Dear Canadians, the time has come to keep your cool. There is no need to panic in front of Facebook, which threatens to block the sharing of your news. Limiting the power of big tech companies is a challenge, to be sure, but the good news is that a mobilization is taking place around the world.
Australia experienced the blocking of its news by Facebook as the Australian government prepared to introduce laws similar to Canada’s Online News Act. When Facebook “amiradiated” Australia in February 2021, many Australians made no secret of their frustration and politicians from all parties expressed their anger. That didn’t stop the Australian government from standing up to its powerful adversaries and adopting the world’s first News Media Bargaining Code a week later.
Much like the News Media Bargaining Code in Australia, the Online News Act aims to redress the imbalance in negotiations between media outlets and tech giants. Facebook and Google have been profiting from news content on their platforms for years. Government intervention is the only mechanism that will force them to sit down at the bargaining table to pay for this information content that adds value to their business.
The Australian code was designed in response to concerns from small and large media about the impact of large digital platforms on themselves, first, but also on their advertising markets.
This is not an Australian problem. Globally, the market power of Facebook and Google, with their sophisticated advertising technology and massive scale, has been disrupting and decimating local media for at least a decade. We have all witnessed the disappearance of audiences and readership. Jobs in newsrooms have become scarce while the loss of advertising revenue has taken place at an alarming rate.
I worked on the development of Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code as it evolved from competition policy to high-profile micro-economic reform. Facebook has always maintained that the presence of news on its platform has no economic value. The giant also argued that the law “fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between [sa] platform and publishers”. Google even claimed that the Australian code was “unenforceable”.
Despite outrage from big tech companies, the code, which has since been found to be workable and effective, has proven successful for Australian media big and small.
Shortly after the code came into force, most of Australia’s major media companies entered into lucrative deals with Google and Facebook, the total value of which is estimated at almost A$200 million.
The Australian code hasn’t turned the internet upside down. Rather, it showed that it was possible to limit the dominance of platforms in its market.
It took a little longer for smaller independent publishers to get to the negotiating table, but we finally got there with Google.
In November 2021, the Minderoo Foundation brought together a group of 24 small independent publishers to bargain collectively with Google and Facebook. Many are very small or family-owned publishers, operating in rural communities, outlying urban areas, multicultural and LGBTQI+ communities, and some offer public interest journalism focusing on the arts, science and culture. ‘environment.
Before our intervention, these public interest publishers were unable to communicate with the platforms. Our collective bargaining efforts have put an end to willful blindness. Facebook quickly dismissed us on the grounds that it had subsidy programs for small publishers, but Google came to the table and negotiated with us.
It took six months of back and forth negotiation, but all of our smaller publishers got deals and funds from Google.
The Australian Code was designed to help support the sustainability of public interest journalism in Australia, to the benefit of media that perform a public interest function, employ people and come in all shapes and sizes. The code and our collective bargaining efforts have produced positive results for small newspaper companies in Australia.
More than ever, we need local information to build trust, fight misinformation and strengthen our democracy.
Now it’s up to you, dear Canadians! Now is the time to stand up to the threats from big tech companies and pass a law to save your local news media.