Meta to unveil fresh round of job cuts among highly skilled staff
Washington PostNov 27, 2022
The Facts
On Thursday, Facebook and Instagram owner Meta announced that it would end access to news for Canadian users in light of the passage of Bill C-18, the Online News Act.
Bill C-18 requires social media sites to negotiate payment deals with news publishers for the content posted on their sites. While the government argues the law protects Canadian media, tech companies have called it unsustainable for their business model.
The Spin
Establishment-critical narrative
Big tech has siphoned off the lion's share of the revenue from news media that desperately need financial security. You cannot have a functioning democracy without an informed population, and a dearth of quality news from trusted sources will ensure that. Social media cannot be complicit in this decline, and instead of paying journalists what they are owed, they are taking punitive measures in an arrogant display. Big tech has gotten a free ride for too long, and it's time for them to pay up.
Pro-establishment narrative
Bill C-18 is an ill-advised piece of protectionism that will only serve to harm Canadians to keep moribund legacy media outlets afloat. The government is imposing a regime of almost unlimited financial liability on social media companies, and it just makes economic sense for them to get out entirely instead of dealing with the unpredictability. Innovators in the media and tech sphere will suffer to keep failing newspapers afloat.
