How to work around big tech’s blocking of Canadian news content

Bookmarks going directly to Nunatsiaq News and other sites will allow readers to continue getting local news

Nunatsiaq News resumed publication of its print edition in March, following a three-year disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. A new disruption poses challenges for Canadian news organizations as Facebook and Google threaten to block the sharing of content from Canadian media on their platforms. (File photo)

By Corey Larocque

Despite the old saying, no news is actually bad news.

That’s why Nunavummiut, Nunavimmiut and all Canadians should be concerned about plans to block the sharing of news stories from Canadian media on certain social media platforms.

People need to know what’s going on in their communities, in their territory or region, and in their country. That’s why Nunatsiaq News has been serving Nunavut and Nunavik for 50 years.

But a new challenge threatens to disrupt the way we deliver the news and how our readers receive it.

Big tech companies Meta — which owns Facebook — and Google have said they will block the sharing of Canadian news stories on their platforms. Earlier this week, Facebook began doing it.

News organizations including Nunatsiaq News will not be able to post links to their news stories on their Facebook page. Facebook users will eventually not be able to share news stories on their own Facebook pages.

Similarly, Google will prevent users from searching for articles published by Canadian news organizations.

This is their response to the Online News Act — also known as Bill C-18 — a new Canadian law that will take effect later this year.

It will require Facebook and Google to pay news organizations for their content that appears on the big tech companies’ platforms.

Its goal is to compensate Canadian news organizations for the money technology companies make by sharing the content those news organizations generate.

Nunatsiaq News is fortunate. Our readers are loyal and many of them come directly to our website because they have it bookmarked on their browsers.

Obviously, Facebook drives a significant portion of our website’s readership — approximately 25 per cent.

We want that portion of our readers to continue to get the news even after Facebook blocks the sharing of it.

Now that Canadians are beginning to see the effects of Facebook’s and Google’s blocking of Canadian news sources, we have some tips for readers to ensure they keep seeing the news content generated by Nunatsiaq News:

  • Bookmark our website, nunatsiaq.com, and come directly to the site instead of counting on Facebook or Google to lead you there;
  • Subscribe to the weekly e-edition. It’s a PDF version of the print edition newspaper and is sent by email to subscribers’ inboxes every Friday;
  • Look for the print edition. After a three-year break forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, Nunatsiaq News resumed publishing a print edition in March. Copies of the paper are available at locations in Iqaluit, Cambridge Bay, Rankin Inlet, Pangnirtung, Kuujjuaq and Ottawa.

The Online News Act ushers in another uncertain time for Canadian news media. We hope cooler heads will prevail and the federal government can negotiate terms that will allow Facebook and Google to continue sharing Canadian news content the way they have done for years.

In the meantime, there are ways to work around the barrier big tech companies are putting up between Canadians and the news about their communities.

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(17) Comments:

  1. Posted by Future Shock on

    Breathtaking hubris on the part of the government to proceed with this Bill despite warning from experts, Meta and Google that its conditions are unworkable.

    It’s not cooler heads that need prevail (though necessary) but ones that can see beyond the crumbled workings of a dated model no one wants and negotiate realistic compromises with the 21st century.

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    • Posted by Jamesie on

      Explain, please, the crumbled workings of a dated model nobody wants. I’m not baiting or being combative. Do you mean journalism?

      • Posted by Future Shock on

        A media landscape dominated by government funded giants that produce uninteresting content.

        The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated C-18 would exploit about $329 million for Canadian news outlets, where about $247 million, or 75%, would go to the CBC (an organization that receives 1.2 billion a year already apparently needs more), Shaw (Global News), and Bell (CTV News).

        The facade that media is ‘independent’ is difficult to maintain, and explains why Canadians trust in media is hitting all time lows.

        I’m not opposed to some measure of government subsidies or funding, but too much of the industry is on artificial life support, and need to be taken off.

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        • Posted by No Moniker on

          I don’t mind paying for good journalism directly, when I can find it. I enjoy supporting it. Thankfully it is out there. Though I have been tempted I have yet to spend anything on major news outlets which do a reasonable job of reporting basic facts, though often skew in whichever political direction they surmise to be their niche. This can get predictable and boring fast, no matter which way you lean. Not that it is necessarily ‘bad’ to have a political leaning, but when that leads to simplistic and predictable analysis and leans away from nuanced thinking it’s more likely to become misinformative than truly useful.

          This, to me, this is a preferred model.

  2. Posted by lol on

    Canadian news is too close to the Canadian Government. Imagine Canadians with websites or blogs or video channels getting a law passed that a search engine must compensate them for displaying the link. This is not reality. Maybe the phone book should start paying me for displaying my information also?
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    The Canadian news lobby is getting what it deserves. You’re loosing the long hanging fruit that is your audience who, without social media, don’t care to look at the news. Maybe this is a good thing and the ignorant should be out of touch with the news.

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  3. Posted by Northern Inuit on

    If you get your news from social media we are in serious trouble. If you can’t figure out how to navigate news without Facebook just delete that and move on.

    Seriously, this is not rocket science people. Facebook is for memes and hilarity. Not news.

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    • Posted by Polique on

      How about Google? That seems consequential.

    • Posted by Distorted reality on

      People aren’t getting their news from Facebook, they are accessing newsites via Facebook, and via Google. That is not the same thing.

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  4. Posted by Why is it Big Tech’s fault? on

    this article fairly clearly places the blame on big tech, but it’s the Canadian Government that put this paw into place that blocks Canadian news from being shown on social media in the first place.

    I was curious how this was going to affect smaller news sites like NN. Soon there will only be CTV, CBC and Global. So much easier to obscure, confuse, divide, and control us. Go figure.

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    • Posted by Par for the course on

      I don’t really see the article taking a strong side, it seems like a typical NN editorial in the post-Jim Bell era; intentionally safe, inoffensive and light on analysis.

      That said, I agree with your points on the source of the problem.

    • Posted by Why? Because of their incredibly anti-competitive practices! on

      It’s disingenuous to chalk this up to “the Canadian Government that put this paw into place that blocks Canadian news from being shown on social media in the first place.”
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      It frames the issue as one of the nonsense moves of an overly inflated Canadian government overestimating its own importance in the world by passing some nonsense law. That definitely happens, don’t get me wrong.
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      But I don’t really think that’s a fair assessment in this situation. While C-18 is not a perfect piece of legislation, and I personally take issue with parts of it, the legislation is clearly a continuation of budding attempts at curbing the anti-competitive practices of things like Meta and Google. The European Union and the United States have recently begun targeting aspects of these anti-competitive practices in the last few years and so begins Canada’s foray into targeting parts of their practices as well.
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      Whether this bill is perfect or not, or effective or not, is one question. But I don’t think we can question the why of C-18 too much, nor its reasonableness. It doesn’t take an expert to see that something is to be done about Big Tech’s practices. However, after studying some Competition Law in school, my thought that legislation should target Big Tech only increased.
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      Governments across the world have lagged behind tailoring Competition Law to Big Tech Practices for decades, and things have only begun to change in the last few years. Every step is into new ground, and some might be missteps, but legislation aimed at updating competition law is a long-awaited and welcome change in the state of things.
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      Big Tech holds the global media industry in a stranglehold and profits off the content provided by these companies. They occupy a very unique and privileged position in relation to viewers and users of their services. There must come some obligations alongside this position and profiteering. No entity should be above the law like they have been for too long.
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      Ideally other jurisdictions will follow suit with similar laws, such that companies like Meta and Google cannot keep freezing out everyone. It’s a question of who gives in first, and I hope that Big Tech loses out.

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      • Posted by Atlas Shrugged on

        Interesting post, but there is a some missing detail. For example, you say

        “I don’t think we can question the why of C-18 too much, nor its reasonableness. It doesn’t take an expert to see that something is to be done about Big Tech’s practices.”

        Which practices are you referring to? And why can’t we question the ‘why’ of C-18?

        In reality the legislation is disastrous and clearly bound to hurt smaller news organizations hardest. That didn’t need to happen. It is happening because Government , in its hubris and detachment from the realities of the 21st century, ignored the cautions of experts and many of those same voices in the industry. Even the Globe & Mail refuted the Bill in a recent editorial. Keep in mind this bill was crafted to support, overwhelmingly, 3 major organizations, the CBC, CTV and Global. That they can not compete or generate their own revenue is a problem they need to solve, and might be indicative that their model is and their product simply has no appeal to consumers of news.

        As for advertising, Tech companies dominate the space because they have created technologies that everyone uses. Canadian media giants have gone the opposite direction; offering content few are interested in, and even less will pay for. The government solution, unsurprisingly, is to make Meta and Google pay for what Canadians don’t want to pay for.

        Hilarious, really…

        Yet Google and Meta were paying millions in support to various news organizations, supporting local news and journalist training prior to this debacle, deals which were cancelled after this Bill was passed. Those companies are now worse off. Yet you say we should not question the ‘why’ of the Bill.

        How strange.

        Undoubtedly Big Tech has enormous power, that is true, but railing against that power by pretending a redistribution scheme of this type is a good enough response is not insufficient. Hosting content that directs users to news sites is a huge value they get for no cost. That they are unable to capitalize on the visits to their sites is a problem that they have given too little attention to. How unfortunate for them.

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        • Posted by Robert Bullard on

          But are Google and META offering hardware platforms to access the links to access the host web sites that contain the news we are looking for? Are they just the platform? Or are Google and META to be considered a social media web site that owns or has control over the information they provide in which case if they say they own what is contained on their web site then when/how much did they pay the originator of this information in order to claim ownership of it? You see Google and META want everyone (the more the merrier and the more PROFIT they make) to use their platform (hardware / architecture) and their services (software / web pages / content) and so they are not in the business (and yes it is a business to retain the end user on their web site …. the longer people stay engaged on Google or META and the more they rely on Google and META for their information, shopping, news articles, etc etc etc then the more profits they will make …. the more ‘clicks’ means more companies want to post on their systems and the more companies that want Google and META to host them then the more business they get and the more money they make).

          It is purely that Google and META do not want to send the end user to another web site because then Google and META do not retain the end user to allow for more ‘clicks’ to other paid company links to other offerings / advertising / marketing. This is their business plan. They would make NO MONEY if all they did was act like a telephone switchboard operator and direct people to other web sites and act just like a traffic cop directing the web connections. They want to people to stay on their platforms and use their services.

          To allow that they would PAY a news organization for the information that they show on their platform is alien to them. What? Pay for the use of someone’s intellectual property! How dare the Canadian Government want or even suggest that Google and META pay the news organizations and the newspaper reporters for intellectual property that does not belong to them while the two mega companies rake in the marketing and advertising dollars by focusing users to stay on their platforms / systems.

          It is like having a company create a new pharmaceutical that eases pain, which is a benefit to us all. And that new pharmaceutical is addictive and then this useful drug becomes abused and easy to get and causes all sorts of societal problems. And then the government comes along to regulate that beneficial drug and looks into how it became so popular and finds that the drug manufacturer knew it would be addictive and would hook people on it so much that they would make utterly hundreds of millions of dollars. How dare the government try and regulate this drug! How dare they suggest that the company that developed it should pay compensation for the users out there that are hooked! How dare they suggest that the drug developer is in some way responsible for the drug causing such egregious societal problems.

          And here we have Google and META taking journalistic property for their own use without paying for it and they wonder why anyone would dare ask them to pay for this stuff, all the while they (Google and META) use the info which undermines the very essence of the viability and livelihood of the news organizations and journalist that work there.

          Google and META …… pay up for what you are using. It is NOT your intellectual property.

          • Posted by Delusional Take on

            The idea that Google or Meta are taking journalistic property is the government line for sure, yet these companies voluntarily promote their links and that, in turn, drives huge swaths of traffic their way. Thay alone is worth millions yet the service is offered for free. News sites actively promote their content, if they did not want it shared on Meta or Google they could opt out, instead the jostle for top spot on Google search. Your argument is delusional.

      • Posted by King Canute on

        Dear: “Why? Because of their incredibly anti-competitive practices! ”

        The internet forever changed the advertising model that news media in the 20th century depended on. Google and Meta are not to blame for that, but they are, to date, among the most successful developers of new technologies that have made advertising effective and cheap. Consequently, they dominate the market.

        The irony of your statements about these companies employing ‘anti-competitive’ practices–whatever those are (we’re still waiting to hear)–while knowing the largest beneficiaries of Bill C-18 are Bell, Rogers and the CBC (paragons of competitiveness?) is a true spectacle to behold.

        • Posted by Future Shock on

          The newsroom of the future will see much of the hard lifting done by Artificial Intelligence. Similar to a calculator AI it will cut down writing time by consolidating materials into appropriate sized, template like pieces that might be tweeked by a human editor.

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  5. Posted by Jennifer on

    What about online news sites like nunatsiaq news that dont post peoples comments? Censorship is not new. Especially on this site.

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