Google and Facebook have now both responded to Canada’s Online News Act with a proposal to block news links on their platforms. Like the Australian News Media Bargaining Code (ANMBC) and draft Digital Competition Bill in the UK, Canada’s legislation is designed to mandate fair payment for content.
Meta have already withdrawn access to news in Canada on Facebook and Instagram.
Though brazen, the joint decision hardly comes as a surprise. The very same tactic was employed in Australia in protest of the ANMBC to great effect. The Australian government was ultimately compelled to accept a watered down version of the legislation, which allowed the Meta and Google to avoid de facto designation.
The Canadian government, however, remains defiant, with Prime Minister Trudeau indicating that he will not give into the platforms’ bullying.
From a legal perspective, the move to refuse to carry news clearly violates Google and Meta’s duty, as dominant platforms, to offer non-discriminatory access to their networks.
However, whilst the decision must be opposed, in principle, as a plain-faced attempt to bully regulators and competitors alike, it could contribute substantially to calculations of an equitable split of the joint value of content. Meta’s blocking of news on Facebook and Instagram and Google’s too (if it goes ahead), would show in black and white how much traffic these platforms generate for news content publishers.
Google have, for instance, made extravagant claims as to the value they contribute to publishers based on the simple fact that the vast majority of people access news through a search engine, and Google owns by far the most popular browser. Yet, as Professor Gawer has convincingly argued, this is an entirely distorted view: platforms are fundamentally substitutable navigational tools. Just because one is preferred, does not mean another could not easily take its place. This was demonstrated in 2021 when news traffic in the UK actually increased during a Facebook outage.
To analogise, it would be ridiculous for Ford to suppose that it is due a share of Walmart’s profits, just because Ford is the most popular brand of car in America and cars are a necessary mode of transport by which people get to the shops. If Ford was then to announce that its cars are incompatible with all shop parking lots in America simply because they refused to handover a cut of their profits, one might imagine people would stop preferring Ford cars in favour of Toyota.
By the same token, we do expect news traffic to drop dramatically as a result of Meta and Google’s joint move. Fundamentally, people want high-quality news and there are other online channels for readers.
This will all likelihood be an embarrassing misstep for the platforms, demystifying their claims to be indispensable patrons of the media.