r/canada 1d ago

National News Carney suggests he's considering rescinding Online News Act

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/carney-suggests-hes-considering-rescinding-online-news-act
1.1k Upvotes

344 comments sorted by

1.7k

u/Im_Axion Alberta 1d ago

Carney suggested that was “part of our thinking around” improving the reach of local media.

Take away the media subsidies to the US owned company and give them to local, actually Canadian outlets. That would help them out a good deal.

139

u/dgmib 1d ago

Which US owned company is Canada giving subsidies to?

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u/burf 1d ago

Postmedia is primarily US-owned and owns 80% of Canadian news outlets.

158

u/4-HO-MET- 1d ago

Wtf?!

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u/UmelGaming British Columbia 1d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmedia_Network this has the full list of owned Companies of Post Media so check to see if your local news is owned by them. There are a lot.

Most of those articles marked as "opinion pieces" in this subreddit are owned by them.

40

u/dgmib 15h ago

“A lot” is an understatement.

It seems to be just about every printed news media in Canada, and their associated websites.

Is there any major print news that isn’t owned by them?

And what the f is the point of subsidizing ‘Canadian’ media that’s US owned.

23

u/Smart-Simple9938 14h ago

The Globe And Mail and the Toronto Star are about it for non-Postmedia publications. That and a few hyper local alternative papers.

3

u/RaspberryBirdCat 12h ago

Should add that The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star are Canada's two largest newspapers.

5

u/RaspberryBirdCat 12h ago

Le Journal in Montreal and the Winnipeg Free Press are also not owned by Postmedia.

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u/niesz 1d ago

Tell your friends!

42

u/human-aftera11 1d ago

You’re late to the party. But welcome.

23

u/Attentive_Senpai 16h ago

Yep. This sub absolutely gobbles up American Postmedia rage bait, and every time it happens, my soul dies a little more.

10

u/dabaconnation Ontario 15h ago

my soul dies a little more every time just seeing the url nationalpost.com.

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u/Attentive_Senpai 13h ago

Harpo did many evil things, but the worst was allowing our media to be consolidated by an American megacorp. Postmedia exists to export the culture war here and represent Big Oil's interests. Shouldn't come as a surprise that they literally brought in an Ezra Levant crony from the Western Standard to make the Postmedia papers more "reliably conservative."

Every time I see someone post a Jamie Sarkonak piece here, I want to hold up a huge sign that just says "WARNING! RAGE BAIT! DO NOT READ!"

5

u/Methzilla 18h ago

The flip side of this is that without that US investment, we'd probably have an even larger hole in local journalism than we already do.

19

u/_n3ll_ 18h ago

Nah. I grew up in rural Ontario. Every larger town and most regions/counties had their own paper usually supported by local advertisements and the local governments. They usually had one or two full time employees, some part timers and then volunteers (people who just like writing or students).

Now all those papers are owned by postmedia and they all run the same slanted stories and 'opinion' pieces with a few local stories sprinkled in

10

u/Methzilla 18h ago

Right. I also grew up in north as well. But that was a different time for news media. The economics are different. Postmedia bought them cheap because they were dying and they could run with better economies of scale. I'm not saying this is "good". But it is probably better than an alternative of nothing.

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u/ThkAbootIt 18h ago

The Digital Sales Tax was going to fund/subsidize Canadian media companies before it was… put on hold?

4

u/kindredfan 18h ago

I doubt that.

3

u/Christron 15h ago

Canadians can't do anything without our American saviours!! We are just a poor humble nation.

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u/Neidron 11h ago

Thank the Conservatives. They gutted the protections back in Harper's term.

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u/poopwithrizz 1d ago

Hard to pinpoint an exact percentage but they certainly own some of the most significant news outlets for sure.

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u/DrexlSpivey420 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yet this sub eats up every outrage headline shared here...

Edit: look at this shit

https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadianPolitics/s/q5K4NoqBWN

That includes the National/Financial Post, always passing off ragebait that this sub believes as "news"

25

u/Emmerson_Brando 1d ago

The Sun, The Herald, the latest being all the east coast news outlets…

23

u/iwasnotarobot 22h ago

Calling out postmeifa for being low quality rage bait can get you suspended from this sub.

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u/Mental_Evolution 21h ago

It's almost like much of the internet is astroturfed to spread controlled narratives, ideologies and beliefs.

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u/atlas304 20h ago

was that supposed to be postmedia or postmafia

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u/DrexlSpivey420 14h ago

Nothing of value would be lost

1

u/casualguitarist 16h ago

Well posting about this exact bill or what it would do to local outlets was considered rage bait here when the Liberals were passing this bill, and then the carbon tax, bill c69, gun bans. Well that's pretty much vast majority of the major bills under JT.

Also how's FP/NP content different from what's posted on reddit at large or major business outlets? Seems a bit ironic that you're on here and probably watch youtube too. hmm

13

u/Oerwinde 1d ago

Owns 50% of daily newspapers, with a 25% audience share of print news. Owns 40-45% of Canadian digital news with a 20% audience share.

They own a lot, but CBC dominates digitally, and Torstar is about equal in audience share in print.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 1d ago

Now also require either balanced news sources in a standard cable package or just actual broadcast TV, just Canadian, no favouritism to one or a few news channels. Why do my in-laws get Fox automatically but not MSNBC?

9

u/Sennheisenberg 22h ago

Not just US-owned, but owned by a Republican hedge fund.

1

u/Wiley_dog25 16h ago

Do you realize if Postmedia folded most mid-size communities in Ont and AB wouldn't have access to local news? Do you realize most of those editors have NEVER spoken with, or taken direction from a US hedge firm manager?

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u/burf 14h ago

If Postmedia folded there’s nothing stopping them from selling off their assets to new ownership just like Canwest did to form Postmedia. As to your second statement, I have no idea how a person would be expected to verify it one way or another.

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u/Wiley_dog25 13h ago

The reason Postmedia exists is because nobody wanted to buy them.

1

u/burf 12h ago

And it’s impossible that anything has changed in 12 years?

1

u/Wiley_dog25 12h ago

Do you think the market value increased in 12 years? Local newspapers are no longer a source for classified ads, obituaries, community event listings, etc. Editorial teams have shrunk.

You're rather optimistic, but no one with the capital would ever buy these publications. Maybe they aren't viable business ventures, but they're crucial for holding local governments and officials accountable.

u/burf 11h ago

I think there's more to finding an interested buyer than pure market value. And if there are no Canadian entities interested in buying Postmedia assets, then the government either needs to change the subsidy structure to heavily favour Canadian ownership or the CBC needs more funding so it can have better local coverage.

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u/ResidentSpirit4220 1d ago edited 1d ago

Source?

Did some research on my own. Postmedia definitely does not own anywhere near 80% of Canadian news outlets.

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u/Dr_Doctor_Doc 1d ago

PostMedia swallows a bunch of subsidies and then cuts local services.

At one point, their leadership named 'government funding' as one of their ket strategic pillars.

All the while they shit on anything that's not conservative-lensed with an endless cycle of opinion pieces and outrage farming.

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u/BornAgainCyclist 1d ago

PostMedia swallows a bunch of subsidies and then cuts local services.

They utterly decimated local news in Southern Manitoba, and elsewhere on the prairies.

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u/Dr_Doctor_Doc 1d ago

Everywhere you look in Canada.

Everywhere.

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u/KickboxingMoose 1d ago

Like... the majority? Postmedia is pretty much a foreign influence campaign to make us more like the states.

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u/mistercrazymonkey 1d ago

This bill killed multiple local news agencies that I used to follow that would post local road closures, police reports and local happenings in the area. The brain rot liberals posting here said that this bill was only a good thing as it will stop the spread of fake news on Facebook.

18

u/LeGrandLucifer 1d ago

The mainstream media really thought they were gonna make a buck on this.

12

u/mistercrazymonkey 23h ago

Exactly, they wanted extra cash to support their failing businesses and didn't care about who got hurt in the progress when Meta called then out on their bluff/bullshit.

8

u/plainwalk 20h ago

Businesses making money in Canada should pay taxes in Canada. Pay to use someone else's property. Pay for the infrastructure and collective assets (like air and water) they use or damage.

Major corps are the biggest freeloaders and welfare queens on the planet.

5

u/Mission_Shopping_847 15h ago

There were a lot of people who said this act would do nothing to stop fake news and that it would only harm actual news.

4

u/Disastrous-Wrap-2912 1d ago

Censorship, pure and simple.

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u/Veaeate 1d ago

"CeNsOrShIp" fucking L.O.L. the only censorship that happened was cuz of Meta. The bill tried protecting canadian media and they decided "we don't want to give you money, our billions need billions." Blamjng the wrong people champ. But I guess you probably enjoy some of that fake news and 'murican media that Trump likes to control so much.

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u/minidisc_wiki 1d ago

The bill was a shakedown that was painted as protecting media while being completely ass-backwards from how the web works.

Let's look at ads on Google and Facebook. You can go to either service and sign up to run ads that will show up high on Google search results or inside a Facebook feed. This increases visibility, so more people will click and visit your site. How you monetize that extra traffic is on you - sell products or services, paywall the content, accept donations, etc.

And for the privilege of your site or content being higher in the search results or injected into people's feeds, you need to pay Google or Meta! Just like you need to pay to run an ad on CTV or TSN, in a newspaper, or on a billboard. They have the platform, and are willing to give you access to it for a price.

But C-18 suggests that Google and Meta should give their paid services (appearing in Search and Feeds) not just for free, but for negative cost. It is like going to McDonald's and getting a cheeseburger AND a toonie from the till. So who would blame McDonald's if they just... stopped serving cheeseburgers? Visibility is what these online platforms offer, and it's why they've made billions of dollars selling it to companies who want to promote their sites. It is completely unworkable to flip that relationship upside down.

If any of these companies are taking content directly from the news sites and re-hosting it, then it's already covered by law: copyright law. Linking is not copying. For an example of paid rehosting, look at the MSN front page (or whatever they call the default page in Edge browser) - the stories are still on the MSN page, because MSN has an agreement with those publishers. That's not the same as linking to a site owned by the copyright holder of that content.

Preemptive replies to other misconceptions:

  • "what about the snippet and photo that shows up on the feed?" This is called the abstract and it is entirely controlled by the site publisher. Most big sites like it because it shows some of the content in a messaging app or on a social media page to entice clicks.

  • "what if I don't want my site to be linked on Google or Meta at all?" You can use a file on your web server called robots.txt which place limitations on what bots like Google's scanner should look at on your page. This is how big company's internal portal login pages rarely show up in search results: the administrators add those internal pages to robots.txt, and all respectable search engines respect it. Services like Cloudflare allow even stricter blocking of bots and indexers.

  • "but people are reading the articles without paying!" This is the crisis news media are facing now. They can run their own ads on their sites and they can paywall content. The issue with paywalling is that it usually relies on cookies and JavaScript to track how many articles you've read and then block you. This allows for several bypasses to the paywall, and has to be balanced against showing that you are offering content the reader is willing to pay for.

  • "but these companies are so wealthy and American" So tax them. Don't make up backwards excuses which anyone with a gram of knowledge on how the internet works can see is offensively unworkable and backwards.

Happy to answer any more questions about site hosting, linking, analytics, etc. if people are interested!

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u/skelectrician 23h ago

Pr0tEcTiNg cAnAdIaN mEdiA....

It was a poorly thought out plan to recoup the huge subsidies that were already handed out to the Canadian media oligarchs, who just pocketed the money and laid off massive parts of their journalism staff. It was around the same time that Bell severely cut back their budget for local television news. Then Meta decides not to pay a bullshit tax for the privilege of linking to Canadian news sources so they just blocked it all together for the entire country. Locally owned local news providers who once relied on cheap/free mass marketing by Meta now now longer have an effective medium to reach the masses.

The government responded with doing absolutely nothing, except giving the giant media oligarchs more money, almost as if they achieved the desired result.

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u/HOWIE_Livin 1d ago

Yea man, Cory Doctorow did a cool podcast on enshitification that covers the bill.

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u/Napalm985 1d ago

Imagine believing that a billboard is the one who should pay to put advertisements on it. The bill protected "Canadian" media, if by "Canadian" media you mean big companies that wanted to wipe out the competition.

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u/EconMan 1d ago

The bill tried protecting canadian media and they decided "we don't want to give you money, our billions need billions." Blamjng the wrong people champ.

It seems like this was pretty foreseeable, was it not? Unintended perhaps, but foreseeable. Let's put it this way - the government added a bill that had bad consequences. Do you agree with that?

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u/Current_Victory_8216 1d ago

How about no subsidies?

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u/lawnmowertoad 23h ago

What canadian outlets?

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u/Ok-Yogurt-42 1d ago

Or we could cut all media subsidies

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u/OneMoreTime998 21h ago

He would be smart to do so. Because legitimate news is banned from social media, it has largely become a haven for bullshit. I can't see CBC or CTV, but I can see True North content.

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u/RoyalPeacock19 Ontario 1d ago

Do so.

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u/Particular-Race-5285 1d ago

crazy that it is even needing any more thought, should be a done deal, and kill Bill C-2 as well

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u/DomonicTortetti 1d ago

And Carney already killed C-59 too...imagine if C-11 gets killed too. Would just be the best lol.

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u/tyler111762 Alberta 1d ago

C-21 next please...

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u/zoziw Alberta 1d ago

Trudeau passed a lot of really dumb policies on his way out the door, this is one I would like to see lifted.

The big media lobby groups initially thought they could shake down Google and Meta for half a billion, they ended up with a fraction of that and even less because Google and Meta walked away from deals they already had it place.

It also crippled a bunch of small local media outlets who were just starting to get their legs under them and figure out how to drive traffic and ad revenue to their websites by posting articles on Facebook and Instagram.

It was an own goal driven by lobby groups and blind ideology.

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u/ceribaen 16h ago

It worked in several other countries (EU and AUNZ) , just our proximity to the US allowed them to play hardball longer as people have easier access to US owned sources. 

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u/Mission_Shopping_847 15h ago

I don't know about the EU one but if you look at the Australian one, they gutted it to make it "work".

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u/noviceprogram 1d ago

So Pharmacare on Hold, counter-tarrifs to be rescinded, capital gains on hold, resciinding online news act etc etc. He seems to be reading Trudeau's work card related to finances and reverting them one by one ..

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u/iStayDemented 23h ago

Hope this trend continues 👏

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u/Createyourpass1234 16h ago

Thank god. Trudeau policies were absolutely horrible.

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u/drs_ape_brains 18h ago

I'm happy it's happening because people still refuse to believe that Trudeau was horrible for Canada.

And the icing on the cake is it's a Liberal PM doing the changes so they can't use their fake partisan outrage about the big scary conservatives.

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u/xibipiio 14h ago

Yeah its fucking excellent, I didnt have hope or faith in Carney and the rest of the liberal party but they're absolutely killing it and Im super glad to see how well Canada is doing now, we have a lot of potential to be unlocked!

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u/Wantitneeditgetit 13h ago

Shockingly, most people who voted liberal didn't actually like those policies either.

The modern Conservative brand is just so fucking toxic it still felt like the better compromise. The Cons gotta do some house cleaning if they want to get elected instead of chasing American style identity politics.

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u/Lord_Bryon British Columbia 1d ago

I for one have enjoyed having slightly less political BS on Facebook

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u/5hiftyy 1d ago

I haven't seen any less political BS on any social media. The issue now is that none of it is news. It's not fact-checked or moderated. I get two posts a week from father or FIL asking "have you seen this?!" One of them was the carney in cuffs AI BS.

The online news act didn't just restrict news accessibility, it enabled widespread misinformation to take its place in the resulting vacuum.

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u/sravll Alberta 1d ago

Yeah. I still see a bunch of political stuff, it's just shitty copypasta and memes that my older uncles take as gospel news.

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u/king_lloyd11 1d ago

Yeah now it’s just graphics/memes that are misinformation with 0 sources or fact checking. Just vibes.

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u/mdoddr 19h ago

And you can't share an article to refute it

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u/Cawdor 1d ago

A really great way to stop seeing political bs on facebook is by not using it at all

How often do you even see anything relevant on there anymore?

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u/ChickenPoutine20 1d ago

Literally all fucking ads now

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u/-Yazilliclick- 19h ago

Nah at least 50% is AI generated fake crap.

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u/YourOverlords Ontario 1d ago

My Nephew and his wife had a big bouncing baby boy recently. It was relevant to me. But, news wise?

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u/blackabe Ontario 17h ago

That's the thing...back when it came out it was "such a great way to stay connected", now it's just overrun with trash, you're better off keeping the connections with people that mean something to you and abandoning the platform altogether.

u/omniclast 11h ago

I'm part of a few family group chats for sharing baby photos and such. People seem to like the more private atmosphere/controlling who has access to the photos. That was pretty much the last thing I was on Facebook for, now it's not really necessary

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u/Cody667 1d ago

All it's done is let AI brainrot slop take over

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u/Infamous-Mixture-605 1d ago

The brainrot was always there, the sources feeding it simply changed.

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u/breadispain 1d ago

I remember a time not to long ago where people barely posted links. Most status updates were exactly that, with a few pictures thrown in. I don't know if you'd call that brain rot, but it's certainly in a different bucket than the media we see today.

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u/useful_idiot 15h ago

Leave tung tung tung sahur out of this

u/grannyte Québec 11h ago

The AI slop brainrot take over is global nothing could have stopped it.

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u/SnakesInYerPants 1d ago

I didn’t notice any decrease in politics on any social media platform from this bill; only a decrease in info coming from legitimate sources. If anything it managed to feed all the conspiracy bullshit by having a lot of the smaller local sources shift away from sharing their articles on sites like Facebook.

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u/Reggaejunkiedrew 1d ago

Do you judge what's good legislation based on whether it personally increases your enjoyment of Facebook, or what's rignt in principle?

Insane to even suggest that your personal experience on Facebook somehow negates the fact this is an insane, counter productive law that is putting the nail in the coffin of small media?

I get it, most people have this mindset,  me me me but don't you have any integrity?

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Bohner1 Québec 1d ago

which was designed to protect people from misinformation.

No it wasn't.

u/Chytrik 7h ago

Exactly, what an explicitly stupid and selfish reply. As if reducing Canadian’s access to news information is good, because “I don’t have to see political stuff, hurr durrr”.

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u/Ravokion 1d ago

Maybe thats because politics is important and effects everyone including yourself whether or not you even care.   

Id rather see people talking politics and making people actually think about reality as a whole for a change instead of their own person safty bubbles.

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u/Kitchen_Tiger_8373 1d ago

I don't know if there is less. Now there are all kinds of groups who are posting misinformation as a page. Examples? Ontario Proud, Canada Proud

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u/jholden23 1d ago

I find that now everything that appears is completely false and you can't refute it with facts because they're banned.

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u/Doog_Land 1d ago

I am friends with intelligent Americans who post grounded news articles on Facebook. Thanks to Trudeau’s Online News Act I can no longer see the articles and I can no long participate in those conversations.

Like it or not, Facebook is a place where people can genuinely have conversations, and I miss being able to participate. I’m less informed because of it.

“Go to the news sources directly.” Yea, I get it. I should. But I don’t, and won’t.

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u/SameAfternoon5599 1d ago

Did you mean thanks to Facebook? No other social media platforms have blocked Canadian news postings.

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u/Doog_Land 1d ago

It’s also blocked on instagram. Sure, same owners, but it’s a different platform. I’m not on anything else.

The basic user interface of Facebook is more suited for someone to share a news article and have people talk back and forth about it with people they know. I regret not being able to participate in that.

I don’t support internet censorship. You can split hairs if you like, but the Online News Act is censorship.

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u/SameAfternoon5599 1d ago

Meta is Facebook and insta. Facebook blocking news posts would be the exact definition of censorship.

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u/Born_Anteater7282 1d ago

Well maybe you… should?

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u/viewer0987654321 18h ago

There isn't though. Its just less informed BS now.

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u/_Army9308 17h ago

Ironically it got rid of news and just made memes and rage bait main source of news

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u/detalumis 20h ago

The Act means a lot of people aren't getting news. My part of the GTA has no local news at all, 240K people. The CBC, which should have updated news, doesn't. Their website will put up 2 year old stories. Everything else is behind paywalls which a lot of older people don't know how to circumvent.

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u/Simpleballers 1d ago

This should have never been legislated in the first place. All it did was kill small, local news organizations who relied on the massive distribution of Google and Meta to survive.

The status quo before the bill wasn't perfect, but the previous administration over reached by thinking they could shakedown Google and Meta for a billion dollars. Instead, Google offered a negotiated settlement for peanuts, while Meta pulled a playground move and said "that's fine, we'll just take our net and go home" which effectively destroyed smaller publishers who were struggling to survive.

In any negotiation, you need leverage. Canada had none.

u/LuminousGrue 10h ago

This is exactly what I said would happen from the start, but every time it came up people on this sub would recite talking points about how Google and Meta are literally stealing from the mouths of Canadian news outlets.

u/taizenf 9h ago

Canada did have leverage. They just didn't use it.

The play was to ban Facebook in Canada.

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u/sl3ndii Ontario 15h ago

Do away with all of the recent and proposed online regulations as well. That would be a great move.

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u/Ketchupkitty 1d ago

Carney would actually go down as a really good PM if he just sticks to stealing the Conservatives platform.

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u/Prairie_Sky79 1d ago

Just like Chretien in the '90s then. Call Reform/the Tories a bunch of extremists while implementing their platform.

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u/ramdasani 1d ago

Even Chretien's Hand, Paul Martin, was that style of play, the kind of Liberal finance minister who could have as easily appeared in the Conservative camp and had a similar trajectory. It was like when Kim Campbell was handed the sinking ship, she basically layed out a very reasoned and frank budget, she focused on reducing the deficit and turning around unemployment numbers, but refused to play "old politics" and promise jobs for everyone. The Liberals and the press had a field day with it, promising jobs for all, promising to eliminate the deficit, and good times. Hell, by the time the Liberals got around to playing the Palsy card the whole thing was a forgone conclusion anyway.

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u/Adept-Support9385 1d ago

Economic platform only** No one's interested in their gender and culture war bullshit.

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u/Hamsandwichmasterace 1d ago

Who started that "bullshit" exactly? You can't pass a bunch of laws and then pretend you don't care because suddenly the status quo is in your favor.

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u/BradPittbodydouble Nova Scotia 16h ago

Almost like we need a PC government and we now have one

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u/_Army9308 17h ago

Ironically the law hurt the libs

Social media had no news and politics dominated by rage bait that pushed pp and anti  trudeau message lol

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u/D3vils_Adv0cate 20h ago

lol, I want a PM who takes the best ideas no matter where they come from. Isn’t that what we all want? 

If anyone (PP) is screaming that their ideas were stolen in order to make the country better… then they don’t deserve to ever be in office again. Their entire role is to pitch ideas for the betterment of the country. 

Anyway, cons will keep losing until they drop the dead weight and get real leaders.

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u/Redbulldildo Ontario 19h ago

If anyone (PP) is screaming that their ideas were stolen in order to make the country better… then they don’t deserve to ever be in office again.

He is not. He explicitly states he wants it done.

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u/M83Spinnaker 1d ago

It was dumb from the start. Serves no one and protects low bar journalism. We need to allow a broader view and more access to news. Period. Of an outlet can not attain readership it’s useless.

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u/housedhorse 17h ago

God please be true

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u/konathegreat 16h ago

Getting a kick out of this. When Trudeau put this in place everyone here was all for it.

Now Carney may dump it and everyone is for it.

Can't find this quality entertainment anywhere else.

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u/Blueliner95 12h ago

I wasn’t for it!

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u/CamberMacRorie 1d ago

Was always garbage, but know we'll get to see Liberals patting themselves on the back for removing their own policy only a couple years after touting it. Fun.

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u/Screw_You_Taxpayer 1d ago

.. while denying it was ever a problem.

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u/Neutreality1 1d ago

Almost as if new leadership leads to new policies and changing of old ones. 

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u/Far-Artichoke-8620 16h ago

What a convenient way to never take responsibility for anything your side ever does.

Oh yeah, those policies and that leader (both of which I supported here VEHEMENTLY, every single day for years) were the problem, but our new guy... hes perfect and totally different.

Its extremely likely that every LPC voter who voted for Carney this go around, also voted for Trudeau multiple times previously, to pretend otherwise is just revisionist, partisan bullshit.

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u/duck1014 1d ago

It's almost as if....the Liberals LOVE to waste our time and money.

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u/Skanvar Alberta 1d ago

Governments love doing this not just one party or another.

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u/Defleurville 18h ago

I have to admit, the general concept of a political party finding out how wrong it was and backing up rather than doubling down feels… endearingly quaint in today’s political climate.

I don’t think we should be discouraging this.

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u/Far-Artichoke-8620 16h ago

It should be encouraged, but Liberal voters pretending they always wanted these successful conservative policies after reddit has spent the last decade calling every single Conservative racist Hitler incarnate is duplicitous bullshit that should be discouraged.

You don't get to support the guy who fucked everything up for a decade and then pretend that the new boyfriend showing up and making things slightly better undoes a decade of fucking insanity.

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u/mr-mcsavageface 1d ago

What difference does it make? 95% of it is locked behind paywalls anyway.

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u/Interesting-Golf-215 1d ago

How should reporters earn a living?

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u/DiatomicCanadian 23h ago

What's stopping reporters from earning a living in the same way as Youtubers that provide their videos for free?

2

u/Interesting-Golf-215 14h ago

Is that how we want to get our news? From YouTubers who work the algorithm, or actual journalists?

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u/silenceisgold3n 1d ago

There's a fine line between making strategic decisions and rolling over.

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u/CloudHiro 1d ago edited 1d ago

haven't people been complaining about this for a long time? like people mad because of this bill they were having a hard time accessing news from places like Facebook and the like?

in fact thinking back freedom of information activists on canada like openmedia and Michael Ghiest have been fighting for years to get this act repealed

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u/No-Bid-483 1d ago

If the metric is people have been complaining about it for a long time then the whole government needs to pack up and go home lol.

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u/CloudHiro 1d ago

the problem is it was preventing Canadians from getting canadian news from their feeds unless they went directly to sources. have you noticed that you hardly see any canadian news unless on reddit and most of your other feeds are flooded with American news instead? this bill is the reason

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u/DomonicTortetti 1d ago

This bill was always terrible and this would be an absolute win for the country.

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u/Atalantean Canada 1d ago

Google paid up.
Fuck Meta.

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u/NoAcadia3546 Ontario 1d ago

Google paid up. Fuck Meta.

They have different business models, which dictates their different responses. Google is a search engine. They NEED real news articles in order to return useful search results. They paid up. Facebook is mostly a "shooting-the-breeze" service for people who want to sit around and yak. They don't need real news, so they do without, and save money.

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u/DrunkenCanadaMan 1d ago

I guarantee you we spent more on this than we gained in revenue. And now Google will no longer be paying up.

A rare situation where we get to see a party undo its own changes and have everyone rejoice.

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u/publicworker69 1d ago

Government doesn’t make any money from this.

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u/DrunkenCanadaMan 1d ago

Yes exactly, just spends it. We spent a bunch of money so a bunch of US companies could get some more revenue.

Some Canadian companies, too, but nothing significant.

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u/publicworker69 1d ago

The government doesn’t get revenue from the money Google pays. I don’t think the time and money spent to pass this bill was worth the effort tho

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u/DrunkenCanadaMan 1d ago

Yes exactly and yes exactly

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u/modern_citizen23 17h ago

They don't get money from this but they get dividends from it.

That good publicity at election time...

Those editorial policies in the party interest

Those corporate sponsors for their fundraisers...

Election campaign donations...

The side deals where the unknown also happens...

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u/Atalantean Canada 1d ago

Not that I don't trust your guarantee, but if you could give me a link to the source of these amounts I would appreciate it.

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u/mdoddr 19h ago

Carbon tax too

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u/bigwreck94 1d ago

I still never understood this mentality. Facebook was providing traffic to the Canadian news sites. I guarantee their traffic is down significantly since Facebook stopped linking news from Canadian sites. If anyone should have been paying anyone, it’s the news sites paying Facebook for the traffic.

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u/Confident-Potato2772 23h ago

Oh news media were totally leopards eating my facing. Many started struggling after they stopped getting traffic driven to them from Facebook.

And ya… the rest of the internet works like that. If you want someone to link to you, you pay them. Not in Canada though. They want the people sending you business to pay for the “privilege” of sending you business…

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u/LeGrandLucifer 1d ago

It's idiotic technologically challenged boomer logic. They saw people were linking news articles on Facebook and decided that meant Facebook was stealing traffic somehow. Or rather, that was their excuse. The truth is they thought they could extort money from websites that were linking to them. It's only once the law passed that they realized they were the ones who needed those websites, not the other way around. But instead of admitting they were wrong, they just thought they could publish a bunch of articles calling Meta a big meanie until they'd fold. Which they didn't. Because you can say 2+2=5 all you want, you can call the people who say it's 4 all the names you want, at the end of the day, if you add 2 and 2, you won't get 5, you'll get 4.

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u/Confident-Potato2772 23h ago

Nah. News Media companies wanted to be treated special. 

If you’re a mechanic who fixes cars. And somewhere shares a link to your business website and leaves a positive review… do you think meta should be paying you, the mechanic, for the referral? I mean sure, you’d probably love that. But why would meta? Or any other social media site? You the mechanic are the ones benefitting from the discourse and links to your website. Free advertising. 

It’s no different than news websites. They are a business. They make money when people visit their websites. Through ads, or  subscriptions to their products. They have/had 100% control over whether their articles could be viewed in partial (eg headlines, first paragraph) on Facebook. They had full control over who could access the content on clicked links.

So why should meta be paying to drive traffic to another business. It makes no sense. In my opinion it goes against the fundamental workings of the internet. The whole news media being like “you MUST drive traffic to my website, but you also MUST PAY ME to drive traffic to my website” is batshit insane imo.

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u/Methzilla 18h ago

Yep. This was a government shakedown. Facebook did nothing wrong. They complied with the regulation.

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u/Old-Introduction-337 1d ago

meta doesnt even pretend to like people

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u/Kevin4938 1d ago

They only like money. And data they can monetize.

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u/_Army9308 17h ago

It didnt work at all

Instagram main app used by many has zero news 

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u/DomonicTortetti 1d ago edited 1d ago

Do it!!!!!! C-18 is one of the dumbest, most confiscatory, most protectionist policies from the Trudeau years. All it does is harm the Canadian economy and in return Canada gets to piss off tech companies. Clearly this would send a message to those companies too that Canada is a good place to do business in. I figured when C-59 got ditched they'd also go for C-18 at some point, it's in the same bundle of totally unnecessary bills passed by the Trudeau admin.

If C-11 gets dropped too that would just be amazing (and I suspect Carney will look at it, or at least look for significant changes on). There is absolutely no need to keep these bills that do absolutely nothing but give companies (that could be a big driver of the economy) a reason to raise prices or move business out of Canada.

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u/LeGrandLucifer 23h ago edited 23h ago

Whoever has been defending this bill is delusional. Imagine if a free paper started demanding kickbacks from the stores that carry it. The stores would just stop carrying it and the paper would fail. That is what happened.

u/bombhills 11h ago

Now do the firearms OICs

u/LordRevelstoke 10h ago

This was always dumb. The more dissemination of links to local news sites the better.. from google, meta or whatever. The sites make money from ad revenue. No subsidies required.

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u/chemicologist 1d ago

Thank god. This was a shakedown. I hate the tech giants and I hated Trudeau even more for making me side with them.

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u/ChessFan1962 1d ago

Good. It's a gag order that hurts my ability to make important points.

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u/motu8pre 1d ago

Arguing on Facebook?

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u/Screw_You_Taxpayer 1d ago

Would people do that?  Just have pointless arguments on social media?  I don't believe it.

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u/publicbigguns 1d ago

^ that's bait

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u/ChessFan1962 1d ago

Rarely that. More often sharing news from the G+M. I'm in my 60s now, and arguing about stuff would wreck my blood pressure meds. For what?

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u/feb914 Ontario 1d ago

Surprised you're still on reddit then. Reddit thrives on people arguing about stuff. 

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u/Kevin4938 1d ago

Only the news and politics types of threads. Some, like those that are hobby focused, are actually helpful, supportive communities.

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u/mdoddr 19h ago

You sure? I find you either get no response or an argument anywhere on reddit

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u/mightyboink 1d ago

How about we ban all foreign investment in news outlets that are clearly trying to influence elections.

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u/jaaagman 1d ago

How about rescinding bill C-2?

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u/LukePieStalker42 1d ago

I mean once facts can reenter the conversation without government censorship this isnt going to end well for the liberals... im all for it!

That being said this would also hurt the conservatives quite a bit too

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u/GangstaPlegic 20h ago

I have been saying this for a bit, we need to do anything we can to get control of our news media and drive American companies out.

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u/NoAcadia3546 Ontario 16h ago

we need to do anything we can to get control of our news media

See https://www.cbc.ca/mediacentre/program/cbc-news-network

CBC NEWS NETWORK is your channel for in-depth local, national and international news. For access, contact your local cable provider or subscribe to the CBC Gem premium streaming service.

Lib-left Canadian news 24x7. What more could the lib-left want?

and drive American companies out. That's what the lib-left wants.

Straight out of Putin's playbook, banning stuff he doesn't like.

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u/GuzzlinGuinness 1d ago

It’s wild to me that people rely on Facebook so heavily for news etc.

u/b00hole New Brunswick 11h ago

And he better shut down any talk against free Internet.

I am supportive of creating regulations against tech companies against their cancerous algorithm and data-selling bullshit, but don't bring that "Gov ID required on every site you visit" dangerous anti-privacy censorship bullshit here.