On June 22, the Canadian Parliament passed Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act. The new law, according to a government news release, “will require the largest digital platforms”—in effect, calling out Facebook, Instagram, and Google without naming them—“to bargain fairly with Canadian news businesses for the use of their news content.” The intent here is to even out the skewed market imbalance between Canadian journalism and Big Tech platforms, many of which have offered distribution pathways and occasional payment agreements to digital news sites while also sapping them of revenue from native advertising—a sector dominated by those very corporations.
