Rhino’s Ramblings - The Online News Act

By Robert Thomas Opinion\Commentary

“Have they blocked you from Facebook yet?” is a question I got asked when I was out having breakfast the other day.

It’s a question all I could say as far as I know “not yet.”

So what exactly am I talking about?

Well, I’m talking about the new Online News Act or Bill C-18 before it’s passing in the House of Commons.

Under the Online News Act social media companies are supposed to pay the original new site money for their content being shared on their sites.

The basic principle of this is that companies such as Google and Meta (who own Facebook and Instagram) have been making profits at the expense of news providers.

What they are saying is that the social media programs have affectively robbed the media, or rather news providers of their incomes and to make up for it platform such as Facebook, Instagram and Google are now going to have to pony up with cash.

I’m not going to stick my head in the sand and say that social media has not devastated advertising dollars that traditionally news rooms have relied upon to keep them operational.

The facts are there whether people want to believe them or not it’s up to them.

News providers have been devastated by the loss of traditional advertising sources.

And no, it’s not just by social media companies. Sometimes it’s actually advertisers themselves who decide to use not just social media companies but also their own websites to promote their products.

Instead of relying upon the newspaper, for instance, to find out when movies are on at the local theatres what happened a long time ago is theatres quit advertising in newspapers.

If you look back at the now defunct Moose Jaw Times-Herald The once daily publication of movie showtimes was discontinued. In its place came a website where people could conveniently access, showtimes anytime they chose through their home computers.

This was a loss to the Times-Herald has guaranteed daily income was taken away, and it was no way to recover it.

With the prominence of social media and people sharing stories from media websites, it has hurt the news media massively.

Advertising dollars that help produce local news magically disappeared overnight, and either went into social media management and sites or directly into social media companies pockets.

The effects of the reduction in local news coverage has even popped up in Moose Jaw as the Times-Herald tried such things as pay walls to make up for lost income.

Other changes has been - and they can dispute it if they like - Discover Moose Jaw has long ago pulled back on sports and weekend coverage.

It’s as simple as that. No advertising dollars means news coverage usually is going to be reduced.

To stop the deterioration of the news industry, the Trudeau government introduced, and passed the Online News Act.

On the other side of equation, you have the social media giants who are also dependent upon advertising to make ends meet.

They are not about to give up what has turned into a very lucrative cash cow for them.

As such the social media giants have decided to turn off all online news published on Meta - both domestic and foreign - for Canadian users.

But there is a catch individuals can share news links in their personal accounts this is aimed at publisher and media site accounts.

In their recent announcement Meta has said that they will be starting to phase in all new sharing from all defined news sources under the legislation.

As I interpret it - and I am no lawyer - what this means is that if you are news site fit into a set of criteria as laid out by the Online News Act that very soon he will not be able to see any news site or post their stories on Facebook and Instagram.

For the Facebook page Moose Jaw Today which is powered by the local newspaper The Moose Jaw Express they’ve already directed readers to their actual webpage, as well as their new email service.

For the radio stations that power DiscoverMooseJaw.com there has been no official word on what they expect.

But through my sleuthing and talking about this issue with the social media company itself my guess is they will face the same fate as the majority of Canadian news sites.

Now, what about MJIndependent.com ? What is this news site looking at?

It took a lot of work and patience, but I was finally able to get a hold of somebody at Meta who explain how this is all going to work.

And on a tertiary basis it looks like it is all smooth sailing for MJ Independent as we are too small and don’t sell ads therefore would not qualify for any type of renumeration if the Online News Act is successful in getting any type of compensation from Meta.

By all looks of it we will still be available under Meta’s new policy in response to the Online News Act.

I did also speak to some friends in the media outside of the city, and they tell me that Meta and Google’s actions are a blow against democracy.

Certainly people can still get their news directly from news media outlets websites, but the ease and convenience of just going on Facebook is going to be gone.

If Meta and Google do go through with their promised blocking of news sites we will post later on how to connect to them.

And at the present time, it looks like it’s going be gone for a long time.