The heavy hand of Google & META
Opinion by Dave Glover
As many of the readers know, I hosted a radio program locally for nearly nine years and in that time I was able to provide 3 hours of talk radio. In all of that time I was not a member of Facebook or Instagram.
To access the new stories I was reading, the information I was imparting and the reports I was bringing to the public, I went to the source, the websites of news media, information sites and more.
I read the iPolitics Evening Brief because I was a subscriber. Every night I would read that as a daily rundown of the most important news that was happening politically in Canada.
I want to stress that I wasn’t on Facebook and I wasn’t on Instagram because right now there is a big problem in Canada for people trying to access news. That, of course, is a result of Bill C18, which many people have classified as a censorship bill by the federal government.Personally, I take exception with that because I don’t believe that that was the intention of the bill.
I think C18 is coming at a problem with, perhaps a unique perspective, but the reality is Big Tech, Google Facebook/META are in my humble opinion exploiting the work that Canadian media have been doing for decades.
Since the inception of Facebook, new services have been happy to allow Facebook, Google and other online services to share their news for free because it drove people to their content and it drove people to their websites but over time that has stopped happening. People have become more reliant upon Facebook posts and Google than on going to the new services.
Now, the problem with that, of course, is that new services rely on advertising and the impact on relying exclusively on digital services as we have seen in the last ten years is they have been losing revenue at a record pace. Advertisers have shifted to using only META and Google and other flow-thru providers of news and information.
As a result, news organizations have had to downsize with the virtual elimination of community newspapers.
Locally, we see what is happening with the cuts to Northumberland News and the impacts it’s had its workers.
Yet during the last decade, Facebook, Google and the other online providers have been doing better than just fine. By taking the advertising away from these news organizations they have essentially been slowly killing the news business.
It’s a bad deal. If they’re going to use and share the content of news organizations, they should pay because they are profiting from that content.
Faced with having to pay for content, re: Bill C 18, the leaders of Google, META and other organizations have chosen to boycott Canadian news.
They have chosen to deny Canadians access to news and told the federal government to, essentially, get stuffed.
The problem with their move is that Johnny and Janey Canuck are left wondering where to get their news from.
Sadly, people seem to have forgotten that the Toronto Star has a website as does the Globe & Mail along with The Toronto Sun, the CBC, CTV. Every news organization in this country has a website that can be accessed directly.
News followers got used to getting it spoon fed to them via Google and META and they got hooked. Web pages get mere seconds of attention before cellphone users are on to the next page. Those two giants have created and fed the web page flippers that most of have become.
I started this by saying that for the almost 9 years that I was on radio, I brought news to my listeners daily. News that I found by scouring the net on their behalf.Doing essentially what Google and META used to do in Canada.
I was doing the leg work, I was finding the stories of interest, and bringing those stories to life every day, but that was something that anyone listening could do. One of the points I made on my program very often was that I wasn’t making anything up, that what I was saying was coming to them from this source or that source. And I would tell the listeners what the source was and say if you don’t agree with what I’m reading, then read it for yourself. Go online. Go to the source directly and read what is written find out for yourselves. Because I honestly believe, an educated voter is quite possibly the most dangerous voter for any political organization, any political party any partisan for that matter.
We can bemoan the fact that Facebook/META, Google and other Tech Giants are withholding access to our news and blame Ottawa. Even our publication, the News Now Network has fallen victim to this pressure and blackmail. As I said many people want to blame the Trudeau government and say that Bill C18 is the problem but I don’t agree with that.
I believe that these organizations should be paying for the content that they are getting for free. They’re making money off the intellectual property of journalists and op-ed writers. People like myself and news organizations like ours. They’re making money but we are not.
For some reason, we’re supposed to just accept the fact that they can take our content and use it to sell their ad revenue and keep 100% of the ad revenue without sharing it with the very people from whom they are taking the content.
Canada’s not alone in this, the UK and Australia have already implemented very similar legislation. It’s not exactly the same but it’s similar and it’s time that Canadians looked into what is really going on.
Why are we content to allow Meta, Google and these other tech corporations to exploit the intellectual property of others for their gain? Why are we allowing them, for lack of a better term, steal this content so they can enrich themselves?
Think about this from a personal perspective.
If you were a writer, a content creator and someone was publishing your stuff for free, posting it on their sites sharing it around the world and taking 100% of the revenue generated how would you feel? Yes, maybe in the beginning you would be quite happy with the expansion of your audience. But where’s the benefit for you as a creator or online content provider?
Where is your return on investment, the reward for your sweat equity?
Well, they will tell you that is just how it goes, chump. You produce the content and we reward you with an audience. Without an audience, chump, no one would know who you are. And, oh, by the way, we are going to stick a few ads along with your stuff. We know you won’t mind because there is nothing you can do about it.
For those of you who are out there saying C18 is terrible and that the federal government needs to bend to the will of this online blackmail, I have to say I disagree. META and Google are collectively punishing Canadians because they don’t want to pay for the content they’re pirating.
We’re talking about intellectual property, hard work, people’s valuable time and effort.
News organizations have to pay staff, overhead, and find advertising to survive. Why should Google and META get a free ride?
One has to wonder, is their ultimate goal to drive local content out of business? So we only see them, depend on them, go to them, bow down to them, rely exclusively on them?
We don’t negotiate with hostage takers and we don’t negotiate with terrorists. We shouldn’t be obliged to negotiate with Facebook/META or Google or any tech company to ensure that Canadians have access to timely news.
The present impasse is wrong. These companies need to be called out.
As I said, for 9 years I did this and did it without META. As a matter of fact, I didn’t join Facebook until recently.
Canadians are rightfully upset about how they’re being treated and need to contact Google and META and let them know what they think. Let them know we’re not going to continue to be held hostage because they don’t want to pay for content that they’ve been in the habit of stealing.
News organizations, writers, and content creators should be compensated for the work that they provide.
META, Google and these other tech companies are in the wrong. The situation in Canada with the blackout of Canadian news is simply blackmail. Blackmail that unfortunately looks a lot like corporate censorship.
Dave Glover is a well known cultural and political commentator in Northumberland. Thousands of listeners, both locally and worldwide, know Dave because of his “Drive Time” radio broadcast that ran for more than 8 years and his 15 years hosting political programs on a local cable channel.
Listen to/Contact Dave
Twitter: https://twitter.com/legant66?lang=ar-x-fm
Online: https://holisticpoliticalchat.com/
Email: HolisticPoliticalchat@gmail.com
