Canada recently passed a law to address the continuing financial woes of its traditional news media, trust in which has steadily fallen to 42% in 2022. The Online News Act, known as Bill C-18, passed in June 2023 but is yet to come into force. It will require digital media companies to compensate news organisations for hosting their content on sites such as Facebook and Instagram and via search engines such as Google.
In response, it is reported that Meta has begun to block news stories from its sites Facebook and Instagram. News companies are reported to have called on the country’s antitrust regulator to investigate, arguing: “Meta seeks to impair Canadian news organizations’ ability to compete effectively in the news publishing and online advertising markets.”
It’s the latest episode in the digital transformation of the global news industry whose business model has been severely disrupted as news revenues have moved to online platforms rather than the producers of the news themselves. In Canada, 80% of all online advertising revenue (CAD$9.7 billion for 2020) now goes to Meta and Google.
