The news will disappear from your feed, Facebook announced after the Canadian Senate’s vote on Thursday formalized the adoption of the bill to forcefully drag “dominant” web companies to the negotiating table with the media.
“We confirm today that we will end access to news on Facebook and Instagram to all users in Canada, before the entry into force of the Online News Act”, writes on its blog the Californian multinational. Meta, in both official languages.
The platform is thus carrying out its threat, repeated during the examination of Bill C-18 on the sharing of revenues between the giants of the Web and the media, in the hope of having it modified. The elected officials and senators had replied that they would not bow to the threat.
In the same message, Facebook wishes to reassure its users “that they will always be able to stay in touch with their friends and family, grow their businesses and support their communities. »
Facebook, like Google, this spring conducted “tests” aimed at blocking access to news articles to a small fraction of the country’s Internet users. The Minister of Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, was meeting Thursday with representatives of Google. The company claims to do “everything in [son] power to avoid an outcome that no one wants”.
“We continue to seek urgently to work with the government on a way forward,” spokesperson Shay Purdy wrote in an email.
Ottawa’s bet
“I sincerely hope that the government will win its bet,” said independent senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, shortly before the vote in the Senate on Thursday, the outcome of which was unsurprising.
The elected members of Parliament had already left Ottawa the day before, for the summer, leaving it to the senators to adopt the text. They had just before sent back to the Upper House the version already revised by the Senate, minus two amendments of Mme Miville-Dechêne who were to specify that the negotiations between the Web platforms and the media which share their content there would be based on “exchanges of values”, one of the requests of the platforms.
This exchange – what both recognize as the value of news on the platforms, monetary or not – must guide possible arbitrations if no agreement occurs, but not necessarily the prior negotiations, decided the government. The Minister explained that it was necessary to “keep flexibility as much as possible” so as not to penalize the media in this expected showdown.
Royal Assent will thus have to formalize the An Act respecting online communication platforms making news content available to persons in Canada, a procedure that is automatic. However, several months separate the adoption of the law and the signing of a first check promised to the media.
Amicable settlements
The implications of Facebook’s blocking of news are still unclear on the application of the new law, which was initially intended to require “minimal intervention” from the government. If everything were to go as planned, the platforms would agree on their own with the media on an amount to be provided to them, for example following collective negotiations.
These platforms must still “make the news content available” to be subject to the Act. Minister Pablo Rodriguez did not seem too worried to see Google or Facebook completely blocking access to news for their users.
“It’s a business decision, but you have to understand that they also make a lot of money in Canada. It’s a market that is important to them,” he told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday.
Then, on Thursday, the minister let it be understood that the process that is under way will give the government the right to crack down on Meta. “Facebook knows very well that it currently has no obligation under the law. Following Royal Assent of Bill C-18, the government will engage in a regulatory and enforcement process. If the government can’t defend Canadians against the web giants, who will? reacted the Minister in an email sent by his office to the Duty.
In theory, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was first to establish the rules of the game, by officially designating Google and Facebook as the “dominant” companies covered by the law, according to criteria established by regulation. Then, the CRTC must also draft a “code of conduct” to which the parties must subscribe in order to negotiate.
These rules must also determine whether these companies have already concluded enough agreements with the media to avoid doing more. Both Facebook and Google already fund several news organizations, including The duty, under agreements whose amounts are kept confidential. However, several other media, including large groups such as Bell Media and CBC / Radio-Canada are also claiming their share of the cake.
In Australia, a country that has passed a similar law, collective bargaining with the media has allowed web giants to be exempted from the law. The multinational Google multiplied its efforts this spring to enshrine in law the number of media with which it would be sufficient to agree.
An assessment of agreements to avoid arbitration
According to the law adopted Thursday, it will ultimately be up to the CRTC, as a regulator, to assess whether the number and quality of the agreements satisfy it, based on various criteria: that the agreements are fair, support the production of local news , regional and national, and maintain freedom of expression, for example. The CRTC will also have to publish an annual report that records the total value of commercial agreements with platforms, without revealing commercial information.
If the major platforms “that make news content available” fail to sign enough deals to satisfy the CRTC within the next 18 months, those companies will be subject to the full law. The financial consequences could be significant.
This would give the right to each media to drag these platforms before an arbitrator. Their case would include estimating what is owed to them, based on the price of producing the news, the value the platforms derive from it, and the “imbalance” in bargaining power. The arbitrator will then have to decide whether the platform’s offer is sufficient.
Google and Facebook have sharply criticized this aspect, which would amount to forcing them to pay the media for the volume of links to the articles they post, which is contrary, according to them, to the spirit of the functioning of the Internet.