> Online News Act (Bill C-18) in June 2023. The law was designed to make large digital platforms compensate Canadian news organizations when news content was made available through their services. It created a bargaining/arbitration framework rather than literally setting a per-link tax.
> So beginning in August 2023, Meta blocked news on both Facebook and Instagram in Canada. Canadians could no longer view or share links/content from Canadian or foreign news organizations on those platforms... As of 2026, the Canadian government still describes Meta as blocking news sharing on Facebook and Instagram
Pretty much the worst result for everyone. Newspapers get less traffic, can't use social media even if they wanted to. Inconvenience to users. Meta mostly unaffected, maybe some marginal loss in time spent on the platform.
These kinds of things eventually just face reality. Meta and Google know very well how much these things are worth to them in terms of marginal revenue or network value. And the answer is not what publishers want to hear.
The article doesn't link to the text of the law, but from what the article says the law will make it mandatory for Facebook to enter into agreements with news outlets, whether they want to or not (otherwise they'll be ""fined"" millions of AUD)
The Australian government has probably learned from the Canadians and set the law up so the tax is more successful. Recall that the government has the power to levy unfair taxes and handouts in principle, so it doesn't matter all that much that their claimed reasoning is silly. This looks to be equivalent to a social media tax and an Australian news handout, just bundled together for rhetorical purposes (and with a bizarre negotiating element in a welfare transfer that really just looks like beating around the bush to me).
Yeah, the way it's being discussed, it does seem like the law is trying to impose those four restrictions. But that seems like compelled speech...I know too little about Australian law, but that seems like a bad precedent, in the sense that government is now forcing private entities to publish news from sites they specify and pay for the privilege. It's not quite state media, but it adjacent to it.
The incentives are horrible. Piss off the government and you won't be included in the pool of sites that are eligible for shakedown money. Piss off Google / Meta and they will throw you out in the cold and make a deal with another site in the pool.
So the reality they must face is that the social media giants will try to circumvent regulation.
Fine. And the most reasonable response to that is therefore to implement some form of general anti-avoidance rule, of the sort that's used in, for example, tax, company, and employment law.
For instance, you could say that if a social media company were to change its behaviour to avoid a law of this sort then they should incur a charge equivalent to, say, 10% of its global revenue. That ought to make compliance with the law the more attractive option.
There's no reason to be defeatist about this - social media companies are not and should not be above the law.
Yeah, there’s no chance that the response to such a law would be for them to immediately shut down all Australian operations, block all connections from Australia, immediately lay off every Australian citizen working for them, and essentially evacuate the country.
The law says that they have to compensate the news organizations when links to those news articles are shared on their platform. They are completely in compliance with the law because they're preventing those links from being shared on the platform.
This is in no way circumventing regulation. It's following it, the same way Anthropic is following copyright law by shredding books after they scan them. They're just doing what the courts said.
What I don't get is when people make rules with a particular outcome in mind, but don't reason through the incentives the rule creates.
For what it's worth, I'm thrilled that you can't post news links on Facebook and Instagram in Canada. The fewer people that visit those platforms, the better!
That is similar to saying someone who refrains from murdering random strangers is circumventing the law that would send them to prison if they did. Not triggering this sort of law is a totally acceptable response and there is no reason for anti-avoidance measures. The basic deal here is is if social media propagates the news then they must pay the news companies. Banning the news companies is reasonable. If they don't want to pay then they can disassociate from the news sites.
Frankly it would be a win for everyone. I don't know why anyone is reading Australian news media in the first place, the information density is low.
>Newspapers get less traffic, can't use social media even if they wanted to
Newspapers want to sell subscriptions for their local area, on paper or on their WEB site. I would say getting clicks from non-subscribers has no value for them.
Does anybody know if that is enough for them to care? Surely they should be paying 30% tax on profit (not revenue above) regardless. Of cause I assume they use tax havens to avoid paying Australia tax.
The theory that these online platforms are stealing value from the news companies is thoroughly disproven by the fact that they would rather ban news from their platform than make the payments. This is a government shakedown and nothing more. If local news is worth funding publicly then it should be done properly out of a general tax on the public like other public programs.
It's amusing, in a shameful, 'typical government' rubbing all it's brain cells together to come up with the answer they were lobbied to come up with by the status quo of their era, way.
Of all the things they could throw at the tech giants, they choose this?
Fucking SMH (not Sydney Morning Herald in this case, although related).
Dismantle the collection of data. Enforce advertising standards and rules. Either of those things would benefit humanity.
This? This is Weekend At Bernie's; one last party with the corpse of a dead old man.
Fucks sake. Dumb cunts will retire to their gold plated mansions in the middle of dystopia.
The kind of single-sided crap with no rigor, no verification, source "my ass" we get these days I feel like it was journalism that invented hallucinations on AI.
Didn't Canada try this in 2023?
> Online News Act (Bill C-18) in June 2023. The law was designed to make large digital platforms compensate Canadian news organizations when news content was made available through their services. It created a bargaining/arbitration framework rather than literally setting a per-link tax.
> So beginning in August 2023, Meta blocked news on both Facebook and Instagram in Canada. Canadians could no longer view or share links/content from Canadian or foreign news organizations on those platforms... As of 2026, the Canadian government still describes Meta as blocking news sharing on Facebook and Instagram
Pretty much the worst result for everyone. Newspapers get less traffic, can't use social media even if they wanted to. Inconvenience to users. Meta mostly unaffected, maybe some marginal loss in time spent on the platform.
These kinds of things eventually just face reality. Meta and Google know very well how much these things are worth to them in terms of marginal revenue or network value. And the answer is not what publishers want to hear.
Correct, I remember my dad complaining he can't share Toronto Star articles on Facebook because they block you from posting them. Same with Instagram.
https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/05/the-behind-the-scenes-bi...
The article doesn't link to the text of the law, but from what the article says the law will make it mandatory for Facebook to enter into agreements with news outlets, whether they want to or not (otherwise they'll be ""fined"" millions of AUD)
That is what the Canadian law said. This was "if Meta is showing news content".
Contrary to the law's assumption, news is worth hardly anything to Meta, so they just stopped showing it.
Does the Australian law really say:
1. You must show news, even if you don't want to
2. You must pay to do so
3. The rate will be determined by negotiation with the people you are paying
4. You cannot say no to them in aggregate
I have my doubts, but if it does I still doubt it will get the results the govt wants. The problem is news is not valuable to Meta.
The Australian government has probably learned from the Canadians and set the law up so the tax is more successful. Recall that the government has the power to levy unfair taxes and handouts in principle, so it doesn't matter all that much that their claimed reasoning is silly. This looks to be equivalent to a social media tax and an Australian news handout, just bundled together for rhetorical purposes (and with a bizarre negotiating element in a welfare transfer that really just looks like beating around the bush to me).
Yeah, the way it's being discussed, it does seem like the law is trying to impose those four restrictions. But that seems like compelled speech...I know too little about Australian law, but that seems like a bad precedent, in the sense that government is now forcing private entities to publish news from sites they specify and pay for the privilege. It's not quite state media, but it adjacent to it.
The incentives are horrible. Piss off the government and you won't be included in the pool of sites that are eligible for shakedown money. Piss off Google / Meta and they will throw you out in the cold and make a deal with another site in the pool.
Hard to call it an "agreement" at that point. I thought one of the fundamental rules of contract law is that it can't be signed under duress.
So the reality they must face is that the social media giants will try to circumvent regulation.
Fine. And the most reasonable response to that is therefore to implement some form of general anti-avoidance rule, of the sort that's used in, for example, tax, company, and employment law.
For instance, you could say that if a social media company were to change its behaviour to avoid a law of this sort then they should incur a charge equivalent to, say, 10% of its global revenue. That ought to make compliance with the law the more attractive option.
There's no reason to be defeatist about this - social media companies are not and should not be above the law.
> 10% of its global revenue
Yeah, there’s no chance that the response to such a law would be for them to immediately shut down all Australian operations, block all connections from Australia, immediately lay off every Australian citizen working for them, and essentially evacuate the country.
The law says that they have to compensate the news organizations when links to those news articles are shared on their platform. They are completely in compliance with the law because they're preventing those links from being shared on the platform.
This is in no way circumventing regulation. It's following it, the same way Anthropic is following copyright law by shredding books after they scan them. They're just doing what the courts said.
What I don't get is when people make rules with a particular outcome in mind, but don't reason through the incentives the rule creates.
For what it's worth, I'm thrilled that you can't post news links on Facebook and Instagram in Canada. The fewer people that visit those platforms, the better!
That is similar to saying someone who refrains from murdering random strangers is circumventing the law that would send them to prison if they did. Not triggering this sort of law is a totally acceptable response and there is no reason for anti-avoidance measures. The basic deal here is is if social media propagates the news then they must pay the news companies. Banning the news companies is reasonable. If they don't want to pay then they can disassociate from the news sites.
Frankly it would be a win for everyone. I don't know why anyone is reading Australian news media in the first place, the information density is low.
This is not "circumventing regulation" here but nullifying the argument the newspapers had for bringing the law in the first place.
They argued that Meta needs them for exposure and that's why they should pay, apparently it's not true and they don't need them.
>Newspapers get less traffic, can't use social media even if they wanted to
Newspapers want to sell subscriptions for their local area, on paper or on their WEB site. I would say getting clicks from non-subscribers has no value for them.
What’s the top of the funnel for getting subscriptions?
> I would say getting clicks from non-subscribers has no value for them.
So the newspaper gets no revenue when non-subscribers view (and perhaps click) ads on the newspaper's web site?
TIL, I guess...
> 2.5% on their advertising revenues
Does anybody know if that is enough for them to care? Surely they should be paying 30% tax on profit (not revenue above) regardless. Of cause I assume they use tax havens to avoid paying Australia tax.
They could create competing news organisations with the money, then I'm sure newspapers will abandon the push to tax them.
Won't this end up with news orgs that don't have deals just being delisted?
It's probably great for the 3 or 4 largest ones, but the rest?
I don't think they can delvist here.
It looks like a flat 2.5% tax on add revenue.
Likely,the tech giants. will just treat it like that, and not strike any deals, and add it on to the cost of doing business in that country.
The theory that these online platforms are stealing value from the news companies is thoroughly disproven by the fact that they would rather ban news from their platform than make the payments. This is a government shakedown and nothing more. If local news is worth funding publicly then it should be done properly out of a general tax on the public like other public programs.
Unfortunately for them, not publishing news will likely cost the giants less than the payments they'd have to make to keep the news.
News writers are in a supplicant position. They need the tech giants to disseminate their new way more than the tech giants need them.
By nature, it's a very asymmetrical relationship.
It's amusing, in a shameful, 'typical government' rubbing all it's brain cells together to come up with the answer they were lobbied to come up with by the status quo of their era, way.
Of all the things they could throw at the tech giants, they choose this?
Fucking SMH (not Sydney Morning Herald in this case, although related).
Dismantle the collection of data. Enforce advertising standards and rules. Either of those things would benefit humanity.
This? This is Weekend At Bernie's; one last party with the corpse of a dead old man.
Fucks sake. Dumb cunts will retire to their gold plated mansions in the middle of dystopia.
Journalists can work for free when tech people work for free.
The kind of single-sided crap with no rigor, no verification, source "my ass" we get these days I feel like it was journalism that invented hallucinations on AI.
Every time I click an archive.ph link, democracy sheds a single tear.