a new law requires digital giants to pay the media to be able to distribute their articles on their platform

The “online news law”, which came into force on Tuesday, notably forces Google or Meta to conclude commercial agreements with media to distribute their information on their platform.

In Canada, a new law to regulate the media comes into force on Tuesday, December 19: the “online news law”, also called C-18. This law requires digital giants with more than 20 million users to conclude commercial agreements with the media for the distribution of their content on their platforms. They have to pay the media to be able to distribute their articles and information.

This concerns in particular Google and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, except that since the announcement of this law this summer, Meta has blocked access to information content on its platforms in Canada. So no more articles shared on Facebook or Instagram feeds.

“The law on online news has an important Achilles heel: it applies to digital news intermediaries, that’s what the web giants are called”explains Jean-Hugues Roy, journalism teacher at the University of Montreal. “And by removing the information, Meta has ceased to be a digital news intermediary and therefore the law no longer applies and Meta will pay nothing.”

After negotiations, Google agrees to pay

A particularly worrying decision for the Canadian media, which are very present on social networks. The Quebec information site “24 Heures”, for example, is mainly aimed at 18-35 year olds and is widely followed on Instagram. Since this summer, an entire publication and distribution strategy has had to be reviewed, explains its director of information content, Charles d’Amboise.

“We have adapted our content much more on platforms like TikTok. There are also newsletters”he notes. “We are participating in a collective effort to really encourage people to come and get information from the source, in our media.” For its part, after several weeks of negotiations, Google agreed to pay. The envelope amounts to 100 million Canadian dollars distributed between the different media in the country.

Australia had already implemented a similar law, requiring Google and Facebook to pay media outlets to publish their content in 2021.