News content "can't be viewed in Canada"

Jeff Green | Aug 09, 2023

I was planning to write about the possibility that the Frontenac News might get caught up in the Meta Corporation battle with the government of Canada, at some point this summer, not knowing how and when it would happen.

This week we found out.

All of the posts on the Frontenac News Facebook Page have disappeared, and there is a note on the page that says “People in Canada can't see your content: In response to Canadian government legislation, news content can't be viewed in Canada.”

So I guess we are part of this story after all. The implications for the Frontenac News are that one of the means that we use to let people know about stories that we put up on our website each week, and about our Everythingfrontenac.ca services site is gone, so our reach as a news organisation is impacted.

The content is still there, still accessible to readers, and thus far the 15,000 articles that we have posted over the years at frontenacnews.ca are still searchable in Google, but we are no longer able to use Facebook to let our 4,000 or so Facebook followers know about stories.

Since we post content online and print 12,000 copies of the paper each week in order to tell local stories to people, anything that results in less people reading those stories is a bad thing for us.

There is no immediate financial impact on us, because while our website reaches readers, it does not generate a lot of revenue.

Because the newspaper makes its way into houses each week, it is where the advertising is strongest, while the web is not.

And, while I did not pay much attention to the battle between traditional media and social media companies, over revenue sharing until quite recently, I had been aware for many years that Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) and Google were the ones who got the revenue from readers of our online content through their ad programs.

At the same time, we have taken measures to improve our standing on Google, and every single day someone from around the world sends us an email promising to improve our standing even more, for a price.

And Facebook drives traffic to our site as well.

But, and this is why the whole issue seemed remote to me for a long time, neither Facebook nor Google have ever forced me to use their services. We voluntarily post on Social Media, and cultivate our standing with the Google spiders searching the web for keywords as well.

So, I'm not clear that they owe us anything, even though they do generate revenue from our content.

The federal legislation that directly resulted in the little note that we received this week from Meta is intended to tax Meta and Google in some way, and then redirect the money to News organisations. I have assumed that the whiners in the Canadian media landscape, Post Media and Metroland, were going to get most, if not all of the money, but the Ontario Community Newspaper Association, of which we are a member, says that's the way they read the legislation. It will result in some money going to the small independents, but no one knows how much.

Being removed from Facebook still feels to me like being a parent during a teachers strike. It is not your battle, but suddenly your kids are home all day and you need to take time off from work or hire someone to mind them so you can work. You are paying the price for a battle that is not of your making.

The way I look at it, the newspaper industry is facing an existential crisis, to be sure. The viability of print publications are in doubt because of costs and consumer habit to read things online, and it is very hard to create a viable online news service on a small, local scale.

The Government of Canada subsidises the newspaper industry in a minor way. As a free publication, the Frontenac News never received any of that money, until recently, and even now it represents 3% of our annual revenue.

The attempt by government to force social media companies to kick in some more makes sense because those companies derive benefit from newspaper content, even though that content is freely posted by newspapers on their platforms, but their kickback against the new legislation makes sense as well.

Somehow it will likely result in a deal at some point, and things will get back to normal. In the short term, our Facebook presence, and perhaps more, is gone, and at the News we are considering creating an email list to let people know when content is being posted.

Most readers know, however, that the week's content is posted Wednesdays at Frontenacnews.ca, and periodically throughout the week as well. And our events directory at Everythingfontenac.ca is updated on an ongoing basis.