The Liberals can solve the ongoing impasse with Meta and Google by making the Big Tech platforms pay into a fund for news outlets, Konrad von Finckenstein says
OTTAWA — The Liberal government can solve the ongoing impasse with Meta and Google by suspending the implementation of its Online News Act and making the Big Tech platforms pay into a fund for news outlets, former CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein says.
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Meta and Google have said they will pull news from their platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Google Search, in response to Bill C-18, which became law in late June.
The idea behind switching to the fund model, which would be run by industry and not the government, is that it would address the main issues Meta and Google have said they have with the Online News Act. Those are that it effectively makes them pay for online links and that it exposes them to uncapped liability.
“As long as you can establish that you, in effect, got money from Google and Facebook, and you are paying into newspapers and therefore they’re staying viable…I don’t think anybody will care what mechanics you use,” von Finckenstein said.
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“I don’t see why Google and Facebook would not do that.”
Meta and Google have said they will pull news from their platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Google Search, in response to Bill C-18.
That legislation would force the two companies to reach commercial deals with news publishers to share revenues for news stories that appear on their platforms (Postmedia, publisher of the National Post, is in favour of the legislation).
The bill covers Big Tech companies — it’s designed to specifically capture Google and Meta — that “make news content available to persons in Canada.” If Meta and Google block news links from their platforms, they’ll no longer be subject to the legislation.
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Von Finckenstein said the bill was based on a flawed premise, that Google and Meta benefit from news links posted to their platforms, when it’s actually the news outlet that benefits. But Google and Meta do benefit from the data they collect from news content, von Finckenstein argued in a recent paper co-authored with Peter Menzies, who formerly served as CRTC vice chair and before that was publisher of the Calgary Herald.
Menzies pointed out in an interview the fund would give Meta and Google certainty about how much they could be expected to pay, which is one of the key concerns they’ve expressed about the current bill. And, unlike opting out of the Online News Act, there would be no way for the companies to escape from it.
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Meta has said there is no compromise solution under the current bill, and that it’s no longer negotiating with the government. While Google initially entered into last-minute talks with Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, the company said Thursday those talks weren’t successful in addressing its concerns.
Menzies said the companies could be “talked into” a compromise of a news fund, provided the contribution is reasonable. “If you make it make sense from a business point of view, you can do it.”
“I don’t think either of the companies really wants to have to take on the sort of ‘dark lord’ persona in this drama… and I don’t think the government is particularly keen on taking on the bumbling-clown persona. So both of them, I think, are motivated to come up with something reasonable.”
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Supriya Dwivedi, director of policy and engagement at McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, agreed both sides likely want a compromise. “I would expect that both sides, both the government and the platforms, do want a resolution to this because I can’t imagine, for either platform, they love the optics of being seen as pulling this kind of thing in a country like Canada.”
But Dwivedi noted there’s nothing stopping the companies from setting up a fund right now. “All they have to do is, they make it transparent and inclusive and align it with the exemption criteria that’s enumerated in C-18. They could very well do that on their own and be abiding by C-18.”
She said the government shouldn’t back down or pull back completely, because that would set a “terrible precedent.”
“Simply because of the message it sends not just to other companies … but to other countries as well,” who are in the process of developing similar legislation.
