How are they making income from local views?
- babypuncher 3y ago
  Because very few people click through to the article, they just read the headline, summary, and comments on Facebook. Facebook is capturing most of the economic value generated by these articles.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Reminds me of hackernews. I'm doing it now (commenting) without visiting the site because I'm aware of the story.
  - Marsymars 3y ago
    Eh, I’d content that most of the economic value is captured by users reading the articles. The comments and ads are near-zero-sum in the aggregate, if that.
  - xdennis 3y ago
    That happens with everything. People talk about movies without having seen them, discuss what woodworking tools are best with no intent to buy them, and the relative value of random sports cars without ever being able to afford them. If newspapers would be able to charge people for referencing an article, then why shouldn't Lamborghini be able to charge people who talk about the Aventador?

Animats 3y ago

Why was the government of Canada advertising on Facebook and Instagram anyway?

vkou 3y ago
Same reason it, and other governments advertise programs, PSAs, etc, on television, YouTube, etc. It reaches eyeballs.
- betaby 3y ago
  We have tax-backed CBC for that (+other tax supported media)
  - vkou 3y ago
    Which doesn't reach people who don't watch CBC/listen to CBC radio. Many young people don't do either. Most government advertising is brand/awareness advertising, which is pretty cheap when other brands aren't competing for the same keywords as you. And the cost of running a government ad on CBC is non-zero. It could be occupying space used for a program people actually want to watch/listen to.
kernal 3y ago
Tourism.
Marsymars 3y ago
This is my take. Bad law, but the government should never have been advertising there in the first place.
version_five 3y ago
Canadian political parties, when in power (and it's not a partisan thing, they both do it) see fit to "advertise" their party under a thin veil of pretending to advertise government programs. The example that immediately comes to mind (despite my distain for the current government) is the former government who circa 2008 had advertising everywhere for their "economic action plan" and how it was helping us. It was partisan garbage paid for by taxpayers. They all do it.

koboll 3y ago

"The party spent nearly $15,000 on over 1,000 ads in the past month." Oh no! Fifteen thousand dollars?! I'm sure Facebook is shaking and crying and will reverse their decision immediately.

VancouverMan 3y ago
I think you should re-read the article. What you quoted seems to refer to what the Liberal Party of Canada itself was spending, and the article makes it sound like they plan to continue buying ads going forward. Farther down in the article, it also mentions recent spending by the federal government (rather than just the Liberal Party itself), and that amount is significantly larger.

kazinator 3y ago

> “Facebook has decided to be unreasonable, irresponsible, and started blocking news,” I don't feature news on my website. Am I also an unreasonable, irresponsible news blocker?

ipaddr 3y ago

I've never seen anyone appearing less qualified in parliament or interviews. Pablo Rodriguez isn't being roasted for his foolish responses and the Canadian media is losing credibility by taking sides. Seeing less national cartel linked media stories will do everyone good. The government not advertising on social media is positive.

brailsafe 3y ago
Hmm... have you seen the environment minister's interviews? Not great.
- graeme 3y ago
  Funnily enough the current environment minister Guillebeault was the previous heritage minister who crafted this bill. It didn't get through on his term and then Rodriguez took over.
  - brailsafe 3y ago
    That's really funny, I do remember that. My favourite video is him basically sweating bullets when interviewed by my favorite CBC host who typically hosts Marketplace. I believe it was about C-11. Seems shady.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  The Minister of Crown–Indigenous Relations Canada is another truly awful character

qqcqq 3y ago

There was another post that was on the front page earlier today that pretty much asked: if the [Canadian] government hates [Facebook] social media platform so much, why don't they just build their own? https://loeber.substack.com/p/10-why-is-there-no-government-built https://loeber.substack.com/p/10-why-is-there-no-government-... And I agree with the author that it's sort of weird that for all the handwringing and grandstanding these governments are doing, none of them are willing to build a replacement platform for their users

crop_rotation 3y ago
Network effects aside, Governments can not build social media or any website competing with private markets (Even google with unlimited pockets gave up on G+). Government just trying to create a barebones micro-twitter straight from the rails tutorial will easily cost millions of dollars to the taxpayer.
- zulban 3y ago
  Some in government are capable of that. It's the leadership building the team and designing the political and business requirements that make it impossible.

snapplebobapple 3y ago

That should just be the default setting shouldn't it? Why are they wasting a bunch of money advertising on social media?

zsz 3y ago

Although I confess I haven't completely kept up with this development (meaning, what I am about to say may be entirely due to my own lack of relevant knowledge in this case), I have noticed that there are occasional references made to a similar law that was passed in Australia (last year?). Well, I'm surprised that no one's brought up a similar case that occurred in the EU and which focused primarily on Google's news aggregation service, rather than Meta's. One significant difference was that the publisher/holding company initiated and won the lawsuit against Google at the national level (see for example this EFF article from 2014: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop-spain-thanks-ancillary-copyright-law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/google-news-shuts-shop... ). From what I vaguely remember about the case, Google's ability to shut down its news service in Spain only (while keeping it running in neighboring countries) was what ultimately allowed it to demonstrate that the news aggregation service had benefitted the publishers rather than costing them revenue, because once they halted their aggregation service in Spain only, Internet traffic to the publications affected was substantially reduced. I assume the lawsuits in Australia and now Canada were initiated on a similar premise, i.e. that Google, et al. Were negatively impacting revenue, rather than bolstering it by referring additional traffic beyond what they would otherwise receive. In other words, In the European case, what happened next was that publishers, realizing they couldn't win at the national level (actually, they couldn't reasonably win at any level, since their principal claim had already been invalidated at the national level) took it up to the EU level. They still wanted to be paid of course, regardless of the validity of their allegation, so they figured that if they could get a law (or amendment) passed at the EU Commission level, then this would be binding for all member states--and Google's only response would be to shut down their aggregation service completely in the EU, or accept the demand to play for each news article headline/summary that was hosted on their site. The amendment that was ultimately passed was something quite byzantine as well, since it forbade any exceptions (to prevent Google from only hosting headlines that came from blogs or other, relatively unknown news services that were prepared to "forego" revenue (due to Google reducing their visitor count, as claimed), in return for the privilege of receiving tons of exposure for being hosted on Google's aggregator. The idea was (IIRC) was that there would be a pool of funds that would be disproportionately divided based on the relative portion of total traffic that each site received--which, needless to say, benefitted the big and well known publishers, while hurting the smaller ones (blogs) that didn't receive much money from this pool, but was still forced by law to participate in this scheme. Which brings me to the final point: if the law that was passed in Canada has anything in common with the EU law (ie to force Google to pay their "fair share"), then the case against Meta/Facebook is a legal extortion racket, sanctioned by the government. There were numerous articles, legal opinions, etc posted around that time, several by the EFF (again, based on my vague recollection).

xdfil 3y ago

[dead]

web3-is-a-scam 3y ago

Nice. Less propaganda in my feed is a plus. Did they think this would somehow make me mad at Facebook? Thanks Zucc!

alphanullmeric 3y ago

If you believe in the force is only justified in response to force principle, what force is Facebook using against Canadian broadcasters to justify being forced to pay a ransom?

stainablesteel 3y ago

the retaliation is a bit... 2010s. don't they know people have moved on from this kind of thing? if you're advertising dollars are being wasted and this is just your political song and dance, that's one thing. but if this somehow drops revenue for ottawa in the long run then google and fb will forever use this as a pitchfork to milk cash from any other city

friend_and_foe 3y ago

Goodness gracious how dumb can you be? "If you want to profit off of our news articles you have to pay us some of it!" and then, predictably, these news organizations become irrelevant overnight because nobody can see their news. Now, they want to claim Facebook is blocking news? Do these people hear themselves? As much as I dislike Meta I'm 100% in agreement with them on this. They're being shaken down for money.