Back in June, the Canadian government passed the Online News Act, which was aimed at shielding traditional media outlets from losing revenue to online platforms. There is no question that the likes of Facebook and Google have been hoovering up a growing portion of the advertising revenue that had previously gone to newspapers and the like. Rather than moving on from their advertising-based business models, the old media lobbied the government to introduce measures to force the newcomers to share the loot.
As soon as the Act came into effect, Meta/Facebook made it impossible to use their platform to link to traditional media outlets. This complies with the Act, though hardly in the way that the government intended, and the ban remains in place to this day. Back during the wildfire season in early summer, the newspapers were full of stories that Facebook's intransigence was putting Canadians' lives at risk by depriving them of vital information.
Google took a less confrontational approach, and last month announced that it had agreed a deal that would see it pay C$ 100 million per year to the old media outlets in order to comply with the new law. As the linked article above shows, details of who will actually get Google's money are now emerging, not without some wrangling. The Toronto Star quickly decided that the overall package was not adequate, which brings thoughts of gift horses and their mouths to mind. The CBC lobbied for and appears to have been awarded a share of the pot, even though it already receives upwards of a billion dollars of taxpayers' money each year.
Anyway, now that the deal is in place, presumably we can go onto Google and read stories in the Toronto Star or the Globe and Mail to our hearts' content, right? Don't be silly! If you try to read a story in the Star online you will still be faced with a demand to take out a subscription. (Try it for yourself, here.) You could, of course, have taken out that subscription at any time, before all of this nonsense started -- and yet somehow we are meant to believe that it was Google and Facebook that were the ones denying us access to the news. All that's changed is that the Star et al have found a way to get paid twice for being being the same mediocre* newspapers as before.
Shameless shakedown or devious double-dipping? Decide for yourself, but in the meantime don't believe everything you read in the newspapers.
* It's almost Christmas so I'm feeling charitable.
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