When Facebook blocks news, studies show the political risks that follow
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[April 15, 2024]
By Byron Kaye
(Reuters) - Since Meta blocked links to news in Canada last August to
avoid paying fees to media companies, right-wing meme producer Jeff
Ballingall says he has seen a surge in clicks for his Canada Proud
Facebook page.
"Our numbers are growing and we're reaching more and more people every
day," said Ballingall, who publishes up to 10 posts a day and has some
540,000 followers.
"Media is just going to get more tribal and more niche," he added. "This
is just igniting it further."
Canada has become ground zero for Facebook's battle with governments
that have enacted or are considering laws that force internet giants -
primarily the social media platform's owner Meta and Alphabet's Google -
to pay media companies for links to news published on their platforms.
Facebook has blocked news sharing in Canada rather than pay, saying news
holds no economic value to its business.
It is seen as likely to take a similar step in Australia should Canberra
try to enforce its 2021 content licensing law after Facebook said it
would not extend the deals it has with news publishers there. Facebook
briefly blocked news in Australia ahead of the law.
The blocking of news links has led to profound and disturbing changes in
the way Canadian Facebook users engage with information about politics,
two unpublished studies shared with Reuters found.
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"The news being talked about in political groups is being replaced by
memes," said Taylor Owen, founding director of McGill University's
Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, who worked on one of the
studies.
"The ambient presence of journalism and true information in our feeds,
the signals of reliability that were there, that's gone."
The lack of news on the platform and increased user engagement with
opinion and non-verified content has the potential to undermine
political discourse, particularly in election years, the studies'
researchers say. Both Canada and Australia go to the polls in 2025.
Other jurisdictions including California and Britain are also
considering legislation to force internet giants to pay for news
content. Indonesia introduced a similar law this year.
BLOCKED
In practice, Meta's decision means that when someone makes a post with a
link to a news article, Canadians will see a box with the message: "In
response to Canadian government legislation, news content can't be
shared."
Where once news posts on Facebook garnered between 5 million and 8
million views from Canadians per day, that has disappeared, according to
the Media Ecosystem Observatory, a McGill University and University of
Toronto project.
Although engagement with political influencer accounts such as partisan
commentators, academics and media professionals was unchanged, reactions
to image-based posts in Canadian political Facebook groups tripled to
match the previous engagement with news posts, the study also found.
The research analyzed some 40,000 posts and compared user activity
before and after the blocking of news links on the pages of some 1,000
news publishers, 185 political influencers and 600 political groups.
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![](../images/041524PIX/news_b4.jpg)
A warning that news stories cannot be seen on Facebook by users in
Canada, a response by Meta to a new law requiring large internet
companies to pay Canadian news publishers for their content, appears
in a screenshot taken in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada April
5, 2024. Social Media Website/Handout via REUTERS
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A Meta spokesperson said the research confirmed the company's view
that people still come "to Facebook and Instagram even without news
on the platform."
Canadians can still access "authoritative information from a range
of sources" on Facebook and the company's fact-checking process was
"committed to stopping the spread of misinformation on our
services", the spokesperson said.
A separate NewsGuard study conducted for Reuters found that likes,
comments and shares of what it categorized as "unreliable" sources
climbed to 6.9% in Canada in the 90 days after the ban, compared to
2.2% in the 90 days before.
"This is especially troubling," said Gordon Crovitz, co-chief
executive of New York-based NewsGuard, a fact-checking company which
scores websites for accuracy.
Crovitz noted the change has come at a time when "we see a sharp
uptick in the number of AI-generated news sites publishing false
claims and growing numbers of faked audio, images and videos,
including from hostile governments ... intended to influence
elections."
Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge in an emailed statement
to Reuters called Meta's blocking of news an "unfortunate and
reckless choice" that had left "disinformation and misinformation to
spread on their platform ... during need-to-know situations like
wildfires, emergencies, local elections and other critical times".
Asked about the studies, Australian Assistant Treasurer Stephen
Jones said via email: "Access to trusted, quality content is
important for Australians, and it is in Meta's own interest to
support this content on its platforms."
Jones, who will decide whether to hire an arbitrator to set
Facebook's media licensing arrangements, said the government had
made clear its position to Meta that Australian news media
businesses should be "fairly remunerated for news content used on
digital platforms."
Meta declined to comment on future business decisions in Australia
but said it would continue engaging with the government.
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Facebook remains the most popular social media platform for current
affairs content, studies show, even though it has been declining as
a news source for years amid an exodus of younger users to rivals
and Meta's strategy of de-prioritising politics in user feeds.
In Canada, where four-fifths of the population is on Facebook, 51%
obtained news on the platform in 2023, the Media Ecosystem
Observatory said.
Two-thirds of Australians are on Facebook and 32% used the platform
for news last year, the University of Canberra said.
Unlike Facebook, Google has not indicated any changes to its deals
with news publishers in Australia and reached a deal with the
Canadian government to make payments to a fund that will support
media outlets.
(Reporting by Byron Kaye in Sydney; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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