Meta's news ban is preventing Canadians from sharing vital information about the wildfires ripping through western Canada

Technology@lemmy.world – 234 points – 11 months ago

Meta's news ban is preventing Canadians from sharing vital information about the wildfires ripping through western Canada::Canadians are calling on Meta to lift its news ban so they can share news about the wildfires in the Northwest Territories and British Columbia.

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The Government telling meta and Google they'd have to pay to link has led to this entirely predictable result, and the companies said they would block links since very early on in the process. Independent experts (e.g., Michael Geist) also said that C18 was a bad idea.

It's ridiculous to complain about someone complying with laws that you (the government) drafted and passed.

The laws aren’t even in effect now. They pulled it as a bargaining chip like they did in Australia. They could show wildfire news for free right now and choose not to.

I don't really fault them for getting their filtering/blocking systems setup and tested ahead of time before they are liable, considering the estimated cost of $329.2 million per year between Google and Meta:

https://www.pbo-dpb.ca/en/publications/RP-2223-017-M--cost-estimate-bill-c-18-online-news-act--estimation-couts-lies-projet-loi-c-18-loi-nouvelles-ligne

They didn’t have to pay to link — they had to pay to publish. As in, links are fine, adding a summary based on the content of that link is not.

That said, C18 was definitely a bad idea, and Meta spun it to their advantage.

Considering the undue influence Meta had over WHICH news people saw, I think Meta made the right choice.

And ~~Twitter~~ X - shame on them for requiring login to search for emergency hashtags. But nobody’s talking about that one.

From the text of the bill: https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent

Making available of news content (2) For the purposes of this Act, news content is made available if

(a) the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced; or

(b) access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content.

(b) sounds like just linking or indexing it would count as making it available, and thus require payment.

That seems to be backed up by at least a couple of the news sites: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-bill-c18-online-news-law-explained/

What is Bill C-18? Bill C-18 is legislation that would force tech companies such as Google and Meta to negotiate compensation deals with news organizations for posting or linking to their work.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/online-streaming-news-bills-whats-next

At the Heritage committee, Liberal MPs resisted efforts from the Conservatives to take links out of the bill [...]