Media
Trudeau’s Online News Act has crushed hundreds of local Canadian news outlets: study
From LifeSiteNews
Trudeau’s Online News Act, framed as a way to support local media, has hurt small media outlets while giving massive payouts to legacy media, a study has found.
According to a new study, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Online News Act has successfully crushed local media outlets while mainstream media has remained relatively unaffected.
According to an April study from the Media Ecosystem Observatory, Trudeau’s Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18, has caused a 84 percent drop in engagement for local Canadian outlets, as Big Tech company Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – has refused to publish links to Canadian news outlets on their platforms.
“We lost 70 per cent of our audience when that happened,” Iain Burns, the managing editor of Now Media Group, which manages news posts for outlets serving smaller communities, revealed. He further explained that he experienced a 50 percent loss in revenue following the move.
“We’re not the only ones. Many, many outlets are in this situation,” Burns added.
The Online News Act, passed by the Senate in June 2023, mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadian content on their platforms. While the legislation promised to support local media, it has seemingly accomplished the opposite.
While Meta has blocked all news on its platforms, devastating small publishers, Google agreed to pay Canadian legacy media outlets $100 million to publish their content online.
The study, a collaboration between the University of Toronto and McGill University, examined the 987 Facebook pages of Canadian news outlets, 183 personal pages of politicians, commentators and advocacy groups, and 589 political and local community groups.
“The ban undoubtedly had a major impact on Canadian news,” the study found.
The study found a 84 percent drop in engagement for Canadian outlets, with small local news outlets being the most affected compared to larger government-funded outlets.
“Local news outlets have been particularly affected by the ban: while large, national news outlets were less reliant on Facebook for visibility and able to recoup some of their Facebook engagement regardless, hundreds of local news outlets have left the platform entirely, effectively gutting the visibility of local news content,” it explained.
However, LifeSiteNews has been relatively unaffected by the ban as viewership on its official Facebook page has remained relatively the same, similar to its Instagram account since most views already came from the United States.
Similarly unaffected was Meta: “We find little evidence that Facebook usage has been impacted by the ban.”
“After the ban took effect, the collapse of Canadian news content production and engagement on Facebook did not appear to substantially affect users themselves,” the study said.
While local media outlets’ viewership has declined thanks to Trudeau’s new legislation, larger media outlets have thrived due to increased payouts from the Trudeau government.
Legacy media journalists are projected to have roughly half of their salaries paid by the Liberal government after the $100 million Google agreement and the subsidies outlined in the Fall Economic Statement.
Mainstream Canadian media had already received massive federal payouts, but they have nearly doubled after Trudeau announced increased subsidies for legacy media outlets ahead of the 2025 election. The subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers $129 million over the next five years.
However, just as government payouts increase, Canadians’ trust in mainstream media has decreased. Recent polling found that only one-third of Canadians consider mainstream media trustworthy and balanced.
Similarly, a recent study by Canada’s Public Health Agency revealed that less than a third of Canadians displayed “high trust” in the federal government, with “large media organizations” as well as celebrities getting even lower scores.
From LifeSiteNews
The decision was otherwise roundly condemned on X as “horrific,” “horrendous,” the hallmark of a “dictatorship,” and even “the biggest breach of privacy Western civilization has ever seen.”
Apple Store on New York’s Fifth Avenue.
Apple pulled its highest-level security feature in the U.K. after the government ordered the company to give it access to user data.
The U.K. government demanded “blanket access” to all user accounts around the world rather than to specific ones, a move unprecedented in major democracies, according to The Washington Post.
The security tool at issue in the U.K. is Advanced Data Protection (ADP), which provides end-to-end encryption so that only owners of particular data – and reportedly not even Apple – can access it.
“Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature,” an Apple spokesman said.
According to Apple, the removal of ADP will not affect iCloud data types that are end-to-end encrypted by default such as iMessage and FaceTime.
The nine iCloud categories that will reportedly no longer have ADP protection are iCloud Backup, iCloud Drive, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Safari Bookmarks, Siri Shortcuts, Voice Memos, Wallet Passes, and Freeform.
These types of data will be covered only by standard data protection, the default setting for accounts.
Journalist and Twitter Files whistleblower Michael Schellenberger slammed the U.K.-initiated move as “totalitarian.”
The decision was otherwise roundly condemned on X as “horrific,” “horrendous,” the hallmark of a “dictatorship,” and even “the biggest breach of privacy Western civilization has ever seen.”
Elon Musk declared Friday that such a privacy breach “would have happened in America” if President Donald Trump had not been elected.
Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at ESET, commented that the move marks “a huge step backwards in the protection of privacy online.”
“Creating a backdoor for ethical reasons means it will inevitably only be a matter of time before threat actors also find a way in,” Moore said.
Britain reportedly made the privacy invasion demand under the authority of the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016.
Business
Federal Heritage Minister recommends nearly doubling CBC funding and reducing accountability
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling for the CBC to be completely defunded in the wake of the federal Liberal government’s recommendation to nearly double the state broadcaster’s cost to taxpayers and hide its budget reporting.
“It is outrageous for the government to try to hide the cost of the CBC from the taxpayers who are paying its bills,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “This government is totally out touch if it thinks it can nearly double CBC’s cost to taxpayers and try to hide its costs.”
Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said the government should nearly double the amount of money the CBC takes from taxpayers every year.
The CBC will cost taxpayers about $1.4 billion this year.
“The average funding for public broadcasters in G7 countries is $62 per person, per year,” St-Onge said. “We need to aim closer to the middle ground, which is $62 per year per person.”
Canada’s population is about 41.5 million people. If the government funded the CBC the way the minister is recommending, the CBC would cost taxpayers about $2.5 billion per year.
That amount would cover the annual grocery bill of about 152,854 Canadian families.
St-Onge also recommended the annual taxpayer funding for the CBC be removed from the government budget report and instead be entrenched in government statutory appropriations.
“I propose that it be financed directly in the legislation instead of in the budget through statutory appropriation,” St-Onge said.
“Canadians have told this government that the CBC costs them too much money, that it is not accountable to taxpayers and they don’t watch it, and now the government wants to double down on all those problems,” said Kris Sims, CTF Alberta Director. “The CBC is an enormous waste of money and journalists should not be paid by the government.
“The CBC must be defunded.”
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