Last year the Canadian government passed a law, the Online News Act, that would require platforms like Google and Meta to pay publishers for linking to their content. Rather than pay up, Meta removed news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada.
“News links and content posted by news publishers and broadcasters in Canada will no longer be viewable by people in Canada,” Meta said.
Months later, Canadian users appear to be doing pretty much fine with a news-less Meta, while publishers have suffered, according to a preprint paper released by The Media Ecosystem Observatory, a collaboration between McGill and the University of Toronto.
“We expected the disappearance of news on Meta platforms to have caused a major shock to the Canadian information ecosystem,” the paper’s authors — Sara Parker, Saewon Park, Zeynep Pehlivan, Alexei Abrahams, Mika Desblancs, Taylor Owen, Jennie Phillips, and Aengus Bridgman — write. But the shock appears to have been one-sided. While “the ban has significantly impacted Canadian news outlets,” the authors write, “Meta has deprived users of the affordance of news sharing without suffering any loss in engagement of their user base.”
Using CrowdTangle, the researchers analyzed six months’ worth of Facebook (not Instagram) posts from 987 Canadian news outlets, 183 non-news pages (belonging to “Canadian federal and provincial politicians, political and advocacy organizations, commentators, and content creators”), and 589 politics-related or local community groups. The posts, published between June 1 and December 31, 2023, allowed the researchers to track engagement before and after the news ban. (Meta will shut CrowdTangle down in August; the Media Ecosystem Observatory is waiting to hear about receiving access to Meta’s planned alternative.)
Here are some of the report’s findings:
The researchers tracked posts from 244 politics-related Facebook groups and 345 local community groups that had been “frequent sharers of Canadian news content.” They found that both the number of posts and engagement with posts after the ban remained largely stable.
“Either news was not all that important in these groups to begin with, or users within the groups identified ways to circumvent the ban and discuss news content,” the authors write.
One method of circumvention: Screenshots.
We observe a dramatic increase in posts containing screenshots of Canadian news stories in the post-ban period. Before the ban, only approximately 19 posts per week featured a screenshot of Canadian news. After the ban, the number of posts with Canadian news screenshots triples to an average of 68 posts per week. This increase in news screenshots after the ban does not correlate with an overall increase in non-news screenshot images, suggesting that the increase in news screenshots is indeed a result of the news ban.
“We saw a pretty wide range of types of news articles [screenshotted] — some from local news sources, but mostly from the bigger national level outlets,” Sara Parker, the paper’s lead author, told me in an email. “Often, people would just share one or two screenshots of the article — so the headline and some key paragraph in the article — but we did see users posting screenshots of the entire article.” The team is looking at screenshots more thoroughly for a follow-up study, Parker noted.
The ban did not seem to have an effect on engagement with influencers’ posts, the researchers found. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Canadian Facebook users aren’t getting more news from influencers, the researchers noted; per the paper, they “may be turning to influencers focused on other countries for their political content,” or Meta could be “suppressing the visibility of news or political content” including influencers’ posts related to those subjects.
After the ban, not surprisingly, Canadian national and local news outlets posted to Facebook much less frequently and started getting much less engagement (defined as reactions, comments, and shares).
“I was surprised — maybe shocked is a better word — by how profoundly the ban affected local news outlets,” Parker told me. “Obviously their engagement rates have decreased significantly, but many outlets have stopped posting [to Facebook and Instagram] entirely.”
“Additional analysis is necessary to identify the circumstances in which Canadian news outlets continue to be engaged with. We observe that some news outlets publish content relevant to non-Canadian audiences, particularly by posting entertainment or sports-related news,” the researchers note. And “a small number of news outlets” weren’t included in the ban, and therefore weren’t blocked.
You can read the report here. The researchers expect to release an expanded report this summer.
MONTREAL – A pair of environmental activists who scaled Montreal’s Jacques Cartier Bridge Tuesday morning will remain detained after being charged with mischief and wilfully resisting or obstructing a peace officer.
Olivier Huard and Jacob Pirro appeared in court Wednesday, along with a third protester.
The third person, Michèle Lavoie, is facing only a mischief charge, in relation to obstructing, interrupting or interfering with the lawful use of property.
Their lawyer, Barbara Bedont, said all three remain detained pending their next court date on Oct. 31 after the prosecution objected to their release.
Huard and Pirro climbed to the top of the bridge early Tuesday as part of a climate protest, leading police to close one of the main access points onto the island for several hours during the morning rush hour.
The groups Last Generation Canada and Antigone Collective took credit for the protest, demanding an end to fossil fuel extraction and denouncing government inaction on climate change.
The groups urged supporters to rally outside the courthouse Wednesday morning.
Bedont, reached by phone, described the prosecutor’s decision to oppose the activists’ release as “incomprehensible.”
“There’s a long history of civil disobedience leading to very positive changes in our society,” she said, adding that her clients were not violent. “This is an important part of a democratic system.”
Laura Sullivan, a spokesperson for Last Generation Canada, reiterated a call for the protesters’ release, and for the federal government to “commit to ending fossil fuels by 2030.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2024.
VANCOUVER – A coalition of Jewish organizations says it is “deeply alarmed” by a rising tide of antisemitism at the University of British Columbia in recent weeks.
A joint statement sent out by six groups, including the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and Canadian Jewish Advocacy, says Jewish staff, students and faculty members at the university have faced “an increasingly hostile environment” since the start of the academic year.
The statement lists incidents such as campus buildings being vandalized with antisemitic slogans, Jewish faculty members who were targeted by a smear campaign, and an anti-Israel student’s club promoting violence and disinformation.
The statement released Wednesday says they are grateful for ongoing conversations with the university’s administration about the “growing threats” targeting the Jewish community, but more urgent actions are needed to address the hatred and harassment.
The university says in a statement that it is working with the RCMP on one act of vandalism that was reported this month at Green College, where slogans were spray-painted on exterior walls and one window was broken.
UBC spokesman Matthew Ramsey says the vandalism is “unacceptable” and contrary to the university’s values, and any community members found to have been involved in this “will face disciplinary action.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2024.
WASHINGTON (AP) — New rules from the White House on the use of artificial intelligence by U.S. national security and spy agencies aim to balance the technology’s immense promise with the need to protect against its risks.
The rules being announced Thursday are designed to ensure that national security agencies can access the latest and most powerful AI while also mitigating its misuse, according to Biden administration officials who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence have been hailed as potentially transformative for a long list of industries and sectors, including military, national security and intelligence. But there are risks to the technology’s use by government, including possibilities it could be harnessed for mass surveillance, cyberattacks or even lethal autonomous devices.
The new policy framework will prohibit certain uses of AI, such as any applications that would violate constitutionally protected civil rights or any system that would automate the deployment of nuclear weapons.
The rules also are designed to promote responsible use of AI by directing national security and spy agencies to use the most advanced systems that also safeguard American values, the officials said.
Other provisions call for improved security of the nation’s computer chip supply chain and direct intelligence agencies to prioritize work to protect the American industry from foreign espionage campaigns.
Officials said the rules are needed not only to ensure that AI is used responsibly but also to encourage the development of new AI systems and see that the U.S. keeps up with China and other rivals also working to harness the technology’s power.
Lethal autonomous drones, which are capable of taking out an enemy at their own discretion, remain a key concern about the military use of AI. Last year, the U.S. issued a declaration calling for international cooperation on setting standards for autonomous drones.
