Canadian Gov’s Game of Chicken with Social Media Ends with Citizens Losing

Canada passed a new law which requires social media companies to pay newpapers if users or the newspapers themselves post new articles on their social media platforms. That means if, for example, CNBC, a Canadian media company, posts a news article on say, Facebook, possibly including a link to the actual article, Facebook would have to pay CNBC for the privilege for allowing CNBC to post their story there.

The social media companies say, and I think correctly, that the newspapers gain a lot more visibility for their stories by having them picked up and propagated by the platforms.

The Canadian government did not waver and the law will go into effect in a few months.

Meta – Facebook and Instagram – announced today that they are phasing out news coverage over the next few months. This means that Canadian new outlets can still publish content on Meta platforms, but it will not be visible in Canada. Same for international news outlets. Canadian users will no longer be able to post or share news content on the social media platforms.

Australia passed a similar bill in 2021 but it allowed the platforms to cut deals with the media. Canada does not allow that.

It is not clear what other social media platforms will do. Twitter may ignore the law and wait for the government to sue them or block their website. That seems to be their most common strategy.

Other countries are considering similar laws; stay tuned to see what they do.

For businesses, if you post news to social media, depending on exactly how you construct that news comments from media sources, it may be blocked to Canadian visitors.

Credit: Cybernews