Back in February 2021, Facebook blocked news on its platforms across Australia to protest a proposed law that would have forced it, along with Google, to pay media companies for stories appearing on their sites.
About a week later, Facebook and Google struck a deal with the Australian government and the restriction stopped. Yet in Canada, such a deal never materialized.
Instead, Ottawa passed the Online News Act in June, requiring tech giants to pay news outlets for content they share or otherwise repurpose.
And on Tuesday, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, responded by announcing it had officially begun to end news availability on its platforms in Canada.
So did Canada miss an opportunity to secure its own deal and avoid the current situation?
‘Fundamental misreading’
Before Ottawa passed its law, Meta and Google had both threatened to block the sharing of news on their platforms in Canada.
“It feels like there were many that put a great deal of stock in the Australian situation and thought that, ‘Well, this is all just a bluff and they will ultimately come back to the table,'” said University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist, who is also the Canada Research Chair in internet and e-commerce law.
Meta moves to block news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, says it is going ahead with a plan to remove news content from its platforms in Canada. It signalled the move was coming when the government passed Bill C-18, known as the Online News Act.
As Geist pointed out in a recent blog, some Canadian industry leaders, lobbyists and academics, were, before the bill passed, assuring the Senate that Meta would back down.
“I think it was a fundamental misreading of what took place in Australia,” he said.
The legislation in Australia, the News Media Bargaining Code, governs conduct between Australian news businesses and “designated” digital platforms.
Originally, however, the bill that was being discussed was similar to what the Canadian law is now, meaning Meta and Google would have been legislated to pay news media companies if their stories appeared on their platforms.
That’s what prompted Facebook’s temporary ban.
Front pages of Australian newspapers show stories about Facebook. In 2021 the social media giant blocked Australians from sharing news stories, escalating a fight with the government. (Rick Rycroft/The Associated Press)
But the ban, coming before the legislation had passed, gave the Australian government some space to negotiate, says Diana Bossio, an associate professor in media and communications at Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology.
“And they took out one really, really vital part of the legislation. And that’s ‘designation,'” she said.
Now, Australia’s Treasurer can designate, and thus force, digital platforms like Meta and Google to pay for news.
But Meta and Google have yet to be designated.
“That’s why Meta pulled that stunt [in 2021],” Bossio said. “It didn’t want to be forced by the legislation to pay.”
But, under the implied threat of being designated, both Meta and Google made separate deals with a series of media companies in Australia. Those deals, according to Jordan Guiao, research fellow at the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology, have resulted in more than 30 commercial agreements at approximately $200 million in value to news organizations.
Facebook wipes news from Australian feeds in battle over paying for content
Facebook feeds in Australia were stripped of news posts during a fight over government plans to make technology giants pay for sharing news content and there are concerns something similar could happen in Canada.
The Canadian law doesn’t have that flexibility, says Geist.
“That was a pretty important difference — where the Australian government had basically left itself with the wiggle room to engage in that kind of negotiation,” Geist said. “The Canadian government, not so much.”
Alfred Hermida, a journalism professor at the University of British Columbia, says, in Australia, the threat of being legislated may have led the platforms to make more deals with news organizations than they would have done before.
“But they still made those deals on their own terms individually, privately deciding who got money, who didn’t get money, and how much money to each outlet,” he said.
“And the government wasn’t involved at all.”
For both Meta and Google, it’s not about the money but the principle of being regulated and the precedent it might set in other jurisdictions, Hermida said.
That’s why Hermida says it’s hard to see a solution in Canada that would bring Canadian news back to Meta. Meta fears that if it agrees to be legislated in Canada, then it would be pressured to be legislated in other places, Hermida says.
“This is not just a Canadian story. This is a global story,” he said.
“Given that other countries and places in the U.S. are looking at this as well, [Meta and Google] don’t want to be in a situation where they set a precedent saying, ‘Yes, we accept this law and we will abide by it.'”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
