The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Has Meta's Ban Affected Canadians?

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

Just over a year ago, news disappeared from Facebook and Instagram in Canada. The Agenda looks at the impact Meta's ban on news has had on Canadians.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you were to check out Facebook or Instagram, you might see posts of your friends at a concert, or the birth of a cousin's new baby, and copious amounts of cute videos about dogs and cats. What you won't see are posts from news organizations about the US election or the war in Ukraine. One year after Metta removed news from Facebook and Instagram in response to the federal government's online news act, what effect is this having on our media diet? Let's find out and ask. In Woodstock, New Brunswick, Teresa Blackburn. She is publisher and managing editor of the River Valley Sun.

In the nation's capital, Angus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory and an assistant professor of research at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. And Dwayne Wincek, he is Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University and Director of the Global Media and Internet Concentration Project. And here in Ontario's capital city, Tlaib Noor Muhammad, who is Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the member of parliament for Vancouver Granville, and I am delighted to welcome you four to our program tonight. And I want to start by not assuming that everybody watching or listening to this

knows all about this. I think we need a bit of background before we start, so let's go back to basics here. Tlaib Noor Mohammed, I'd like you to start by just telling us about Bill C-18, the Online Use Act, and what you see its mission as. Yeah, thanks, Steve. Look, maybe we take a step further back and even ask the question, why C-18? Because I think at the outset, I think it's important for Canadians to understand that we have seen over the last number of years the news ecosystem in this country in decline.

And one of the things that is really important in a strong, vibrant democracy is to make sure that there is a strong, uh, base for journalism. There's a strong, uh, news environment. And so what C18 sought to do is to make sure that we leveled the playing field for journalism. Why did we need to do that? If you look at what has happened over the last number of years and particularly in particular the way in which big tech, particularly Google and Meta on its platforms, were taking up all of the oxygen in the room and dictating the terms by which Canadians interacted with news. And what that meant, it was very important to make sure that they

would be paying into the system that ensured and assured a vibrant news ecosystem in this country, which Google, as you know, has done as a result of this bill and has now decided that they're going to be part of a solution putting in a hundred million dollars a year index to inflation into supporting news in this country and so I think this is this is the why and that is really the what as well and making sure that there is a healthy ecosystem for news in this country, making sure that we continue to support as much as we can. Okay, let me jump in there. I got you.

That's good background. Let me go to Dwayne Winsick now. Google responded one way. Meta responded a very different way. They opted for a news ban. Explain to us how that rolled out. Well, Facebook or Meta has decided to play hardball with governments around the world

that have decided to embark on platform regulation. They did this in Australia. They threatened to withhold the news, and they did for a short period of time. And that forced the government to make some changes to the Australian news media bargaining code which came into effect in 2021. When it came hand in hand to developing the online news act, Metta rolled out the same playbook and threatened to bar the distribution and sharing of news. As soon as the law landed and became the law of the land, that to carry through

on its promise and I think in doing so really opened up some clear blue water between its scorched earth policy and that of Google, which has decided that it's going to play more like the historical monopoly telecom players and basically embrace the idea that it will have some social responsibility with respect to the overall news media ecology. So we're going to have to see, we already are seeing from the report that one of our guests has put out, the effects of that ban. And I mean, this, I think, really underscores why we had the bill to begin with, which is these companies have, as Talib said,

the ability to dictate the terms for news distribution and sharing in this country. And when a company like Meta can just withdraw its services, Instagram and Facebook, from their role that they've cultivated for a long time in news distribution and sharing, I think we can see why we need strong countervailing measures to have them meet the public obligations that match the revenue they take home from this country and their importance in news distribution sharing. Well let's show everybody what that looks like. I suspect people have seen this on their laptop screens or their desktop screens. Sheldon, if you want to

bring that up there's something off the CTV News site. If you try to go to CTV News, you will see that there is a Canadian news band message that comes up. And let's do the next one as well. Maybe you go to CP24 and you're going to get the same kind of message. Sorry, Canadian news band in place and your, I think the technical term is SOL. Okay Teresa Blackburn let's bring you in at this point. This ban has obviously had an impact on you personally. Describe what it's meant for you and your business.

It's been terrible. We basically maybe got between four and six thousand dollars a year from doing live events and sometimes advertising through Facebook. But we were a free paper. We set out as a free model. We started with no government funding. We started with no investors. It was just basically myself and a reporter going door to door with a piece of paper saying, do you trust what we're going to do?

And we started that. And we used Facebook because it was free. We also used Facebook because there was some controls there. That was our only online presence for a number of years. And then, you know, the government starts with the C18. You hear the rhetoric back and forth and we were like, okay, we better get a website started. So we started that process,

but that was a costly process for us, for a paper that we're already giving away and trying to make sure that people can access. So that was a huge cost for us, but it was also the removal of all of our archive. We can't even access it. So everything we put into that page over four years is gone. I live 12 minutes from Holton, Maine, and if I have to get something in the archive back or we want background information if we can't find it on our computer or the pictures aren't there anymore, I mean, we have a multitude of people working for us freelancing. I have to travel across the border to access my archive from those four years.

That's insane to me. Well, let me ask you this. Who do you think that, who's the villain in this story? I think it's, first off, Facebook has taken so much from us and they can't be community players. They say that they care, they don't care. They're willing to take all of the money, but they're not willing to help us inform the public.

And the government, to me, way too little, way too late. And I'm sorry to the gentleman from the Ministry of Heritage Office, but we're talking about 450 news outlets that have died on this watch since 2008. And we just start getting things rolling, you know. And COVID, I know COVID threw a big wrench into this, but this should have been started long ago. You know, we have a cart, you know, that's being put before the horse in terms of the horse has already left the barn. So I don't know how we can get this back. All right. I'll get a comment from Taleb in just a second, but I want to hear from Angus Bridgman first. In your view, who's the villain in this story? This is kind of a tricky question.

I really appreciate the point that Google is taking the approach of legacy telecom players, where with corporate revenue, with a position of importance in society, there is a responsibility to give back to the community. And so I really sort of see what Metta has done here as a betrayal of that trust and confidence. So for sure, that's an issue. In terms of sort of the government response, this has been an effort to address some of the monopolistic tendencies of Metta and Google, and it's one such effort. And thus far, yeah, Google's only playing ball.

One thing, and maybe we can talk about it a little bit later, but the report we looked at showed that actually news content was still circulating on meta-platforms. And so this is going to be really of interest to the CRTC trying to understand and interpret how C18 actually impacts and is consequential for meta-platforms because they say, well, we're no longer in compliance because we've blocked news sites and we've blocked news links. But if news content is still actually circulating on those platforms in the form of screenshots or alternative links or other workarounds, then they may actually be subject to it. So this is sort of a complicated dynamic for sure, but I don't think the last word has been said yet in terms of the C18 meta-contention.

Talib, maybe you could help us understand this. We showed a couple of examples of quote unquote hard news legacy sites that are now blocked and don't have the access to news anymore. But there are others, for example, Rolling Stone or BBC Radio 1 or Vogue, which I guess, you know, they're in the news business, so to speak. But does meta not consider them news because they're not being blocked? Help us understand that. I mean, this again goes back to the whole point at the beginning. I mean, this is an arbitrary

situation that Metta gets to decide what we see and what we don't see. And this idea that somehow Metta has been hard done by as a result of this legislation is patently untrue. They decided that they were going to get out of the news business in countries like the UK because it doesn't make money.

And you've heard, I think, we talk about the idea of villains and heroes, but here's the reality. They are beholden to their shareholders and what makes them the most money. Our obligation is to make sure that we are doing the best we can to create a news ecosystem in this country to serve Canadians. I take your point on that, but I think you need as well to speak to Teresa Blackburn's point as well, which was while she has no doubt that Metta is playing a version of hardball here she doesn't like, she also thinks you relate to the party to help this out. Could you speak to that? Well, I mean, I think one of the unfortunate things is, I mean, as she rightly noted, this problem started in 2008. By the

time we took office, there was already the ball, I mean, the cart was very, very much already moving. So the question is, how do you respond? In the first instance, you wanna work with industry to make sure that as much as possible, you can bring them to the table and they can participate. Metta made a decision not to, and they said at the beginning, 2019, they said, look, we wanna be a newspaper.

We wanna be part of that ecosystem. I mean, they sold everybody a bill of goods. 2020, fast forward to 2023, they're not there anymore. So how do we make sure we support? So there are really two ways, right? One is we have put forward all kinds of programs to support journalism in this country. Is it enough? Maybe not. But we've made that effort. The second piece is to say to Big Tech, look, if you want to play, you have to

contribute. Now the thing that we have to remember, and look, I come from a background, I worked in e-commerce marketplaces before coming into politics, and one of the unfortunate things is that platforms, like Metta, have one goal and one goal alone, and that is to monetize and optimize every single thing that they do. And if you look at news, it is, in many cases, in many ways, no different from how they think about when you're selling

products or commodities. Everything to them is a commodity. It is not about providing information. It's about commoditizing information so that they can drive the most revenue. And they get to them is a commodity. It is not about providing information, it's about commoditizing information so that they can drive the most revenue. And they get to decide what you see. And the sad thing is that what really sells on platforms like Meta arguably are things

that are salacious, that are titillating. And think about it in these terms, I mean all of us are old enough to remember the grocery aisle. All of us know that when you lined up at that grocery store, the National Enquirer was sitting there right next to the sun. None of us wanted to admit it, but all of us looked at it.

Every single one of us wanted to understand how a baby could possibly be born with two heads, one that looked like Donald Trump and one that looked like John Travolta. But none of us wanted to admit it. And the problem that Facebook's algorithms create is it takes you down that rabbit hole and you monetize that rabbit hole. The great news that you're seeing being put out by organizations like the ones that our

guests just talked about are the ones that don't necessarily attract the maximum eyeballs for their algorithms. And so what we need to be doing is thinking about how do we make sure that Canadians understand that they can go to that website where you're getting great local news. How do we make sure that can happen? How do we support the ecosystem to be able to do that and let Metta know that they aren't the only game in town that we can create this ecosystem. But if they want to play ball and they want to be part of this conversation, they are welcome and we will always talk to them about how they can enter this re-enter, but we're not

going to do it in a way that compromises Canadians. Okay, let's get some stats on the table here. I'm going to ask our in a way that compromises Canadians. Okay, let's get some stats on the table here. I'm going to ask our director Sheldon Osmond to go to the bottom of the page. We're looking at bullet board one here, Sheldon, because when journalism was turned off, there were some preliminary findings on the effect of Meta's ban, and these are courtesy of Angus's organization, the Media Ecosystem Observatory. Here we go. Key findings.

33% of Canadians say they still use Facebook or Instagram for access to Canadian political and current affairs information. National news outlets lost 64% of their engagement on their Facebook pages. 64%. And local news outlets lost 85% of their engagement on their Facebook pages. Theresa Blackburn, I gather you can relate to that directly. Yes? I can. The engagement is, I think, what bothers me most.

And I have to argue a little bit against, you know, our gentleman from Canadian heritage related to, you know, titillating. We're very, very small. We're in what's called a news desert. And yes, the federal government has provided us with some help. But I think that in terms of knocking on Metta's door, I don't think that's been happening. I don't think there's been much discussion. When we look at what we've lost, we lost not just the ability to disseminate news,

we lost the ability to engage our public. We can't, there were checks and balances on the Facebook pages that allowed you to block comments sometimes. So anytime we covered court, we made sure those comments were blocked. But when we covered other stories, like changes to the school board or things that were happening with our tax rates, we allowed those comments to be there and there was an engagement within our community. That doesn't really happen right now because we don't have the ability to kind of constantly rates, we allowed those comments to be there and there was an engagement within our community. That doesn't really happen right now because we don't have the ability to kind of constantly monitor our website.

But on top of that, we have lost the ability to quickly get information out. Not everybody is clicking on our website. And so when you're on there looking at your grandchildren's photos and something pops up from us saying, we have a boil water advisory in our town, people are seeing it very quickly. And that's been a problem. But when you talk about the whole ecosystem related to Facebook, the government, the federal government said, we're gonna take our ball and go home too. We're not going to advertise on Facebook to the millions of dollars that they spend on advertising. But that didn't come to me.

Now, yes, they've set up these other programs, the Local Journalism Initiative, which has helped us. It pays for one of our staff. But this new becoming a qualified Canadian journalism organization meant I couldn't be a sole proprietor anymore. I had to spend money to become a corporation. On top of that, I do 12 jobs. And that's no word of a lie.

I'm doing ad designs, ad sales, some writing, reporting, GST, answering the phone, coordinating staff, lay out of our paper. I deliver our paper too. And so all of that, I'm full time. I'm more than full time, but I can't be considered an employee. And so that's a bit of a problem too. I am keeping the lights

on. We've had a paper here since 1848. There are some of us out here doing this for very little money trying to keep the lights on because we can't let it die. I have been in journalism since 1989 and this paper is not going to die on my watch. But that's a very huge strain on a very small organization. And I don't think that in the overall scheme of things, the talk in Ottawa a lot of times is larger people. I am so tiny. I'm a speck compared to, you know, the TVOs and the CBCs and the, you know, city news. But I feel like I'm still being stepped over to some degree because we are the ones that are going to the municipal council meetings,

and we're doing that on the ground stuff in a place that no one else is. And I think there needs to be a little more, I think, a little more help in that department. Dwayne Wincek, you've heard that clarion call from Teresa. You've also seen the numbers that Angus's organization just posted up, characterize the present circumstances we're all dealing with now as a result of all that. I think Theresa gives us a very good on the ground account of what she's doing in Woodstock, New Brunswick. If we kind of zoom out a little further and take a broader national view and one that's also longer

historically, you know, I think we need to trace the roots back of these problems for quite some time, going back to the mid-2000s. Actually, that's when we really see the decline of news media in this country. Revenues begin to fall off then. And we do get, as Teresa points out, 400 newspapers and other news outlets shut down since 2008. But I also think we have to kind of step back a little bit here too. Many of those newspapers were community newspapers, which had very, very tiny news holes. And they were primarily, and I risk a little bit sounding disparaging here, but primarily, many of these community newspapers

were basically advertising delivery vehicles. And when things like Publisac in Quebec were shut down, well, they were no longer coupled with Flyers and advertising. And their loss, to my mind, we need to bear in mind two things. One, they were no great bastions of original investigative news production

and we should be careful about shedding a tear for those that were primarily in the flyer distribution business. And this process starts a long time before Google and Meta swoop in and consolidate their grip on online advertising. They have definitely magnified the woes and closed off the escape hatches from what is truly a crisis of journalism. But I worry that we risk pinning all of the blame on two entities that deserve their fair share of blame and deserve

to be strongly regulated in the public interest in this country. But when we focus too narrowly, we miss bigger picture issues and a confluence of unfortunate events that are really crippled news in this country. So I would like to see a more whole of problem approach as opposed to trying to pin all the blame just on Meta and Google. I do think one of the things that Teresa's really highlighted nicely in earlier comments was this idea of platform dependence and the idea that relying on platforms for access to your audience, for distribution and sharing of news, and as she says, for advertising and archives.

The idea that she would lose access to her archives is just an extraordinary demonstration of the power. And this is why I think we need to think about things like the Online News Act. In my ideal world, it would have been a much broader piece of legislation that wasn't primarily directed only at distributing revenue from platforms to news media organizations.

It would have looked at these problems of control, market dominance, weak privacy and data protection rules, and this problem with platform dependency that is causing people like Teresa and her news outlets so much trouble. Okay, in which case Angus, those were your numbers we put up there just a moment ago. Maybe you could tell us as you survey the country and what different organizations like Teresa's are doing to try to stay afloat. Give us some ideas. How are people trying to keep their heads above water in this game now?

Give us some ideas. How are people trying to keep their heads above water in this game now? Yeah, so it's incredibly interesting. So the numbers you had put up were from an April report. We had a more recent one kind of looking at the one year reflection. And one of the really interesting things that we found in that report is that, yes, engagement and viewership on meta-platforms tanked to the tune of about 90% across sort of all outlets a year later. But what that actually represented across the information ecosystem was roughly a drop of about 45% on all engagement across sort of the social media footprint.

And we found about 200 outlets had gone dark on social media completely. So like they only had a website or they only had a paper delivery and there was no sort of socially connected element, which helps as sort of Teresa highlighted in sort of like quick sharing of news, quick access, these sorts of things. So, you know, absolutely here kind of that platform dependency. One of the remarkable things about the one-year reflection report is the inflexibility of various

actors to this decision. And there's a few roots of that, but ultimately I think what sort of occurred is that there was this sense that Canada would be a repeat of Australia. So Metta would posture, the government would posture, and then eventually this wouldn't actually occur. And so news outlets, for example, didn't make archives. Or in the week, you know,

the Metta announced that the ban would be taking taking place and I didn't see a single time and we really looked where our news outlets went, hey, we're actually going to be turning dark on this platform in a week, follow us on these other platforms, subscribe to our newsletter, get some other access. And the reason that didn't occur is that there was this real sense that, oh, this isn't gonna actually happen, right? Like this is just some posturing. And so there was a remarkable inflexibility of news outlets. And we've seen that even a year on. There hasn't been sort of an investment in other social platforms or a reinvestment in sort of trying to build that really strong one-on-one relationship between the news outlet and their consumers. Instead, there's this

kind of continued reliance on the mediated relationship or using some other platforms infrastructure to spread. And particularly for the small outlets, that makes a lot of sense when you don't have resources to do a lot of the logistics and the management of that. But for the larger outlets, that's troubling. And the other thing I just want to flag is that Canadians have actually been very inflexible as well. And Canadians have continued to use meta-platforms and essentially continue to say,

hey, I still get my news from this platform. When we first saw that, we thought, what are you talking about? You continue to get news. But in fact, what Canadians think of as news and as political information doesn't necessarily come direct from publishers. It comes in mediated ways. And so that's very interesting is that actually Facebook continues to be the platform that Canadians say that they rely on the most for news and public opinion and current affairs, even when news is blocked on the platform.

And actually Canadians generally don't know that news has been turned off on that platform, even avid users. And so we sort of have this really interesting set of empirical findings, which point to everyone just kind of sleepwalking into this and sleepwalking through it when in fact the consequences are quite large. All right. Let me go to Talib Noor Muhammad on this then. Given everything you've heard so far,

a year later, how well do you think the act is working? Well, I think there are a couple of elements that have worked extremely well. The first is the fact that you do have Google that has come to the table and said, we're going to put $100 million a year into the news ecosystem in this country. I think that is a signal that there is an opportunity. And Google isn't doing this to be altruistic. I think they understand that there is an opportunity. There's a business opportunity.

Nothing that these platforms do is driven by anything but that. But the fact that they have seen that there is an opportunity means something. I think the second part of this, I think it's been a real demonstration of the fact that they have seen that there is an opportunity means something. I think the second part of this, I think it's been a real demonstration of the fact that Metta does what Metta wants to do and is inflexible. And the points that you made are all extremely valid. How do we make sure that people are able to access local news? And I think the tragic reality is that for the last couple of decades, we have seen a substantial decline. So when we look at what this act can seek to do, it is there

and it is available, the resources from Google and others are going to be available to help smaller news outlets actually recalibrate, get on board with new ways of being able to be there and present in their communities. It doesn't negate the important challenges that you're seeing in small town New Brunswick or across this country. But I think it provides us an opportunity to be able to say there's more that now we have seen that can be done. So again, go back and say, look, Metta gave us a pretty clear signal that they were uninterested

in participating. They didn't have anything to say about the regulatory structures. They did not come to the consultations on the Online News Act. And that tells you something, right? That tells you where their interests are. So our job is to make sure that the door is open if they want to have further conversations a year, you know, a year on out. But I think our job is also to make sure that small and large news outlets in this

country are supported in letting Canadians know that they can still access that news. It's just not going to be on Metis platforms and that we should be sending people to other websites. We should be sending people to the origin source, which by the way, from a revenue standpoint, is actually much better for small and large publishers of news. So a year out, I think there are some things that have gone extremely well. The jury is still out. There's lots more work yet to be done. And we're doing that work and we're going to continue to work hard with those that are interested in participating in that process in making sure that the outcomes are good for Canadian journalism and for Canadians.

Well let's talk about that outcome with Theresa Blackbird. I gather you have applied to the Google News Fund for an opportunity to dip into that and how did that go and what's the verdict? It went well, thankfully. It was a lot of hoops to jump through, but we were qualified. We were actually two days, I think it was last Thursday, just a few days ago, we were notified that we jumped through those hoops. And the gentleman from Carleton University needs to know that that's why that exists.

I am not just an advertiser. And that weeds out those, right? And I'm grateful for that. But I think in terms of what we've lost, all you have to look at is the recent case of Tenet Media, where this organization was found to be sharing, you know, they were basically sharing and being influenced by Russia related to anti-LGBTQIA. Like, there's a lot of news on Facebook that is not news and people are gobbling it up as news. And we have to remind ourselves it's not just about, oh,

we're using that platform. We use that platform or we want to use that platform to send them to the reputable places and we can't do that anymore. And it still is the platform of choice for the majority of Canadians. We have to get back our Facebook pages. We have to get the government to understand that we just can't take pennies. And I say that, like, I appreciate everything the government has tried to do, but $17,000 times two staff is going to help us very little in the long run. I can't necessarily hire somebody full-time to do my graphic design.

I'm probably going to be able to contract some of that out, but my 60-hour work week will probably still continue. And until we can get Facebook back to draw those numbers to our website to be able to up those advertising dollars, we're still going to be covering the Woodstock Town Council, you know, the Nackawick-Millville Town Council, these places that nobody does. But the other part of that is these little places like ours, these little organizations

like ours are feeding the TVOs, the city news, the CBCs, the Globals, all of those because they look at us and then they go, oh, well, that's an interesting story, and they'll come here for some of it because it's bigger and it's a little more broader, you know, reach for, they want to, you know, maybe expand that provincially. But we still, these little places like mine, these little papers like mine, still have a huge role to play in being able to inform Canadians about what's happening. Ultra-local news still needs to be supported. And if Facebook would just come back to the table, if the government could just come back to the table

and kind of negotiate that, and possibly renegotiate that, in terms of like they did in Australia, I mean, there's not a lot that I want. But one of the things is to have my Facebook page back, to have that engagement, to have that reach. Well, maybe Tlaib could help us on that. You clearly, whatever you did with Google worked.

They came back to the table, they ponied up some money, not as much as you wanted, but something. Why didn't that approach work with Facebook? Well, Steve, let's take a step back and talk about the Google deal for a second, because it is actually the single largest deal that Google has done in any country. And the provisions in that will guarantee that Canada will always get the best possible deal. So if another jurisdiction negotiates a better deal, Canada has most favorite nation status

on that, and we would be able to come back and renegotiate our deal. So I think that's really important to know. In terms of Facebook, look, the door is open. The minister has said she is ready and willing to talk to Metta at any time. I'm willing to talk to Metta. Our government is prepared to talk to Metta whenever they want to have a conversation. Do they want to talk to you? They have, I mean, that's a question for them, but what I will tell you is this. We are not going to sit there and let them run roughshod over the ecosystem as they already have. We're there to make a fair deal for Canadians, a fair deal that allows

Teresa's and others papers to have what they need, but for Canadians to have it to get what they need for the long term to make sure it is sustainable. Okay. And that is something that Metta needs to understand. I think we all understand the issue a whole lot better now and I've got to say Teresa Blackburn, you're my new hero. You are chief cook and bottle washer and getting it, as the Premier of Ontario would say, getting it done. So thank you and you keep on keeping on. That's Teresa Blackburn from the River Valley Sun, Angus Bridgman from McGill University,

Duane Winsack from the University of, from Carleton University, excuse me, and Talib Noor Muhammad, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage. Thanks to all of you for coming on TVO tonight. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you for having us.