News out, memes in: what to expect from Meta’s cull after Canadian decision
Meta’s decision to pull all news from its Canada platforms to avoid paying a contribution to publishers, slashed exposure to news links and limited natural disaster warnings. Australia should take heed.
Millions of Australians will lose access to news entirely, witness a surge in online memes, and small publishers dependent on social media will suffer if Facebook blocks Australian news, based on Canada’s experience after Meta blocked local news last year.
Canadian experts say Meta’s decision in August to pull all news from its Facebook platform, to avoid paying a contribution to news publishers, slashed Canadians’ exposure to news links by 5 million posts a day.
Taylor Owen, one of Canada’s most renowned media professors at the nation’s top college McGill University, warned the Facebook ban in his country had gone far enough to impact warnings to Canadians facing bushfires and other natural disasters.
“A certain number of people are certainly losing their access to news entirely,” he told The Australian, adding it was unlikely such individuals would seek out news elsewhere.
“Small publishers have just stopped posting entirely, for most of them Facebook was their only social media access point.
“During the big wildfires in British Columbia last year, the kind of people who got their news on Facebook didn’t get the news.”
The limits on emergency news will resonate strongly in Australia, where publishers and governments have been concerned Meta’s moves against news will have an adverse effect on Australians who use Facebook to pick up alerts on bushfires and floods.
Meta blocked all news links on Facebook and Instagram in Canada after the tech giant refused to pay money to Canadian publishers for their content, as part of an Australian-style law known as the Online News Act, passed in June, designed to bolster the local news media which was suffering from haemorrhaging advertising revenues.
Australian publishers are similarly preparing for Meta to dump Australian news from its two giant social media platforms after the US giant earlier this month said it wouldn’t renew contracts next year worth tens of millions of dollars, in a repeat of the brief ban in February 2021 during earlier contract negotiations.
“In political groups on Facebook, where news played a big role previously, the proportion of news links has almost perfectly been replaced by images, which are mostly memes,” Professor Owen told The Australian. “It’s been pretty much total block of news”.
Former Editor-in-Chief Bloomberg Canada, Ed Greenspon, said agreements with Google – who are more reliant on news than Meta – was now key for governments to secure journalism.
In Canada, Google last year agreed to pay $C100m a year to Canadian publishers which, according to industry sources works out to around a little under $20,000 per full-time journalist.
“Meta’s model has been moving away from news for several years, and at least since 2016 it has shown it’s not a reliable partner for news companies in any case,” he told The Australian in an interview.
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