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Facebook Canada

Meta's Canada News Ban Fails To Dent Facebook Usage (reuters.com) 116

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Meta's decision to block news links in Canada this month has had almost no impact on Canadians' usage of Facebook, data from independent tracking firms indicated on Tuesday, as the company faces scorching criticism from the Canadian government over the move. From a report: Daily active users of Facebook and time spent on the app in Canada have stayed roughly unchanged since parent company Meta started blocking news there at the start of August, according to data shared by Similarweb, a digital analytics company that tracks traffic on websites and apps, at Reuters' request. Another analytics firm, Data.ai, likewise told Reuters that its data was not showing any meaningful change to usage of the platform in Canada in August. The estimates, while early, appear to support Meta's contention that news holds little value for the company as it remains locked in a tense standoff in Canada over a new law requiring internet giants to pay publishers for the news articles shared on their platforms.
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Meta's Canada News Ban Fails To Dent Facebook Usage More

Meta's Canada News Ban Fails To Dent Facebook Usage

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  • Maybe it's for the best (Score:5, Informative)

    by Molten Heart ( 5842394 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @10:13AM (#63805784)
    I don't read facebook for the news, I read it to see what my friends are up to.

    • Re:Maybe it's for the best (Score:5, Insightful)

      by garett_spencley ( 193892 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @10:24AM (#63805812) Journal

      I'm usually not on Meta's side on any issue. But in this case, the law is absolutely absurd. It's absurd in principle (why should anyone be required to pay for giving someone else free traffic?) but what people don't understand is the insanely broad nature and scope of the law.

      • -The law does not distinguish between Canadian news sources and global/foreign news sources.
      • - It does not distinguish between small independent news outlets and major ones.
      • - According to the strict letter of the law, and Meta's reasonable response, even a news outlet having their own page and voluntarily sharing those links to their own content requires payment from Meta.

      To put this into perspective, my wife and I are planning a vacation to Walt Disney World in 6 months and even a Facebook page called "Disney World Updates" is subject to the ban. That's how broadly scoped it is.

      And while I certainly wouldn't trust Facebook itself for news sources, I did follow a local independent news outlet's page as a convenient way to get updates on local events in my city. I can't see their posts or their page anymore. That wasn't "the algorithm" feeding me Global Affairs news from CNN or NBC ... that was very local stuff that I looked to find out about summer festivals and things. Do I need Facebook for that? No. But it's no one's business if that's the tool I chose, nor can I think of any justification for The Online News Act. It's one of the most ill-conceived and ill-written laws I have ever heard of.

      • Curious, does the scope even extend to newspapers putting their content on YouTube, and then fecebook users linking that YouTube video?

      • in this case, the law is absolutely absurd.

        The one the government down here in Brazil is trying to approve is even more insane.

        It's being modeled after the Canadian and Australian one, while also "fixing" their shortcomings. How are they fixing it, you ask? Well, they're wording the law such that social media sites must pay for links to news sources and are forbidden from blocking news sharing. It also establishes that the bigger a news source is, the more it's paid compared to smaller news sources, so as to best protect huge incumber media conglome

      • why should anyone be required to pay for giving someone else free traffic?

        Because it wasn't free traffic. It was rendered in the Facebook page, with their ads, creating load on the news providers servers and providing nothing in exchange while generating revenue for Facebook.

        The law is accomplishing its goals whether Facebook pays or not. If they don't pay, it will increase traffic to the news sites and generate ad revenue there. If they do end up paying, then the news sites get fair remuneration for their content.

        The interesting metric isn't whether or not Facebook is losing

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by RedK ( 112790 )

          > Because it wasn't free traffic. It was rendered in the Facebook page, with their ads, creating load on the news providers servers and providing nothing in exchange while generating revenue for Facebook.

          "Rendered", you mean a quick embed preview which every site does. Also "providing nothing", except you know, an opportunity to reach eyeballs and could click. If you want to argue clickrate, do so. But don't pretend there's no value to having a link to your website on more popular websites. That's ju

          • So, what, your argument is that social media platforms like Facebook are little more than link aggregators? You say that as if they haven't invested billions of dollars into UX, HCI, psychology and behavioural experts creating dark patterns, and fostering an environment where users are addicted to staying within the walled garden of the platform and never leaving. Go to bed Mark, your batteries need recharging.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by RedK ( 112790 )

              > So, what, your argument is that social media platforms like Facebook are little more than link aggregators?

              I mean, that's what they are ultimately. You subscribe to a news organization's page like you would your friends, and you see their status updates which are a bunch of links to their stories.

              > You say that as if they haven't invested billions of dollars into UX, HCI, psychology and behavioural experts creating dark patterns

              What does that have to do with this story ? I also hate Facebook's "Su

        • The interesting metric isn't whether or not Facebook is losing traffic, but whether the news providers are seeing more.

          That is absolutely correct. No one knows what effect Meta blocking news on Facebook is having except for the news outlets. One interesting signal, however, is how loudly the news outlets are complaining about Meta blocking news on Facebook. If this is win-win, they don't have much to complain about. In this case they want their cake and to eat it too.

          Because it wasn't free traffic. It was rendered in the Facebook page, with their ads, creating load on the news providers servers and providing nothing in exchange while generating revenue for Facebook.

          A little bit of context here is in order. First, if this is a problem, there are very easy remedies that don't involve passing a law forcing " digital news int

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It comes down to a difference of opinion over when fair use applies to copyrighted material.

        An individual showing their friend a headline and byline is definitely fair use. A friend showing 100 of their friends a snippet from a newspaper, with only minimal comment and original work surrounding it, is starting to look questionable. It gets even murkier if they are profiting from it in some way, such as how Twitter now shares ad revenue with some users.

        And what of the company providing the platform for all th

      • I can't see their posts or their page anymore

        a newspaper that only operated from a facebook page?! they deserve all the anonymity they get!

    • Facebook's lock in comes from being an actual social media network, e.g. a place to connect with people, often to do things in the real world. The news stuff was just there to get a little extra engagement for almost zero cost.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I don't read facebook for the news, I read it to see what my friends are up to.

      I hear that Canadian PM Justine Trousseau still reads FB, looking for hookers, now that the divorce has been announced.

      After all, a guy/gal still has certain needs.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      I don't read facebook for the news, I read it to see what my friends are up to.

      Pretty much this. People aren't getting their news from Facebook.

      That being said, I don't agree with rent-seeking laws designed to prop up buggy whip manufacturers who refuse to modernise. So this is good news.

  • So the survey's population is only the subset of phone users who have other apps with the tracking code.

  • Law if (Un)intended Consequences (Score:4, Informative)

    by idlehanz ( 1262698 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @10:22AM (#63805810)
    I find this situation to be hilarious. I'm no fan of Meta - and an even lessor fan of the Canadian government. (Or most governments for that matter). "We need to force companies to pay for content. I know, let's make a law. By God we'll bring these capitalists to heel ". Result - rather than pay, company simply blocks all news - causing more harm to the content creators. Great job commies.
    • Was the intention of this to reduce Facebook viewership in the first place? I never heard that stated as a goal.
    • I wish companies would do this in response to GDPR... just block European visitors and spare the rest of us with all the bs about accepting cookies and opening themselves up to insane liabilities. If enough sites pushed back on bs laws the people would grow tired of losing access and complain to their legislators.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Some already do. You get a message that because of GDPR, page cannot be displayed in your location when viewing from a known EU based ip address.

        Actual change required is exceptionally easy though, unless you want to slip in some really invasive tracking. So when I get a page that tell me that, I can reliably tell that these are the people who anally probe you so much that you probably should avoid visiting said site in general. To add to this, there are easy one click software packages that are available t

  • Hah (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anrego ( 830717 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @10:30AM (#63805828)

    Canadian and I have no love for Meta, but yeah, there is no tense standoff.

    Meta basically called Canada out on its BS law, and now Canada is either going to back down when they realize they have no leverage and will probably face the same from other big platforms, or this will just be a thing on all platforms and the content creators this aimed to help will be absolutely fucked.

    • Canada is either going to back down ...[or] the content creators this aimed to help will be absolutely fucked.

      Don't count on it. Trudeau relies on bribing the media with other people's money to make himself look good. I suspect that if this fails to deliver money to his media friends it will get replaced by a tax of some sort that he will use to fund media. This would at least be more transparent about government funding media (and all the serious problems that raises) than this current attempt to hide behind Meta which has not worked out at all well.

  • Why would it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @10:39AM (#63805846) Homepage
    People didn't go to Facebook for the news, they went to Facebook because it's Facebook. The fact the news was visible, helped people engage with the news, not the other way around. This is why C-18 was a very, very stupid bill, because it only hurt the news agencies that were lying about loosing funding.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by SmaryJerry ( 2759091 )
      The Canadian government is still getting what they want. Their problem was not publishers getting paid in the first place. They want places that people discuss news to be banned so that they can more easily control the conversation around any news. Social websites make it impossible to control the conversation on articles.
      • Absolutely that was and is the end game.
      • But conversation still goes on, just without direct links. Whenever there is an important issue people are going to discuss it, with or without the links. So it won't affect FBs role of town hall meeting place.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        This law was created because the news sites pushed for it. The push was not from the government. Similar laws are being passed in other countries as well. [wikipedia.org]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by GlennC ( 96879 )

          This law was created because the news sites pushed for it. The push was not from the government.

          True, but since when has stating facts got in the way of a good anti-government rant?

          • The news agencies wanted it, but the government should have stepped up and stepped in. The claim was news agencies were loosing massive amounts of money from ad revenue, to social media, but was that true? Since Meta blocked the news, how much have profits increased, 10%, 20%, 100%?

            It's also important to realize that some news agencies are publicly funded, for instance the CBC, in that case they shouldn't be allowed to have these kind of blocks in place. The CBC is public news, but now the public can'

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          This law was created because the news sites pushed for it. The push was not from the government. Similar laws are being passed in other countries as well.

          And the law isn't even in force yet

          There is no reason to block the news. The law doesn't come into play until much later - it's enabling the CRTC to figure out what to do.

          Google isn't blocking any news links yet - they're just making profit off them because otherwise that's leaving money on the table. They only announced they will.

          Meta is doing it because

          • Canada weaponized their banks against protesters. We all saw. I think that might have something to do with the shifting opinions.
            • Yes it would have been better if any of the three levels of police enforced the law like they were supposed to. But seeing as the capital of Canada had been abandoned by law enforcement, it left Trudeau with no choice. The emergencies act is for situations where Canada has lost the ability to enforce laws, which this was.
              • You wanted protesting stopped and protesters arrested (how very democratic of you) and the LEO's wouldn't oblige? Ever wonder why?
                • Blocking streets and making the lives horrible for people in the area is not a necessity for protesting.
                  • Oh, I see, they can only protest if it's convenient for you. Got it. I bet you don't even live there and have no idea what they were actually doing. I suspect you just want to rationalize the censorship and protest-busting because of your political beliefs. Say whatever the fuck you want, but it won't change the fact that we all saw what happened: the government weaponized the banks against right-wing protesters. You can suck whatever government dick you like, it won't change that fact.
                    • No.. I am saying they are free to protest as long as they don't break laws. I don't care, I don't live in Ottawa. But it's no coincidence that laws are convenient for people. The whole point of laws is to stop some people from walking all over others. I know what they were doing because it was all over TV.
                    • We all saw, not just you in Ottawa. We saw the Canadian government weaponize banks against protesters. Nice democracy you got there.
                    • Yes, I do consider it nice. Nice that it allows us ways to keep things peaceful for as many people as possible.
                    • And a country that seems totally incapable of controlling violent citizens to the point that mass shootings are just 'normal' seems awful to me.
                    • I suggest not justifying freedom just for freedoms sake. Some use it to hurt others.
                    • I love the fact that the Canadian government considers safety and well being of all citizens to be a priority and will take extreme steps when that becomes threatened.

      • The Canadian government is still getting what they want.

        I disagree. What they wanted was to use someone else's money to pay the media so it will be strongly in the media's best interest to make the government look good. After all, if all the news makes them look good why would they care if people discuss it?

    • People like to bag on facebook, I am pretty active in several photography groups and I have to say they are some of the best both in terms of quality of content and activity.

      • I, for one, hate Facebook because they subjected the world to React and GraphQL. Not because I have any issue with their social media service.

  • Captain Obvious' latest discovery (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @10:39AM (#63805848)

    People don't visit Facebook to be informed. They visit Facebook to learn about their cousin's latest bowel movement, learn their favorite rapper's opinion on Calvin Klein underwear and say hello to Grandma at the retirement home.

    • to learn about their cousin's latest bowel movement

      While I don't much care about my cousin's bowel movements, I did find this funny mainly because I only typically use Facebook when I'm at work making a bowel movement because when one's gotta go poop they might as well do it at work that way they get paid.

  • Or not. They're expecting Facebook and Google to subsidize their work.

  • i, for one, am grateful to these canadian overlords!

    who said politicians were useless? this is comedy gold. and now they're throwing "scorching criticism" at meta ... fucking hilarious!

  • ...big internet/tech companies to ban canadian news sources on their sites, too - why pay Trudeau and his cronies (and liberal news organizations) $$.

  • Impact on news sites? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @11:38AM (#63806024) Homepage

    The real question is: what is the impact on the news sites? How much traffic have they lost?

    Whatever impact Facebook's ban has had, multiply by 10 if the search engines also follow through.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      If? Google (~93% market share in Canada) has already announced that they will block links to news sites in search results once C-18 comes into full effect around the end of the year. No other search engine has a large enough market share to fall under C-18's rules.

      This is very much a monkey's paw scenario for Canadian news organizations. They lobbied for a bill that makes it illegal for social media and search engines to link to their content without paying, so social media and search engines stopped linkin

      • I don't think that answers the questions though. How many people clicked on those links to go to the news website before, and after the law? Somehow I doubt that many people clicked on the CBC link from the blurb on Facebook - just like most Slashdotters don't bother to read the actual article (and some don't even read TFS).

        If I can use Google to search for CBC or CTV or whatever, do I care that it doesn't aggregate the top 3 stories on the main search page? If I want to know anything I'll have to click a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Guspaz ( 556486 )

          According to C-18 (https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent), Google will not be able to allow "access to the news content, or any portion of it", and the front-page of news outlets does contain a portion of the news content. Namely, headlines, photos, and blurbs. As such, Google will not be able to return links to the CBC or CTV main page if you search for CBC or CTV, as that would require them to negotiate payment. CBC and CTV could, of course, turn their main pages into landing p

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

      Facebook did the same thing in Australia, then reversed course. [wikipedia.org] Can anyone here compare the Australian law to the Canadian law? I wonder if it will go the same way.

      • I don't know a ton about the "News Media Bargaining Code" in Australia, but I believe that one crucial difference between that law and the Online News Act here in Canada is that in Australia there is a regulatory body of the government that decides which news outlets apply and which do not. In Canada, there is no such regulatory body (we have the CRTC which has some role to play but they do not get to decide who applies and who doesn't). So basically, under the statue in Canada, various publishers and outle

  • Rather than target Facebook, they should have targeted Chrome. Clearly Chrome derives huge value from being able to open news websites - Google should pay for that, or Chrome should not be able to open news sites!

    That will surely make the news companies very happy.

  • where do I opt-in to this "awesome new feature"???

  • So I never saw anything but things my friends posted or groups I'm a member of anyway. If I wanted news I'd go to a news site. If I want to share a link I just cut it into "https://" "URL" ".domain" and let people select and right click the URL if they want to follow it.

  • The Only News in Cananda (Score:4, Funny)

    by Your Anus ( 308149 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @12:37PM (#63806214) Journal
    Is when it's Rrrrroll Up the Rim to Win time at Timmie's
  • ...will continue to take whatever shit they can get their hands on to keep feeding their habits. Why is this surprising to anyone?

  • Canadian FB user. I use FB to keep in touch with friends and family and to get booked on comedy shows. I certainly don't use it to look for news.

    It is slightly irritating that FB doesn't let you share news links because sometimes there's something interesting or funny I want to share, but meh... it's not a big deal.

    The one time I really wanted to share a news story, I used a technical means to circumvent Facebook's block. I'm not going to give the details lest FB catch on. So I might use that techni

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      > The one time I really wanted to share a news story, I used a technical means to
      > circumvent Facebook's block. I'm not going to give the details lest FB catch on.

      Facebook doesn't actually care. They only blocked what they legally had to block. Unless the Canadian government complains, there is no motivation for them to concern themselves with your circumvention of the block.
    • Does Facebook block links to news sites if the URL is run through a link shortener?

  • "The Canadian regulator responsible for implementing the country's online news law said on Thursday that it would start setting up a framework for negotiations between news organizations and internet giants this autumn, with the aim of initiating mandatory bargaining by early 2025."

    So, Facebook decides to not carry news in Canada, so now the Canadian government is going to *force* them to deal with news outlets? Facebook has said they are not interested in news.

  • I'm not the biggest fan of Facebook by a long shot, hell I don't even use it. I'm not even sure I understand the ins and outs of this, my assumption was that platforms would have to pay for content they aggregated and projected in some what which didn't offer the user any meaningful reason to head over to that new sources site at all.

    The way I read the headline makes it sounds more like a user sharing a link to a news article is blocked. That doesn't sit well with me. for at least two reasons right off t

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by RedK ( 112790 )

      > I'm not even sure I understand the ins and outs of this,

      The ins and outs is that a bunch of politicians with 0 knowledge of the Internet thought they could regulate the Internet and gouge Facebook into buying something they didn't need. Now news in Canada is blocked from Facebook.

      > First, the user is able to grab a link to the content. Therefore the publisher intended on it being shared.

      That is exactly what Facebook is doing, you cannot post a link to a story on a news website anymore. The content

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