Bill C-18 could dramatically alter news media consumption on social platforms

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Bill C-18 is designed to compensate Canadian news organizations for the use of content on social media. However, the bill may come with some unintended consequences when the new law takes full effect.

For starters, social media users will likely notice a dramatic format change on their platform feeds.

“It’s basically a law that ensures news media outlets get fair compensation from Google and Facebook,” said Digital Anthropologist Giles Crouch, who also added news media outlets currently have limited and shrinking access to ad revenues on many social media platforms.

“This will enable news media outlets to recoup some revenue from lost advertising,” said Crouch.

However, in the short-term, news stories that usually appear on social media could disappear because of financial issues.

“The way it is structured now, every time someone shares a link to a story, Facebook would have to pay a link fee,” said Crouch.

Facebook’s parent company Meta has pushed back and is not happy about Bill C-18.

According to Crouch, subjecting Facebook, Google and other platforms to what is essentially a new tax for posting stories, could inflict long-term financial damage on the Canadian news media.

“That’s actually a problem with C-18.”

Crouch said the way the bill is currently structured, it could hurt the news media and the social media platforms.