Canada vows to follow Australia with new law after Facebook bans news
Canada vows to follow Australia with new law after Facebook bans news
Canada vowed to make Facebook pay for its news content as the social media giant faced international condemnation for imposing a blackout on Australia.Facebook has been labelled a “schoolyard bully” for blocking links to news outlets in Australia in response to a planned law requiring it to pay for news shared on its site.Canada said that it would not be deterred from implementing a law similar to Australia’s, and appealed for international allies to take on Big Tech.Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive, with Sir Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, who has been urged to consider his senior position at the companyNIALL CARSON/PASteven Guilbeault, the culture minister in charge of crafting the legislation, said: “Canada is at the forefront of this battle.”British MPs said that Facebook’s move showed that it should face tougher rules in the online harms bill, which has pledged to better regulate social media.AdvertisementGuilbeault said that Canada might adopt the Australian model, which requires Facebook and Google to reach payment deals with news sites whose links drive activity on social media platforms or be forced to pay through binding arbitration. France is requiring tech platforms to open talks with publishers about paying for news content.Guilbeault said: “We are working to see which model would be the most appropriate.” He said that he spoke last week to his French, Australian, German and Finnish counterparts about working together on ensuring fair compensation for web content.“I suspect that soon we will have five, ten, 15 countries adopting similar rules. Is Facebook going to cut ties with Germany, with France?” At some point Facebook’s approach would become “totally unsustainable”, he said.Media groups in Canada warned last year that 700 journalism jobs out of 3,100 nationally would be lost without action. The Australian model would allow publishers in Canada to recover £350 million a year.Megan Boler, a University of Toronto professor specialising in social media, said that the Facebook action marked a turning point that would require a common international approach. “We could actually see a coalition, a united front against this monopoly, which could be very powerful,” she said.AdvertisementThe social network has reacted to a planned Australian law requiring it to pay for news shared on its site by blocking users from seeing or posting links to news websites.Health and emergency organisations were initially caught in the news ban, blocking users’ access to Covid information and charitable support. Australian media pages are unavailable to international users and Facebook accidentally blocked Sky News and The Daily Telegraph because they share names with Australian outlets.There have been calls in Britain for Sir Nick Clegg, the former Liberal Democrat leader and deputy prime minister, to consider his position as vice-president for global affairs and communications, which he has held since 2018.Julian Knight, Conservative chairman of the digital, culture, sport and media committee, said that Facebook was demonstrating irresponsible “bully boy tactics” that “run a bulldozer” over democratic processes. He added: “This is not just about Australia. This is Facebook putting a marker down, saying to the world that ‘If you do wish to limit our powers . . . we can remove what is for many people a utility’.”James Cleverly, the Foreign Office minister, told Times Radio: “Ultimately we’ve got to ensure there is an appropriate balance between a country and its ability to make decisions and its commercial partners, whether they’re big tech companies or others. Australia is and remains a very strong partner and we will of course listen to whatever requests they put forward on the international stage.”AdvertisementThe Liberal Democrats distanced themselves from Clegg. A senior MP from the party described Facebook’s actions as “entirely wrong”.There was also strident criticism of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive. Facebook said that the new law misunderstood the relationship between its platform and publishers and that it had no choice but to act.Dr Damian Tambini, a media fellow at the London School of Economics, said that the row was being keenly watched by policymakers around the world.“At the moment Facebook are within their rights to switch off news services,” he said. “However, in the longer term they know that doing so weakens their claim that they have no editorial control, which they need to maintain in order to fend off the regulation that inevitably comes with editorial responsibility.”Facebook’s latest power play is a significant escalation in its legal fight with Australia over legislation that will force digital platforms to pay publishers for articles.AdvertisementScott Morrison, the Australian prime minister, vowed to press ahead with the new law today, and criticised Facebook for “unfriending” Australia. He added that the leaders of Britain, Canada, France and India had shown their support to his government’s actions.“There is a lot of world interest in what Australia is doing,” he said. “That is why I invite . . . Facebook to constructively engage because they know that what Australia will do here is likely to be followed by many other western jurisdictions.”He added that Facebook’s actions constituted a “threat”. “I thought that was not a good move on their part, and they should move quickly past that, come back to the table,” he said.Josh Frydenberg, the Australian treasurer, said that he had spoken to Zuckerberg today for a second time since the news blackout. “We talked through their remaining issues and agreed our respective teams would work through them immediately. We’ll talk again over the weekend,” he said.By damming the flow of news, Facebook has drawn a sharp dividing line between itself and Google. The search engine had initially threatened to remove links to news from search results in Australia. This week, however, Google struck licensing deals with a number of the country’s large publishers, including News Corp, owner of The Times.AdvertisementThis is far from a localised spat — the reverberations have spread across the world. Many governments see the Australian reforms as a template for safeguarding the future of quality journalism in their countries.The legislation is designed to redress the power imbalance between Facebook and Google and publishers in negotiating payments for articles used on the platforms. Under the proposed rules, news providers would thrash out licensing deals with the Silicon Valley giants. If agreement cannot be reached, an arbitrator would decide a fee.Australia is explicitly attempting to curb the growing power of Facebook and Google. The two firms dominate the market for internet advertising, accounting for 80 per cent of spending on digital ads in the UK in 2019.The Australian government sees the “link tax” as a potential saviour of grassroots journalism. Critics of the legislation have attacked it as a blunt instrument that does not reflect how the internet works.Facebook says the statutory code is based on erroneous analysis and that the company does not benefit directly from users posting links to stories. It has made a cold-eyed calculation in turning off the news tap. The move has been a PR disaster, yet the price may be worth paying if Australians continue to spend as much time on Facebook as before.What did Australia do?Propose a law forcing tech companies to pay news outlets for articles shared on their networks. It would require Google and Facebook to negotiate with media companies and compensate them for content that appears on, for example, Google search results and Facebook’s news feed.How have Google and Facebook responded?Both are angry and lobbied hard to change the law. Google put warning signs on its Australian homepage but it has signed deals with news organisations such as News Corp, parent company of The Times, to cover all news links on its platform. By contrast Facebook users in Australia cannot see or post links to any news sites.Why is Facebook doing this?It wants to show that it is more important to news organisations than they are to Facebook. It says that articles account for less than 4 per cent of news feed content but that Facebook drove 5.1 billion visits to Australian news sites last year.What do news outlets say?That Facebook and Google benefit from the content they produce. Between 8 per cent and 14 per cent of Google search results trigger a “top stories” display, typically including news articles. Facebook benefits because stories on the news feed retain user attention, enabling more adverts to be displayed.Why is the law considered necessary?It is designed to address the loss of advertising revenue that traditional media companies have suffered. For every £100 of Australian online ad spending in 2019, £53 went to Google, £28 to Facebook and £19 to the rest. Newspapers say that while they are having to cut staff, Google and Facebook make huge sums off the back of their work.Does Facebook pay anyone at the moment?In Britain it launched a news tab feature in January after signing deals with news providers including Sky News, The Guardian, the Daily Mail group and the Telegraph Media Group. The news tab shows curated stories from national, local and lifestyle media outlets; users choose topics and publishers they want to follow or hide. News UK, publisher of The Times, has not yet signed up.What happens next?The law will be debated in the Australian Senate. There may be amendments depending on negotiations with Facebook.