SAN FRANCISCO, CA – NOVEMBER 03: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (C) and Andreesen Horowitz partner Marc Andreesen (L) speak with Alan Murray of Fortune Magazing during the Fortune Global Forum on November 3, 2015 in San Francisco, California. Business leaders are attending the Fortune Global Forum that runs through November 4. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Last week workers at a San Francisco-based company announced they were forming a union.
“We are organizing because it is more important than ever that companies are equitable and supportive of their employees… [Our company] must support and protect its workforce and create the best environment possible in these turbulent times.”
While this sounds like it could be about a meatpacking plant or plastics factory, the company in question is Medium, a digital media publishing platform created by Twitter (TWTR) co-founder Evan Williams. (You can read the entire statement here.)
That employees at Medium feel the need to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA)—a 100-year-old union best known for repping workers at AT&T and (Yahoo parent company) Verizon—perhaps speaks to a failure by Medium management. Which would be ironic since a number of years ago the company instituted a “Holacracy” model, which it touted as “a radical new theory of corporate structure, a completely management-free environment,” and “by far the best way to structure and run a company.” Apparently it wasn’t all that. The Holacracy was scrapped after three years.
The point is that leadership at Medium have deeply considered the idea of management and its employees still feel it’s necessary to unionize. And it speaks to a bigger point too, which is that even after all these years of tech and media melding together, the divisions between these two businesses are deeper than ever and at the same time becoming more urgent to address as the tech industry inexorably takes over more and more media, in particular the news business.
You’re probably familiar with that latter, takeover point, but I suspect that you may not have considered the totality of tech’s incipient media dominance.
Let’s explore that now.
Tech companies and tech moguls hold sway over the news business in at least three overlapping ways. First, if you include social media platforms (Facebook (FB), Twitter and YouTube) as media—as you certainly should—the tech industry is actually now defined to a great degree by media companies. (We could also include a portion of Apple (AAPL) by dint of Apple News and its music business and LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft (MSFT).) As measured by audience size and profit (billions), ad revenue (hundreds of billions) and market capitalization and impressions (trillions), all the other media outlets combined aren’t nearly as big as the social media companies.
Adjudicating the frictions that arise from this unreconciled relationship—manifested for instance by whether Facebook et al. should be shielded by Section 230—is no easy matter, even for the likes of brainiacs such as Harvard Law School professor emeritus Larry Tribe who told me this week: “I think the time is ripe for really a full reconsideration of the intersection between the First Amendment and powerful, extensively private social media.” So what should we do, Larry? “I don’t know yet,” Tribe told me. “It’s one of the things that, if I look at my sort of intellectual agenda for the next 10 years, if I’m around for another 10 years, that’s one of the things I’m thinking about.”
Two current flash points are 1) Australia, where the government there is requiring Facebook and Google to pay publishers for news that it outs on their platforms (Imagine that.) And 2) Facebook’s oversight board which will rule soon on whether Trump will be allowed back on Facebook. Just to give you an idea of the lack of consensus there, I asked Tribe, who told me Trump should not be allowed back on, while Bill Gates told me: “I don’t think having him off forever would be that good.” That one will be worth watching.
But even if you reject the idea that social media is media (then why is it called social ‘media,’), tech is coming to dominate the media industry by other measures.
Which brings us to the second means of tech holding sway over media and that is simply buying news organizations. The examples here are high-profile and obvious: Laurene Powell Jobs and the Atlantic, Marc Benioff and Time Magazine, Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post. I guess you could include bio-tech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong buying the LA Times, as well as Facebook founder Chris Hughes’ brief ownership of The New Republic.
“Wealthy people who buy a publication do it largely because they believe in its mission and partly for prestige in the community or nationally,” says Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at Poynter. “They used to say of rich people buying papers, it’s more fun than having a bond. It’s kind of like owning a sports team.”
Ownership of these properties by tech billionaires now constitutes a significant slice of American news business and it’s likely we’ll see more of it in the years to come. After all, they are the wealthy people now. On the other hand, does buying one of these businesses really make sense? Many news organizations are fusty and unprofitable and besides there are other, vulture-like buyers circling, such as hedge fund Alden Global Capital which just bought Tribune Publishing this week.
That point segues to our third category of tech influence in media, which is instead of buying, DIY or building one of your own. Here we have the aforementioned Medium as well as First Look (which publishes The Intercept) created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. This group of companies isn’t neat and tidy grouping as many digital media or new media companies have mixed pedigrees, like Reddit funded initially by Y-Combinator, then bought by old-school media giant Condé Nast, then spun off and now funded mostly by, you guessed it, Silicon Valley VCs.
I should also make mention of my own organization, Yahoo, very much a creation of Silicon Valley, and ditto for sister publication TechCrunch, also owned by Verizon (VZ). Business Insider, Axios and Vox, to name just three, had blends of old media and Silicon Valley as investors. And of course there are hundreds of other media-like companies birthed in Silicon Valley such as Digg, Flipboard, Quora and so forth.
The startup cycle here is important to note. A few years ago it was generally accepted that the digital media boom was over. As growth slowed, valuations topped out for the likes of BuzzFeed, Vice and HuffPost, and VCs cut back on funding new ventures. That proved to be a false peak. Podcasts became all the rage and soon enough entrepreneurs founded scores of audio companies and platforms. And more than that a new wave of red-hot social media companies have taken the stage, most notably TikTok, which now has 1.1 billion monthly active users (MAUs), as well as much smaller but high-profile entities, Substack and Clubhouse. All three have deep Silicon Valley funding roots; TikTok’s parent ByteDance via Sequoia Capital China and Substack and Clubhouse through Andreessen Horowitz. (Other Silicon Valley and non-Silicon Valley investors have bought stakes as well.) Though it varies by company, these investors have a strong or even dominant influence on the workings of these platforms. And remember all those billions of eyeballs and dollars flowing to TikTok, Substack and Clubhouse come at the expense of traditional media.
WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 11: Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill April 11, 2018 in Washington, DC. This is the second day of testimony before Congress by Zuckerberg, 33, after it was reported that 87 million Facebook users had their personal information harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
More on Andreessen Horowitz in a moment, but first a bit more on the relationship between Silicon Valley and the media, because it’s become a hot-button issue for some very simple reasons which seem to get lost in the heat of the debate.
Historically, as in say before the 2016 election, tech companies were mostly covered by a small group of tech reporters. It was a pretty insular world, with the subjects and their Boswells more or less on the same page. There were hard-hitting stories and scandals, but the general idea that tech companies, while of course money-making ventures, generally had honest intentions and were even forces for good in society, was more or less accepted by many tech journalists.
But this changed over the past half decade, particularly as Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Facebook, Apple, Amazon (AMZN) and a revived Microsoft grew into global giants with tentacles reaching into all facets of society. Why did these halo-topped companies lose their luster? “There’s been this growing animosity between Silicon Valley and mainstream media,” says veteran business journalist Jim Ledbetter, chief content officer of Clarim Media, which owns Techonomy and Worth magazine, who for a time was the head of content at Sequoia. “I remember seeing that image of beat up Mark Zuckerberg on the cover of Wired [in 2018] thinking ‘wow.’”
There are bonafide reasons behind the shift in perspective. Societal conflicts like privacy and election integrity came to the fore. There were scandals at companies like Theranos and Zenefits. Employees at these tech giants—heretofore the happiest, most privileged people on the planet—began to agitate over issues like working conditions in warehouses, gender and racial equality and #metoo issues, and contracts with the Defense Department. Lawmakers took notice and began berating the companies. And journalists began to write stories about these issues, and new journalists without any historical knowledge or relationships (not that this should be a requirement) began to write about tech companies.
Now the bloom is off the rose. Increasingly Silicon Valley feels itself under attack, some even suggesting there is conspiracy by the media to write negative stories, a point of view shared on forums like the now defunct website Slate Star Codex, (The New York Times in particular seems to draw tech’s ire), engendering all manner of dust-ups on Twitter and now on Clubhouse too.
Behavior has changed. To be sure, some high-profile executives like Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg still appear in traditional media, but increasingly, leaders like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos as well as Larry Ellison and Marc Andreessen, some of whom used to engage with media, are eschewing traditional news outlets.
And why not, particularly since they can now communicate without media filtering directly to audiences on Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn and Substack, platforms in which they either invested or whose founders or other investors they know well.
As for the animosity and finger pointing, not surprisingly, there’s truth on both sides while the extreme views are generally off-base. Fact: People in Silicon Valley want to make money and yes, want to change the world. They can be arrogant, clueless entitled and can act badly. They generally have good intentions but can create products which have negative consequences.
We journalists on the other hand want a story, not necessarily a good one or a bad one, just a story. Understand though that calling people out on hypocrisy and misdeeds is our job. And yes, we too can be arrogant, clueless, entitled and can act badly. Both sides probably have more in common than they realize or would like to admit.
Some journalists and some in Silicon Valley care more about this than others. And that brings us to Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the powerful VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, (whom I noted recently as possibly decamping from Silicon Valley.)
As I mentioned earlier, Andreessen is one of those Silicon Valley potentates who used to be much more public facing, but now he and his firm apparently aren’t doing interviews, reflecting the increasingly fraught relationship between media and technology, (see more detail in this piece). (A company spokesperson declined to make anyone available for this article.)
It’s a bit of a paradox because I’ve interviewed and spoken with Andreessen a few times over the years and I can tell you he’s someone who cares about media, and more than that is taking an active role in reshaping it as an investor and behind the scenes. “The running joke of the firm is that we’re a media company that monetizes through venture capital,” Andreessen told Wired in 2018.
“Every media company is a tech company now, and every tech company not only needs to have a PR wing but also produces its own content and manages user-generated content,” says Meredith Broussard, a data journalism professor at the New York University journalism school and author of, “Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.”
Andreessen’s eyes were opened early on. Twenty five years ago to yesterday, (2/19/96), Time Magazine put then 24-year-old Andreessen on its cover, barefoot on a throne-like chair with the cover line: The Golden Geeks: “They invent. They start companies. And the stock market has made them Instanaires. Who are they? How do they live? And what do they mean for America’s future?” At that point Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, was riding high after that company’s IPO from the year prior.
By 2009 Andreessen and his partner Ben Horowitz founded their eponymous firm, (also known as “a16z”) which I remember well as I was editor of Fortune at the time and we did an exclusive cover story on the firm’s launch. Two years later Andreessen penned his famous “Why software is eating the world” op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.
Andreessen, through his familiar @pmarca twitter handle, practically invented the tweetstorm seven or eight years ago. Bloomberg counted that he tweeted over 20,000 times in the first half of 2014, which was right around when Twitter went public (November 2013), a company in which a16z had invested.
Twitter is hardly the only digital media company a16z has had stakes in. Here’s just a partial list: Facebook, BuzzFeed, Pinterest, Reddit, Medium and Digg as well as newer investments like Substack and Clubhouse. (To be clear, this is just a sliver of the 890 investments a16z has made, according to crunchbase, but it’s substantial within that industry.) BTW, nowadays Andreessen doesn’t tweet so much, and when he does, lately it’s been about appearing on Clubhouse.
It’s worth noting too that a16z has had a significant in-house content, or content-marketing effort for some time now. Six years ago the firm hired Sonal Chokshi from Wired to be its editor-in-chief. The company produces all manner of articles, videos, podcasts and newsletters. Given where a16z sits and the brainpower there, it makes sense that some of it is revelatory. Some of it though is preachy, lost in the weeds and axiomatic.
Now a16z is stepping up its media presence even more, announcing late last month that it is “building a new and separate media property about the future that makes sense of technology, innovation, and where things are going…expanding and opening up our platform to do this on a much bigger scale.” The firm hired Maggie Leung from NerdWallet as executive editor apparently to manage the operation.
The announcement goes on to say a16z will welcome contributions for articles, op-eds, newsletters, video and more, even offering pitch guidelines. But just when you think, wow, maybe a16z really is creating a traditional media company you come across this line: “Our lens is rational optimism about technology and the future.” Ahh. A risk here is creating content only for the Silicon Valley echo-chamber.
“Companies have always put out content,” says Broussard. “There have always been corporate magazines — Amtrak magazine, and other magazines put out by corporations. Nobody thinks Amtrak magazine is going to destroy democracy.”
“Marc has always been good at media,” says a former a16z person. “Ben’s a good writer and other people there are great at social and creating content. Now they feel they can go out on their own, which may or may not be true depending on what kind of audience and impact they want.”
Here’s where I come out on all this. First regarding a16z: It’s too bad people there don’t talk to the media anymore, but that’s their prerogative. It’s also their prerogative to create as much content as they want. Just don’t call it journalism, (not that a16z has) which would allow for the creation of content critical of the firm, its portfolio companies or tech in general. It sounds like that won’t be happening, although who knows. As far as a16z’s investing in media companies, more power to it for doing so, and more power to Marc and Ben for using and promoting these companies.
When speaking to Bill Gates this week I asked him if he ever thought about investing in or buying a media company like Jeff Bezos. Not interested. “I’m glad somebody is providing long term capital for great interactive news, but I don’t see myself [doing that.] I’ve gotten pretty full up,” Gates said.
Part of Gates being full up is a massive, traditional media campaign for his new book “How to avoid a climate disaster,” which includes him doing interviews, (including with schlubs like me), which may result in stories where he is criticized or even where journalists play gotcha or twist his words. I’ve asked Gates about this and he essentially says it comes with the territory. Meaning if you want to reach as many people as possible, you have to put yourself out there and absorb the slings and arrows from The New York Times and others.
I was thinking about Gates’ influence when I noticed he has 53.7 million followers on Twitter. As for Marc Andreessen, he has 813,000. Of course it’s just one metric, but on Twitter at least, Bill is some 66 times more impactful than Marc. To be sure, Gates does have the advantage of being the richest guy on the planet for many years, but Andreessen has some world-beating ideas too. Maybe Andreessen doesn’t care if he reaches a wider audience, but if he does, it may be difficult to do so inside the ecosystem of a16z.
This article was featured in a Saturday edition of the Morning Brief on February 20, 2021. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET. Subscribe
Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter: @serwer.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill
It was July 2018, and Michael Avenatti was considering a presidential run. Anyone can consider running for president, I suppose. It’s just that when the lawyer for Stormy Daniels and cable news mainstay did it, important people — theoretically important, at least — in the press took it seriously.
CNN’s Jim Scuitto had Avenatti on to talk about it, and make a bit of a campaign pitch for himself, on July 4. The next day, CNN’s editor-at-large Chris Cillizza, one of the more prominent writers for the website back then, published a piece of analysis with the headline “President Michael Avenatti? Never say never!”
And sure, why not. Avenatti was riding high at the time. A couple months earlier, he was being pitched, according to the New York Times, for a “Crossfire”-like show with Anthony Scaramucci, the rapidly-defenestrated former Trump communications director, by mega-agent Jay Sures, who represents top CNN talent like Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper. Maybe that’s why Avenatti became so ubiquitous on the network to begin with — embarrassingly so, in retrospect.
But if we look back to April, almost exactly six years ago, that’s when Avenatti truly burst onto the national scene. On April 9, 2018, the FBI raided the office of Michael Cohen, the long-time “fixer” and business associate of then-President Donald Trump. The next day, Avenatti was on Cooper’s CNN show to break it all down — from Stormy Daniels, his porn actress client, to Karen McDougal, the former Playboy playmate, to Cohen himself. It was Avenatti’s chance to craft the narrative for the media, and the media was happy to oblige.
The whole ordeal was portrayed a couple weeks later in a cringe-inducing “Saturday Night Live” cold open, with Ben Stiller playing Cohen, Jimmy Fallon playing Jared Kushner, and Stormy Daniels playing herself. (She struggled to nail the “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” line at the end.)
It’s worth reflecting this week on this bizarre 2018 moment, as it serves as the prelude to the first (and possibly only) trial of Trump in 2024. The trial that officially began on Monday isn’t about “insurrection” or “espionage” or classified documents or RICO. Oh no. It’s this reality TV, trashy tabloid junk about porn stars and Playmates — stuff that belongs more in the National Enquirer than the National Broadcasting Company.
Which is ironic, of course, because the first witness in the case was David Pecker, the former executive in charge of the National Enquirer. (It’s also ironic that Avenatti is now firmly on Team Trump, saying he’d be happy to testify for the defense, although of course he’s also currently in federal prison for wire fraud and tax fraud, so…)
It’s been more than six years since that initial FBI raid, and the original Avenatti media sin. But buckle up, here we go. We’re getting to hear about the way Trump teamed up with the National Enquirer in an effort to boost his 2016 campaign. A bit like how most of the establishment press today is teaming up with the Biden campaign to stop Trump in this cycle.
You know that story about Ted Cruz’s father potentially being involved in the murder of JFK? Totally made up, to help Trump in the primary! None of this is surprising, to any discerning news consumer. But it does allow the media to get on their proverbial high horse over “checkbook journalism” — as if the crusty old legacy press hasn’t been doing a version of it for decades, when ABC or NBC wants to secure a big “get” on their morning show. But the journalistic ethics of the National Enquirer are a red herring — a distraction from the substance of the trial.
After Pecker, we’ll get Cohen, and Daniels, and McDougal as witnesses. Avenatti, at least it seems for now, will stay in prison, and not get to return to the limelight.
This trial is a circus. But the media made their choice way back in 2018. And now they too are on trial.
To get meta for a minute, when I decide to devote my weekly column to a topic, I’m not only deciding the topic to cover, but making a decision about what not to cover as well. On a far larger and more consequential scale, every single news organization makes choices every day about what to focus on, how to cover it and what gets left on the cutting room floor.
Back during the Trump years, the media spent an inordinate amount of time dissecting every last detail of this tabloid journalism fodder we’re now seeing play out in a New York City courtroom — which is meaningless to the lives of nearly every American. The trial is the culmination of the inconsequential work that ate up so many hours of cable news, and occupied so much space in the most powerful media outlets in America. So much time and energy and resources that could have been devoted to literally any other story, including many that directly relate to Donald Trump. And yet now, here we are.
This trial has to matter for the American press. If it doesn’t, it invalidates their entire existence during 2018. But if the public tunes out — and, can you even imagine if a jury in New York City actually finds Trump not guilty at the end of this thing — well, it’s as much an indictment of the Trump-obsessed Acela media as it is of the system that brought these bizarre charges and salacious case in the first place.
Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People” and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.
The Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register sent the photo to one of their experts ‘who said that it was “compelling evidence” ‘ of the creature
Author of the article:
The Canadian Press
Published Apr 24, 2024 • Last updated 3 hours ago • 3 minute read
Canadian couple Parry Malm and Shannon Wiseman have gotten attention from British media for their photo of what has been called “compelling evidence” the famed Loch Ness monster in Scotland.Photo by Handout/The Canadian Press
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LONDON — Parry Malm and Shannon Wiseman weren’t expecting a “pivotal moment” in their sons’ lives when they visited Scotland’s Loch Ness earlier this month, but that’s exactly what happened.
“Our youngest is turning three next week,” said Wiseman from the family’s home in London, England. “And he tells everyone there have been two pivotal moments in his life: Seeing the world’s largest dinosaur, which he did at the Natural History Museum in January, and seeing Nessie.
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“He tells everyone he encounters. He tells the postman, he tells the guys in the shops and the cafes.”
Malm and Wiseman have been thrust into the limelight after a photo they took during their family vacation showed a shadowy figure poking above the waterline, something that the couple’s children _ and others — firmly believe is the latest sighting of the famed Loch Ness monster.
Malm and Wiseman, who are from Coquitlam B.C., and Calgary respectively, moved to England in 2006.
The couple said the original plan for the spring vacation was to take a boat ride in Loch Ness because their children were “completely captivated by the concept of Nessie.”
“We’d even packed shortbread cookies, which we were told from these books was Nessie’s favourite treat,” Wiseman quipped. “Turned out shortbread cookies were not necessary.”
That’s because the family spotted something sticking out of the water while visiting a lookout at nearby Urquhart Castle.
“We just started watching it more and more, and we could see its head craning above water,” Malm said. “And then it was swimming against the current towards the castle, slowly but surely, like very fastidiously going over the waves (and) coming closer and closer. And then it submerged and disappeared.”
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Malm said the family took a photo of what they saw and decided “for a bit of a laugh” to send the picture to the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register, which he stumbled upon while surfing the internet.
“They got in touch within 24 hours,” Malm recalled. “They were super excited. They sent it to one of their Loch Ness experts who said that it was ‘compelling evidence,’ I believe was the exact phrase.
“And just one thing led to another. I mean, it’s been incredible.”
Since the photo submission, Malm and Wiseman have been featured in British tabloids such as The Sun and the Daily Mirror and digital publication LADbible.
On the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register, the encounter has been recorded as the first Nessie sighting of 2024.
“We’ve both got texts from people who we haven’t heard from in quite some time going, ‘Guess who I just saw on TV?”‘ Malm said.
“I’m just glad that we hit the national media in Canada for spotting the Loch Ness monster and not being on Crime Stoppers.”
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Both Malm and Wiseman said they are happy their experience is bringing some positivity to the daily news cycle, and at least one person they have spoken with thanked them for the picture.
“Our son’s school’s headmaster is Scottish,” Malm said. “And he pulls me aside at pick up one day and he goes, ‘You know what, Perry? You’ve done more for Scottish tourism than anybody else in my lifetime.’
“So, hopefully some people will be inspired to come visit Scotland.”
What isn’t certain, however, is what they actually encountered on that cold April morning on the shore of Loch Ness.
“We don’t know what we saw,” Wiseman said. “Our children believe we saw Nessie, and I believe it for them.
“I believe that we saw something that could be Nessie, and that is a very broad possibility.”
Malm said the wonder that the sighting has inspired in his children, and others resonating with the photo, is more important than the question of what they encountered.
“It’s really charming,” he said of the outpouring of reactions. “Because in a world where the news is about a war here and an atrocity there, it’s just nice that people are interested in something that’s just lighthearted, a little bit silly and a little bit unbelievable.”
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The British Columbia government is putting its proposed online harms legislation on hold after reaching an agreement with some of the largest social media platforms to increase safety online.
Premier David Eby says in a joint statement with representatives of the firms Meta, TikTok, X and Snapchat that they will form an online safety action table, where they’ll discuss “tangible steps” toward protecting people from online harms.
Eby added the proposed legislation remains, and the province will reactivate it into law if necessary.
“The agreement that we’ve struck with these companies is that we’re going to move quickly and effectively, and that we need meaningful results before the end of the term of this government, so that if it’s necessary for us to bring the bill back then we will,” Eby said Tuesday.
The province says the social media companies have agreed to work collaboratively with the province on preventing harm, while Meta will also commit to working with B.C.’s emergency management officials to help amplify official information during natural disasters and other events.
The announcement to put the Bill 12, also known as the Public Health Accountability and Cost Recovery Act, on hold is a sharp turn for the government, after Eby announced in March that social media companies were among the “wrongdoers” that would pay for health-related costs linked to their platforms.
At the time, Eby compared social media harms to those caused by tobacco and opioids, saying the legislation was similar to previous laws that allowed the province to sue companies selling those products.
Premier David Eby is pictured with Ryan Cleland and Nicola Smith, parents of Carson Cleland, during a news conference announcing Bill 12. (Ben Nelms/CBC)
Eby said one of the key drivers for legislation targeting online harm was the death of Carson Cleland, the 12-year-old Prince George, B.C., boy who died by suicide last October after falling victim to online sextortion.
“In the real world we would never allow a company to set up a space for kids where grown adults could be invited in to contact them, encourage them to share photographs and then threaten to distribute those photographs to their family and friends,” Eby said when announcing the legislation.
The premier said previously that companies would be shut down and their owners would face jail terms if their products were connected to harms to young people.
In announcing the pause, the province says that bringing social media companies to the table for discussion achieves the same purpose of protecting youth from online harm.
“Our commitment to every parent is that we will do everything we can to keep their families safe online and in our communities,” said Eby.
Ryan Cleland, Carson’s father, said in a statement on Tuesday that he “has faith” in Eby and the decision to suspend the legislation.
“I don’t think he is looking at it from a political standpoint as much as he is looking at it as a dad,” he said of Eby. “I think getting the social media giants together to come up with a solution is a step in the right direction.”
Business groups were opposed
On Monday, the opposition B.C. United called for a pause to Bill 12, citing potential “serious legal and economic consequences for local businesses.”
Opposition Leader Kevin Falcon said in a statement that his party pushed Eby’s government to change course, noting the legislation’s vague language on who the province can sue “would have had severe unintended consequences” for local businesses and the economy.
“The government’s latest retreat is not only a win for the business community but for every British Columbian who values fairness and clarity in the law,” Falcon said.
B.C. United Leader Kevin Falcon says that Bill 12 could have had unintended consequences. (Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press)
The Greater Vancouver Board of Trade said they are pleased to see the legislation put on hold, given the “potential ramifications” of the proposal’s “expansive interpretation.”
“We hope that the government chooses not to pursue Bill 12 in the future,” said board president and CEO Bridgitte Anderson in a statement. “Instead, we would welcome the opportunity to work with the government to develop measures that are well-targeted and effective, ensuring they protect British Columbians without causing unintended consequences.”
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