Meta's news blackout in Canada causes problems during election
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Canada's first big election with a news blackout on Facebook. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carino. Canada's Liberal Party and its leader, Mark Carney, are set to remain in control after the country held federal elections Monday. They were the first since Canada adopted the Online News Act in 2023.

The law requires online content providers, like social media platforms, to negotiate some sort of fair payment to news publishers in exchange for using their content. Or they can just do what Meta did, block all news from their Facebook and Instagram platforms altogether.

We spoke with Marketplace senior Washington correspondent Kimberly Adams, who's reporting from Canada, to learn more about that law and what happened to the online news environment after it passed.

So this was a 2023 law that requires social media platforms and other online content providers to either negotiate deals to pay news publishers for their content or to pay some kind of fee that arbitrators would help set. And this was mainly going after Meta and Google, and they lobbied hard to stop the bill, but it ultimately became law.

Now, this law was Canada's attempt to support its news industry, ideally by forcing these big tech companies to share some of the money they make when users share news articles. Because just like here in the U.S., that industry, the news industry, has been struggling for years.

And so how did these tech platforms respond to this law? I asked Dwayne Winsec, who teaches journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. He's also director of the Global Media and Internet Concentration Project there. And he talked about two different responses. Google came to the table and it made an agreement with the Canadian government to provide $100 million dollars

per year into a fund that will be distributed by a third-party consortium to news media organizations. And that has to do with, like, the size of the organization and how many journalists they have working for them. On the other hand, Meta took a very different approach.

and blocked users in Canada from being able to share or view news links on their platforms, Instagram and Facebook, rather than comply with this law. Now, this can affect links for news stories from even non-Canadian news providers. So it's been a couple years since then. How big of an effect has this kind of news blackout on Facebook and Instagram had? A

According to a study by the Center for Media, Technology, and Democracy at McGill University, almost half of all media engagement across all platforms has just disappeared. And more than 200 news outlets have gone under, the vast majority of which were local. Now, obviously, there's been some industry trends playing into that as well, but it was a pretty rapid change in the media landscape after the ban. We'll be right back.

You're listening to Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carino. We're back with Marketplace's senior Washington correspondent, Kimberly Adams. So this was the first federal election in Canada since these policies kicked in.

How did it shape the information ecosystem around the election? So Taylor Owen, who teaches at McGill and runs that Center for Media Technology and Democracy I just mentioned, pointed out that in their survey, most Canadians didn't even notice the absence of news links on the platforms. Or they're still seeing news in the form of like screenshots and other repurposing of content. But there's also been a lot more information

non-news content that's been able to spread pretty quickly in the void. The New York Times found evidence that a ton of hyper-partisan and misleading content was flourishing online in the run-up to the vote. And Taylor Owen flagged another issue as well. One of the things we've seen during this election is widespread AI-generated fake images and videos of the political leaders.

And we think that's part of a function of both Meta scaling back their content moderation efforts, as well as blocking news and leaving this void in Canada. So what kind of misinformation, you know, fake news was spreading?

Oddly enough, it wasn't so much political content, but it was mostly stuff like crypto scams. Owen sent me a couple of examples like this one, which was an AI generated and manipulated video of Mark Carney, who's set up to be the next prime minister, pushing a fake investment program.

In just a month, your $350 Canadian dollars could turn into $12,000 Canadian dollars or even $20,000 Canadian dollars. This is the safest investment opportunity in Canada. Obviously, not a safe investment opportunity at all. Now, I should point out that Meta had a whole suite of tools for the election to push people towards authoritative information about the vote, as well as to clamp down on AI content that could mislead voters.

So why does this matter to us here in the U.S. and how we get information online? You know, Canada's law was modeled after one in Australia. And these platforms, Google, Meta, even X, and to some extent places like TikTok, have a major interest in making sure that the rest of the world, especially a profitable market like the U.S., does not follow the same route. And the experts I talk to say that's why Meta's really playing hardball here.

So Taylor Owen at McGill pointed to an effort in California last year to pass a bill to pay news publishers that got shelved when Google reached a payment deal. But Owen says Meta used the Canadian example as part of its lobbying to help kill the legislation. That was Marketplace senior correspondent Kimberly Adams.

We reached out to Meta for comment. They didn't get back to us before our deadline. But we've got general details on how they address misinformation on their platforms at MarketplaceTech.org. Daniel Shin produced this episode. I'm Megan McCarty Carino, and that's Marketplace Tech. This is APM. If there's one thing we know about social media, it's that misinformation is everywhere, especially when it comes to personal finance.

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