Speaker 1: Facebook does not care about you, does not care about
Speaker 1: anyone who uses the service. It only cares about it's
Speaker 1: bottom line.
Speaker 2: There are no Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridge Tad and this
Speaker 2: is there are no Girls on the Internet. It's been
Speaker 2: a deadly summer of historic wildfires in Canada. This year's
Speaker 2: wildfire season has seen the most areas burned in Canada's
Speaker 2: recorded history. And you'd think that during an emergency like
Speaker 2: deadly wildfires, people would be able to turn to social
Speaker 2: media platforms to stay informed on critical information. After all,
Speaker 2: one in four Canadians get their news from social media. However,
Speaker 2: that is not the case, because when you go to
Speaker 2: a news outlets Facebook or Instagram page, or try to
Speaker 2: share a link about evacuations right now, it's all blanked out.
Speaker 2: That's because Facebook has pulled news content in Canada, an
Speaker 2: objection to the Online News Act, which would require social
Speaker 2: media platforms to pay news outlets.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: This is a move.
Speaker 2: Grounded in stunning cruelty and abdication of responsibility at a
Speaker 2: time of crisis, and it really shows exactly what companies
Speaker 2: like Facebook think of the people who use their platforms
Speaker 2: that make them rich. Indigenous communities in Canada have been
Speaker 2: the most deeply impacted by the wildfires. The Union of
Speaker 2: British Columbian Indian Chiefs has called on Facebook to lift
Speaker 2: its ban on sharing local news as wildfires rage. Because
Speaker 2: folks in smaller communities are dependent on social media to
Speaker 2: get critical news updates. Grand Chief Stuart Phillips said social
Speaker 2: media has become a community organizing tool that has relied
Speaker 2: upon easy infrastructure for sharing news. We don't know the
Speaker 2: long lasting effect yet, but we already know that not
Speaker 2: being able to share news has communities disoriented and puts
Speaker 2: lives at risk. Government emergency websites and text notification warnings
Speaker 2: just don't have the same reach and up to date
Speaker 2: information as social media does, and he's right. People have
Speaker 2: been trying to sort out workarounds like taking screenshots of
Speaker 2: images from news articles about evacuation and wildfire spread to
Speaker 2: post those on Facebook in an attempt to just try
Speaker 2: to keep their communities safe and informed. So why is
Speaker 2: Facebook doing this money? Facebook is putting profit over people's
Speaker 2: lives and Paris Marx, hosts of the podcast Tech Won't
Speaker 2: Save Us, An editor of The Disconnect tech newsletter who
Speaker 2: lives in Montreal says this is not the first time
Speaker 2: that a tech company has shown just how little it
Speaker 2: cares about the people.
Speaker 3: Who use it.
Speaker 1: It's massive, Like looking at these fires, it's you know,
Speaker 1: you can't say that like climate change is not happening,
Speaker 1: and that climate change is not making the natural disasters
Speaker 1: that Canada is experiencing that many other countries are experiencing,
Speaker 1: you know, making it worse right, and seeing all of
Speaker 1: this happen like it started a few months ago when
Speaker 1: we really early fire season, and then it's kind of
Speaker 1: been like, you know, usually we might have a lot
Speaker 1: of fires in British Columbia one year, or might have
Speaker 1: a lot of fires in Alberta another year. But this
Speaker 1: year it was kind of like we had a ton
Speaker 1: of fires in British Columbia, a ton in Alberta, a
Speaker 1: ton in Quebec, a ton in Ontario, a ton of
Speaker 1: Nova Scotia. It was just like all over the place.
Speaker 1: And it's still going right now. Northwest Territories, which is
Speaker 1: one of the northern territories in Canada, you know, two
Speaker 1: thirds of the population of that territory has been evacuated
Speaker 1: because of wildfires. And in British Columbia, Colowna, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a popular kind of tourist vacation spot and
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of like a place that's in
Speaker 1: you know, a nice natural area. Part of it has
Speaker 1: been evacuated and part of it is under evacuation order.
Speaker 1: So you know, what we're experiencing with the wildfires this
Speaker 1: year is just shockingly bad and it is kind of
Speaker 1: a preview of where things are going and how the
Speaker 1: effects of climate change. You know, I remember when I
Speaker 1: was younger, younger is in like, you know, ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, there would be like climate deniers and
Speaker 1: conservative politicians who would say, you know, climate change might
Speaker 1: be bad, it might be happening, but it's going to
Speaker 1: be okay for Canada because you know, we're a northern
Speaker 1: country and you know, we're going to have more arable
Speaker 1: land as a result, so we're going to be able
Speaker 1: to feed the world and blah blah blah. You know,
Speaker 1: people who are in the pocket of the fossil fuel
Speaker 1: industry and stuff that they never talked about how the
Speaker 1: wildfires are going to get worse, and how the hurricanes
Speaker 1: are going to get worse, and how we're going to
Speaker 1: get more flooding, and so we see all of that
Speaker 1: and then, as you say, as all of that is
Speaker 1: happening this summer, we have Meta, which is kind of
Speaker 1: going to war against the new government regulation that is
Speaker 1: similar to the regulations that passed in Australia a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago that would expect you know, Facebook, Instagram
Speaker 1: and Google to be paying money to news publishers because
Speaker 1: you know, they have the news on their platforms, they're
Speaker 1: running ads against that news people don't always click through
Speaker 1: to read the articles, but are still commenting on them
Speaker 1: and things like that on these platforms, and so there's
Speaker 1: a few that you know, we can debate whether that
Speaker 1: is right or wrong, but that these platforms should be
Speaker 1: paying a certain degree to support these news publications that
Speaker 1: are going through a really difficult time right now because
Speaker 1: this is a public good and these companies have taken
Speaker 1: all the digital ad dollars that you know, these news
Speaker 1: companies might have gotten otherwise. Right, So that is all happening,
Speaker 1: and that has basically meant that because Meta has cut
Speaker 1: off access to news on its platforms, then you know,
Speaker 1: all of these emergencies are happening and so people can't
Speaker 1: share what the news media is writing about all of
Speaker 1: these natural disasters, about the evacuations that are happening in
Speaker 1: the Northwest territories. And when Meta is presented with this
Speaker 1: information and is presented with the fact that people are
Speaker 1: just taking screenshots of news articles and sharing them on
Speaker 1: social media because they can't share the article itself to
Speaker 1: make sure that their friends and family are informed about
Speaker 1: what's going on, Meta says, well, the government can still
Speaker 1: post updates, and people on the platform actually report that
Speaker 1: they're happier now that we have taken news off. And
Speaker 1: I think the final thing I would say, because I
Speaker 1: know I've been talking for a little while, is just
Speaker 1: that you know, Meta is saying all this, Meta is
Speaker 1: blocking news on its platforms, But the reality is that
Speaker 1: the law is not even enforced yet. The law is
Speaker 1: not going to be enforced for another few months. But
Speaker 1: Meta is still doing this and still won't allow news
Speaker 1: to go back on the platform, even in this moment
Speaker 1: where there's a ton of natural disasters happening in the country.
Speaker 2: So I think that last point is really key. The
Speaker 2: law that Facebook objects to is not even an effect
Speaker 2: or being enforced right now, so Facebook could continue allowing
Speaker 2: news on their platforms, especially given that that we're in
Speaker 2: this emergency situation in Canada but they aren't. So it
Speaker 2: just feels to me like Facebook is putting profit and
Speaker 2: power and like dick swinging for lack of a better word,
Speaker 2: over people's actual safety and lives, the lives.
Speaker 3: Of their users.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you know, it's undeniable, and they've done that many times.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear, this is not a new thing. You know,
Speaker 1: if you think back to the genocides and memr if
Speaker 1: you think about all the revelations about you know, what
Speaker 1: they've been doing around the world, and how sure they
Speaker 1: might be interested in content moderation in places like the
Speaker 1: United States or Canada or the UK or whatever, where
Speaker 1: they have a lot of users and where the media
Speaker 1: is really paying attention if something goes wrong, but in
Speaker 1: many other parts of the world, they really don't care
Speaker 1: nearly as much. And there's a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: human tragedy that results from the fact that Facebook does
Speaker 1: not really care about what happens on its platform. And
Speaker 1: so what we're seeing right now, as you say, is
Speaker 1: that this law is not actually enforce So if Meta
Speaker 1: did allow news on its platform right now, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to pay news publishers because the government is not
Speaker 1: actually requiring this to happen. And I think that one
Speaker 1: of the really notable things is that in the Australian case,
Speaker 1: Meta did pull news off of Facebook because it was
Speaker 1: going to be required to pay, and that didn't take
Speaker 1: very long for Meta to reverse course and to start
Speaker 1: working through this government process to make these deals with
Speaker 1: the news publishers and to abide by the law. But
Speaker 1: in this case, a couple of years later, Meta is
Speaker 1: really not willing to do that in the way that
Speaker 1: it was before. And I think that part of that
Speaker 1: is because Meta's kind of view on news and view
Speaker 1: of how its platform should work has shifted over that time.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, two years ago or whatever,
Speaker 1: there was a much greater argument that maybe news was
Speaker 1: something that Meta needed to have on its platforms to
Speaker 1: keep people engaged and to keep people interested. But I
Speaker 1: think now we've arrived at a point where Meta sees
Speaker 1: news as more of a liability that can kind of
Speaker 1: get people engaged in conversations and things like that that
Speaker 1: are more extreme or for whatever reason, kind of result
Speaker 1: in these discussions that it doesn't like on the platform.
Speaker 1: And it also feels that it doesn't make enough money
Speaker 1: to justify having that on the platform. So, as I said,
Speaker 1: one of the things that's saying now that it's taken
Speaker 1: news off in Canada is that it says that users
Speaker 1: are actually happier not having news on the platform. And
Speaker 1: this is not just about Canada, but about saying to
Speaker 1: all the other jurisdictions that are looking at Canada and
Speaker 1: trying to think about following suit with their own version
Speaker 1: of this, places like California, New Zealand and other places
Speaker 1: around the world, that don't you dare try this, because
Speaker 1: we'll do the same thing in your jurisdiction too.
Speaker 2: There was a time that when you logged into Facebook,
Speaker 2: the thing that you scrolled was called the news feed,
Speaker 2: and it was full of news. But in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: social media platforms were increasingly scrutinized for a failure to
Speaker 2: keep misleading and an accurate news off of their platforms.
Speaker 2: Two years later, Facebook changed its algorithm and announced that
Speaker 2: we'd see twenty percent less news prioritize againstead content from
Speaker 2: your friends and family. This move hurt news publishers, who
Speaker 2: up until then had been getting about ten percent of
Speaker 2: their traffic from Facebook alone had been jumping through hoops
Speaker 2: that Facebook set, like the infamous pivot to video that
Speaker 2: ended up being based on Facebook artificially inflating video metrics
Speaker 2: to make newsrooms think that all of us really wanted
Speaker 2: to be watching video instead of reading text. Newsrooms had
Speaker 2: built up and staffed entire strategies around what ultimately ended
Speaker 2: up being a lie. In twenty nineteen, Facebook brought on
Speaker 2: former CNN news anchor Campbell Brown to head up news
Speaker 2: partnerships and start a dedicated newstab that the company said
Speaker 2: would be curated by journalists, but according to a report
Speaker 2: from The Australian, one of Campbell Brown's first orders of
Speaker 2: business was gathering news publishers in a meeting where she
Speaker 2: allegedly told them that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn't care
Speaker 2: about news and didn't want to rehash any of how
Speaker 2: Facebook had wrecked all of their strategies, and that if
Speaker 2: their outlets didn't partner with Facebook they would quote die
Speaker 2: in hospice. So the outlets did, and Facebook started paying
Speaker 2: news outlets. According to a report from Facebook spent one
Speaker 2: hundred and five million dollars in three year content deals
Speaker 2: for news, plus another ninety million for news videos, including
Speaker 2: ten million for The Wall Street Journal, twenty million for
Speaker 2: The New York Times, and three million for CNN. Today,
Speaker 2: Facebook seems to see news as more trouble than it's worth.
Speaker 2: They stopped paying news publishers last summer. And it's not
Speaker 2: just Facebook. Elon Musk has floated removing headlines from news
Speaker 2: articles shared on Twitter, a move that would surely make
Speaker 2: the platform less friendly to news. This is yet another
Speaker 2: example of the rocky and sometimes opaque relationship that news
Speaker 2: publishers have had with social media platforms, where news outlets
Speaker 2: are ostensibly meant to be writing truthfully about these platforms,
Speaker 2: but also depend on those platforms for traffic and reach.
Speaker 2: What do you think caused that shift where Facebook was like, actually,
Speaker 2: maybe we don't want to be in the news game,
Speaker 2: because I know that there was a time, at least
Speaker 2: in the United States where Facebook was prioritizing news in
Speaker 2: their feats. It was like you're going to see news.
Speaker 2: You're going to see less like your friends and family
Speaker 2: and like cat pictures or whatever, and more news. Do
Speaker 2: you have any sense of what caused that shift?
Speaker 1: There's just been a general kind of shift in the
Speaker 1: past few years where meta has been facing kind of
Speaker 1: the backlash of having news on its platforms. There was
Speaker 1: decisions around news much more often than it did in
Speaker 1: the past. So when it came to like COVID misinformation,
Speaker 1: it had to put out a policy on that and
Speaker 1: make a decision around what it was going to do,
Speaker 1: and that kind of still pissed everyone off. Right. Liberals
Speaker 1: were still angry with it because things were still getting through.
Speaker 1: Conservatives were angry because all of a sudden, they're kind
Speaker 1: of vaccine skeptic stuff and anti vax stuff was getting
Speaker 1: caught up in it, right, And then you look at
Speaker 1: Trump and you know, what are they doing with Trump?
Speaker 1: Are they going to allow him on or not? And
Speaker 1: there was recent reporting from the Washington Post that after
Speaker 1: Elon Musk took over Twitter, Meta was actually moving forward
Speaker 1: with a ban on political advertising, I believe, and decided
Speaker 1: to not move forward with that because you know, the
Speaker 1: decisions that Musk made around quote unquote free speech and
Speaker 1: allowing right wing commentary onto the platform with something that
Speaker 1: has now affected other platforms as well, and their decisions
Speaker 1: around how content is going to work. So that's not
Speaker 1: a full answer to what you're saying, but I think
Speaker 1: that it just sees news as not something that's essential
Speaker 1: to what it's doing anymore, and that there are other
Speaker 1: ways to get people engaged and get people looking at
Speaker 1: ads where it doesn't need that sort of content.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break at our back as Canada
Speaker 2: burns from wildfires. Here in the States, California is also
Speaker 2: experiencing extreme weather like storms, droughts, and bloods, and similarly,
Speaker 2: in California, the California Journalism Preservation Act would have require
Speaker 2: tech platforms like Facebook and Instagram to give a cut
Speaker 2: up to seventy percent of revenue made on advertising news
Speaker 2: content to local newsrooms. Both Facebook and Google have threatened
Speaker 2: a pulled news content in California if that legislation is passed.
Speaker 2: In Australia, after Facebook did temporarily remove news content back
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty one, eventually Facebook and Google caved and
Speaker 2: worked out deals to pay news publishers. Bill Gruskin, a
Speaker 2: professor at Columbia University School of Journalism who has studied
Speaker 2: the Australia law, says that it generated nearly one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty million dollars for news organizations and that the
Speaker 2: Australian Broadcasting Corporation was able to hire fifty new journalists
Speaker 2: in underserved parts of the country because of that law. Now,
Speaker 2: to be clear, I don't necessarily think that deals like
Speaker 2: these are going to save journalism. It's much more complicated
Speaker 2: than that. But I do think the people who run
Speaker 2: big tech platforms, who have made so much money from news,
Speaker 2: should be invested in supporting a healthy journalistic landscape. I
Speaker 2: do think that what we're seeing now is Facebook trying
Speaker 2: to really send a signal to other countries, like the
Speaker 2: similar legislation in California. I think this is meant to
Speaker 2: really be a signal globally, like, do not tell us
Speaker 2: that we have to pay you, we'll pull out so
Speaker 2: fast and you don't want that. Like, I think they're
Speaker 2: just trying to grandstand a little bit and sort of flex.
Speaker 1: A little bit absolutely, and they can flex, right, because
Speaker 1: let's be real that a lot of our governments have
Speaker 1: become very reliant on Facebook and these other social media
Speaker 1: platforms in order to communicate with their citizens, their residents,
Speaker 1: what have you, right, the people who they want to
Speaker 1: communicate with, and that means that they don't always have
Speaker 1: the channels to reach people directly. Because there has been
Speaker 1: a viewer or an acceptance that the way that we
Speaker 1: are going to communicate with people is through these social
Speaker 1: media platforms and that has just been kind of accepted
Speaker 1: for the past decade or so, right, and the media
Speaker 1: is in that camp as well, where the media, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly there's been like a shift to newsletters in the
Speaker 1: past few years and stuff like that, but in general,
Speaker 1: the media still reaches people through social media, or at
Speaker 1: least reaches a lot of people that way. You know,
Speaker 1: it's overstated how much traffic Twitter sends to media websites,
Speaker 1: but it is the case that Facebook still sends or
Speaker 1: you know, has traditionally still sent a lot of traffic
Speaker 1: to news and they have depended on that traffic. And
Speaker 1: so I don't think the reality is that they can't
Speaker 1: switch away from that, but that it will be an
Speaker 1: adjustment and there will be kind of a difficult period
Speaker 1: if everything just gets turned off and government and media
Speaker 1: were not kind of preparing for that having to happen
Speaker 1: and haven't set up alternatives ahead of time. One of
Speaker 1: the things that we did see in Australia, and again
Speaker 1: like we didn't have a ton of time to actually
Speaker 1: judge the long term impacts but that when news was
Speaker 1: removed from Facebook, these like these publishers were able to adjust,
Speaker 1: and I believe it was I can't remember it was
Speaker 1: Australia or Spain, actually sorry, because Spain had a similar
Speaker 1: thing that they did as well, and Google News had
Speaker 1: blocked like News in Spain for a while and publishers
Speaker 1: did kind of you know, we're able to make up
Speaker 1: the difference there. So I think that that's just to say.
Speaker 1: I think that there are examples where you know, these
Speaker 1: publishers and the governments can and their reliance on these
Speaker 1: social media platforms and don't need to be so reliant
Speaker 1: on them. But that takes real work and you know,
Speaker 1: a real commitment to do that, and I haven't really
Speaker 1: seen that commitment kind of in practice in the past
Speaker 1: few years. And it seems rather that they would prefer
Speaker 1: to continue to be reliant on these platforms but also
Speaker 1: have them kind of abide by these regulations. And theoretically
Speaker 1: these companies should be abiding by regulations. If a sovereign
Speaker 1: government decides that Facebook or Google or whatever should be
Speaker 1: abiding by certain regulations in their country, I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to say that, yeah, they should probably be doing that,
Speaker 1: because I you know, especially in a democratic country like
Speaker 1: the ones that we live in, I think we would
Speaker 1: expect that the government, which is ultimately the representative of
Speaker 1: the public, should be having the final say, not some
Speaker 1: major corporation that's led basically dictatorially by Mark Zuckerberg, like
Speaker 1: news media.
Speaker 2: Governments have had a complicated relationship with social media platforms
Speaker 2: because governments need social media to be able to communicate
Speaker 2: with people, but governments are also ostensibly meant to be
Speaker 2: regulating these platforms and keeping them from harming us. And
Speaker 2: when emergencies like Canada's wildfires happen, like it or not,
Speaker 2: a lot of people are getting critical information from social media,
Speaker 2: and it reveals this problem of what happens when social
Speaker 2: media platforms, in the whims of the tech billionaires who
Speaker 2: run them, become such a big part of the infrastructure
Speaker 2: of modern society. In a recent piece for The New Yorker,
Speaker 2: Ronan Pharaoh makes clear just how much of the infrastructure
Speaker 2: of public and civic life is being left up to
Speaker 2: the whims of individual tech leaders like El Writing in
Speaker 2: the past twenty years against a backdrop of crumbling infrastructure
Speaker 2: and declining trust and institutions, must have sought out business
Speaker 2: opportunities in crucial areas where after decades of privatization, the
Speaker 2: state has receded. The government is now reliant on him,
Speaker 2: but struggles to respond to his risk taking, brinksmanship and caprice.
Speaker 2: I really feel like this is a parable of what
Speaker 2: happens when governments become so reliant on privately owned social
Speaker 2: media platforms and platforms that are run by people who
Speaker 2: have made it clear time and time again they don't
Speaker 2: really care about people, They don't really care about anything
Speaker 2: other than profit and power. What happens when governments become
Speaker 2: so reliant on those platforms to inform their citizenry, especially
Speaker 2: during times of emergency or harm.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and like it's not just platforms, right, Like we
Speaker 1: see it with Google and Facebook, et cetera. And we've
Speaker 1: seen it with Twitter to a certain new where some
Speaker 1: media companies were leaving the platform after Elon Musk took
Speaker 1: over and started really kind of going after certain media
Speaker 1: companies like the CBC in Canada and they decided not
Speaker 1: to post on the platform for a while. And certainly
Speaker 1: there have been other examples of that, but you know,
Speaker 1: more recently, we've seen reporting in the New York Times
Speaker 1: and the New Yorker about the power that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: wields through Starlink and through his ownership of SpaceX, and
Speaker 1: through the ownership of the largest public charging or you know,
Speaker 1: the largest electric vehicle charging network in the United States,
Speaker 1: and these things were really downplayed, I think for a
Speaker 1: long time the fact that Elon Musk was basically controlling
Speaker 1: the US rocket launch infrastructure and has really taken control
Speaker 1: of that and is kind of the primary means that
Speaker 1: the United States and many other countries get things into
Speaker 1: space now because of SpaceX rockets. He also controls, you know,
Speaker 1: what is at almost half of the satellites that are
Speaker 1: active in orbit right now, which is just crazy to
Speaker 1: even think about, like that one person or one company
Speaker 1: controls that much of what is in outer space and
Speaker 1: has basically been given carte blanche to continue launching more
Speaker 1: satellites by US regulators. And then, of course, on top
Speaker 1: of that, you know, as we're making this transition to
Speaker 1: electric vehicles, and again we can debate whether that's the
Speaker 1: best way to be doing it or whatever. He owns
Speaker 1: the major charging network through his superchargers that he has
Speaker 1: been allowed to build out in a way that's like
Speaker 1: very different from how automakers can't really own gas stations
Speaker 1: or don't traditionally own gas stations. And now we're seeing
Speaker 1: that after the other automakers tried to collaborate on their
Speaker 1: own charging standard that was separate from Tesla's because Tesla
Speaker 1: has a proprietary standard, that many of these automakers in
Speaker 1: the United States are just adopting Tesla's standard because you know,
Speaker 1: Elon must controls so many chargers already and it's really
Speaker 1: difficult for them to catch up.
Speaker 2: You had that piece that was called something like Elon
Speaker 2: Musks should not be put in charge of the night sky.
Speaker 2: People think like just thinking about and I think in
Speaker 2: the Ronan therapy so often Rodan Pharaoh's reporting is like,
Speaker 2: this guy is a bad guy. Let me show you
Speaker 2: all the things that he's done. But in that piece
Speaker 2: on Elon Musk, what I really took away from it
Speaker 2: was exactly what you said was that it's not just
Speaker 2: that Elon Musk is a bad guy.
Speaker 1: It's that we have given we have.
Speaker 2: Such little infrastructure that having one bad guy who is
Speaker 2: not great at decision making be in charge of it,
Speaker 2: that's not really just on him. It's the it's on
Speaker 2: our governments to allow that to be the standard.
Speaker 1: Oh totally. Like it's a complete failure of government right
Speaker 1: to allow this to happen. And like it's not like
Speaker 1: they stood back and this just happened and they didn't
Speaker 1: notice it. Like they actively encouraged Elon Musk to amass
Speaker 1: this much power. You know, the media was involved in
Speaker 1: that as well. There were many other kind of you know,
Speaker 1: players who helped to kind of build Elon Musk into
Speaker 1: the figure that he is. But you know, the United
Speaker 1: States made an explicit decision to move forward with the
Speaker 1: privatization of the space program and to de emphasize NASA's
Speaker 1: role within that because it was building a new rocket
Speaker 1: and the George W. Bush administration stopped it, and the
Speaker 1: Obama administration continued the move toward or excuse me, the
Speaker 1: George W. Bush administration ended the Space Shuttle program or
Speaker 1: set a date for it to end. The Obama administration
Speaker 1: ended the work that NASA was doing on a new
Speaker 1: kind of rocket launch capability and instead said we're going
Speaker 1: to rely on the private sector to do this. And
Speaker 1: that is part of what allowed this transition to SpaceX
Speaker 1: and to reliance on Elon Musk to happen. Then, of course,
Speaker 1: regulators allowed him to put all those satellites in the sky,
Speaker 1: you know, American regulators deciding that an American company can
Speaker 1: put all of these satellites up that are effectively going
Speaker 1: to block a lot of other countries from doing something
Speaker 1: similar instead of like an international body having to approve
Speaker 1: something like this. And then on top of all that,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, all of the investment and kind
Speaker 1: of subsidies that he received with Tesla and to build
Speaker 1: that out. So we have this really serious problem where
Speaker 1: the government for many decades has been slowly kind of
Speaker 1: reducing state capacity, reducing what it does and leaving that
Speaker 1: to the private sector. And that has allowed someone like
Speaker 1: Elon Musk to be in this position of power that
Speaker 1: he's in. And of course we talk about Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: but like we're talking about with Meta, and like we're
Speaker 1: talking about with all these other companies, they have assumed
Speaker 1: real positions of power, real kind of bottlenecks around society
Speaker 1: and throughout the economy, and that has a lot of
Speaker 1: serious impacts on you know, on the wider public.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's such a good point that it's really
Speaker 2: not like I was interested to talk to you about
Speaker 2: Meta and the Canadian news media ecosystem. But it's really
Speaker 2: not about the one company Meta or the one company
Speaker 2: Twitter or Elon Musk. I wonder, like, do you think
Speaker 2: that these US based companies should have such an impact global?
Speaker 2: Like what does it say Is it fair that like
Speaker 2: the US based company Meta can have such a big
Speaker 2: impact on Canada's news media ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I obviously don't. Yeah, yeah, And I feel like
Speaker 1: I can sometimes get criticized for this as well, right,
Speaker 1: because one of the things that I try to point
Speaker 1: out sometimes is that, like, if you're an American and
Speaker 1: you're in the United States, maybe it doesn't seem so
Speaker 1: egregious that there are all these large American companies that
Speaker 1: have such a significant role in so many countries around
Speaker 1: the world. Amazon, Google, Facebook, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But when you're not in the United States, it feels
Speaker 1: like you have very little control over your own society
Speaker 1: and your own economy and what is going on in it.
Speaker 1: When you're always at the whims of these major companies
Speaker 1: that are foreign owned and controlled, and when your governments
Speaker 1: try to regulate them, like in the case of what
Speaker 1: the Canadian government is doing now with Meta and Google.
Speaker 1: They basically fight these regulations tooth and nail and try
Speaker 1: to ensure that they don't have to you know, follow
Speaker 1: through on it. And I would argue that this was
Speaker 1: you know, if we go back to like the nineties,
Speaker 1: when the Internet is being privatized, the message that we
Speaker 1: have is that as the Internet is going global, and
Speaker 1: as these companies are going global, it's bringing like democracy
Speaker 1: and freedom and economic opportunity to everybody. And I push
Speaker 1: back on that, and I would say, like, we never
Speaker 1: really got those things, you know, to a large degree,
Speaker 1: but what we did get was the expansion of like
Speaker 1: American control and American power through these companies and through
Speaker 1: the expansion of internet infrastructure. And this is like the
Speaker 1: political economy piece that is often not brought into the
Speaker 1: critiques of like the tech industry and it's kind of
Speaker 1: connections to government, right because it was presenting itself as
Speaker 1: separate from government and like, you know, oppositional to government.
Speaker 1: And there are there are ways that that is true,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, it's you know, it is
Speaker 1: helping to kind of expand the influence of the American
Speaker 1: government around the world, and that ensures that once you
Speaker 1: have kind of free flows of capital, once you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to put kind of protectionist measures on your own economy,
Speaker 1: it's pretty much impossible for you to create effective competitors
Speaker 1: to these large American companies that you know, we're able
Speaker 1: to corner these markets well before, you know, any kind
Speaker 1: of domestic company was able to do anything similar, and
Speaker 1: they can never really reach the scale that an American
Speaker 1: company can because it starts in such like a large
Speaker 1: market to do these sorts of things, right. And so
Speaker 1: part of the reason that we're finally starting to see
Speaker 1: a shift away from you know, the US focus on
Speaker 1: you know, deregulation and allowing these tech companies to do
Speaker 1: whatever they want is that Chinese tech companies are finally
Speaker 1: kind of competing with them and potentially trying to you know,
Speaker 1: benefit from this infrastructure that they set up. And now
Speaker 1: we see America moving forward with protectionist measures after so
Speaker 1: many years of saying no, like everything should be free
Speaker 1: and open and whatever, right, but now they want to
Speaker 1: stop the Chinese companies from moving into the space that
Speaker 1: American tech companies occupy. And so that's part of the
Speaker 1: reason why we see these.
Speaker 3: Shifts more after a quick break let's get right back
Speaker 3: into it.
Speaker 2: US run platforms like Facebook, Amazon, and Google have had
Speaker 2: such a big hand in shaping the entire world, and increasingly,
Speaker 2: I think lawmakers are interested in keeping it that way,
Speaker 2: a kind of digital tech enabled colonialism. It's so hard
Speaker 2: for me to follow the conversation between lawmakers around TikTok,
Speaker 2: where it's just so obvious to me that, like, what
Speaker 2: they actually want is for US owned big tech companies
Speaker 2: to be the only game in town. They don't want,
Speaker 2: Like they can talk all their talk about data privacy
Speaker 2: and national security, but I just it just seems so
Speaker 2: obvious to me that what they're actually saying is, like,
Speaker 2: we want it to be American companies. It's okay if
Speaker 2: if Amazon and Facebook and Google and Twitter are the
Speaker 2: ones who are doing it, but we want to make
Speaker 2: sure that it's America exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: Like, you know, it's bad if TikTok steals your data
Speaker 1: and content moderates in a way that the American government
Speaker 1: doesn't like or whatever, But if Facebook is doing it,
Speaker 1: you know, in China or anywhere else around the world,
Speaker 1: it's completely okay or any of these other American companies, right,
Speaker 1: Because what's important is the continued dominance of American tech
Speaker 1: companies and ensuring that Chinese tech companies cannot move into
Speaker 1: the American market, but ideally not globally as well, and
Speaker 1: are confined to the Chinese market where, you know, the
Speaker 1: Chinese government has successfully put in protectionist measures, again not
Speaker 1: just for economic reasons, but also for kind of political reasons, right,
Speaker 1: let's be clear about that. But it also ensured that
Speaker 1: they were able to actually build a domestic tech industry
Speaker 1: in a way that many other countries have not been
Speaker 1: able to do because their companies were protected from competition
Speaker 1: from foreign American giants that would have just kind of
Speaker 1: eaten up their market share and not allowed them to
Speaker 1: kind of build up their own domestic capacities.
Speaker 2: There's a kind of libertarian attitude that bubbles up in
Speaker 2: conversations about social media platforms blocking news in Canada. One
Speaker 2: that posits that this is all the Canadian government's fault
Speaker 2: and that the government has no place regulating a private
Speaker 2: company like Facebook and should have just stayed out of it,
Speaker 2: or describing the law that forces social media platforms to
Speaker 2: pay for news as a kind of government enforced link tax.
Speaker 2: Paris says that these arguments are all rooted in the
Speaker 2: idea that tech companies should basically be able to do
Speaker 2: whatever the heck they want with no government oversight or consequences.
Speaker 1: I think pernicious narrative that's happening in Canada right now,
Speaker 1: and it's a good reflection of, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: these general narratives that we have around the tech industry
Speaker 1: and critique of the tech industry that we see in
Speaker 1: the United States that are much more kind of libertarian focused,
Speaker 1: right that kind of say it's it's illegitimate almost for
Speaker 1: the government to try to regulate these tech companies because
Speaker 1: you know, there are these longstanding narratives that are associated
Speaker 1: with the tech industry that the government is bad and
Speaker 1: even though the companies are bad, the companies are not
Speaker 1: as bad as like government, right because government is like
Speaker 1: the ultimate evil. And so I think what we see
Speaker 1: in Canada right now is that there is there are
Speaker 1: different ways to look at these laws that the government
Speaker 1: is trying to enforce against Meta and against Google, and
Speaker 1: I'm critical of them because I don't like the idea
Speaker 1: that the news media is going to be tied to
Speaker 1: Google and Facebook and have revenue that is coming from them.
Speaker 1: Because I think that creates an incentive not to want
Speaker 1: to hold these companies to account for what they're doing, right,
Speaker 1: And it also makes them dependent on foreign companies that
Speaker 1: you know, anything could happen to them in the coming years,
Speaker 1: and I think we would want them to kind of
Speaker 1: be dismantled to a certain degree, But this creates an
Speaker 1: incentive not to have that happen because you're setting up
Speaker 1: this revenue stream. Whereas the other form of critique, and
Speaker 1: the one that I would say is more dominant, is
Speaker 1: for people to say, actually, it's bad that the government
Speaker 1: is moving into this space at all, is trying to
Speaker 1: regulate these foreign tech companies, and is doing so with
Speaker 1: and I would say that these are very disingenuous arguments.
Speaker 1: With a link tax, right, which is against the fundamental
Speaker 1: nature of the very internet. You can't tax a link
Speaker 1: because that's essential to how the Internet works. And I
Speaker 1: think ultimately, like you know, you can certainly read the
Speaker 1: bill in a way where it looks like a link tax,
Speaker 1: but I think that the actual goal of what the
Speaker 1: government is trying to achieve is not that at all,
Speaker 1: and they've been very clear about it. But I think
Speaker 1: that you get these disingenuous arguments that are very beneficial
Speaker 1: to the tech companies, but that are laundered through particular
Speaker 1: experts who are at arm's length from the tech companies
Speaker 1: and who would even say that they are critical of
Speaker 1: the tech companies, but are ultimately kind of forwarding arguments
Speaker 1: that are in the tech company's favor even though they
Speaker 1: act like they are opponents of the tech companies. And
Speaker 1: that's why we see that whenever stories about this Canadian
Speaker 1: news bill come up, you have a lot of people
Speaker 1: replying to it saying, actually, this is the government's fault,
Speaker 1: not meta's fault, that there's no news on these platforms,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I'm sorry, but you have taken the
Speaker 1: complete wrong message from the criticism of these companies.
Speaker 2: So that's something that truthfully has created struggle for me
Speaker 2: on how to thoughtfully cover this issue because it does
Speaker 2: seem like an issue that it's the government's fault, but
Speaker 2: also the tech companies are at fault. It's difficult to
Speaker 2: cover it in a way that is thoughtful and tells
Speaker 2: the whole story. Have you found that too, because of
Speaker 2: all of these different talking points, the blame being put
Speaker 2: on the government in a way that's laundering the message
Speaker 2: for tech companies, and it makes it kind of difficult
Speaker 2: to have a thoughtful conversation about what's actually happening.
Speaker 1: I think the difficulty is that we always seem to
Speaker 1: want to try to narrow these things down into like
Speaker 1: very simple narratives that everyone can understand and that like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's not much complexity to it. But the
Speaker 1: reality is that all of these things are very complex,
Speaker 1: right if you actually dig into the details. And so
Speaker 1: it's easy just to say, oh, the government is bad,
Speaker 1: you know, we shouldn't be doing this, or to say
Speaker 1: the tech companies are bad and we should be setting
Speaker 1: up this framework where they need to support the news
Speaker 1: media companies. And let's be clear, like Canadian news media
Speaker 1: companies in many cases suck. They're really terrible because of
Speaker 1: like the legacy of just you know, decades of funding
Speaker 1: difficulties and mergers. And you know what, our biggest newspaper
Speaker 1: chain is owned by a US hedge fund right now,
Speaker 1: so you know that they are not actually incentivized to
Speaker 1: provide good journalism. It just creates a bunch of right
Speaker 1: wing newspapers that like you know, are not really interested
Speaker 1: in in providing good journalism to Canadians, not to say
Speaker 1: that the journalists working there are are not doing their
Speaker 1: best in a really difficult situation, right, And so I
Speaker 1: think that it's it's easy to like take those kind
Speaker 1: of perspectives. It's much more difficult to say, listen, there
Speaker 1: is a serious problem with news media in Canada. We
Speaker 1: do need to address it. It's probably not the best
Speaker 1: way to do it to make these news media companies
Speaker 1: linked to these tech companies and like create a direct
Speaker 1: stream of revenue from them. But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: the government is illegitimate in trying to set up some
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, way to regulate these companies or
Speaker 1: some way to address what's happening in the news media environment.
Speaker 1: It should just be done in a different way so
Speaker 1: you're not creating these kind of really bad potential, you know,
Speaker 1: incentives as a result of it. And so that's more
Speaker 1: difficult to argue because it takes a longer amount of
Speaker 1: time than just saying government bad or metabad. I would
Speaker 1: be more uh, you know, inclined to say metabad and
Speaker 1: then try to expand on why there's more complex But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you can see how that happens.
Speaker 2: Thank God, we are podcasters and like newsletter writers, so
Speaker 2: that we have a little more space than like a
Speaker 2: tweet to boil this down listen. So I know that
Speaker 2: you're not, like I think of tech won save us
Speaker 2: and disconnect blog as like very future forward often like
Speaker 2: you know, prophetic about what's next. I know you're not
Speaker 2: a fortune teller, but what do you think is on
Speaker 2: the horizon for Canada? And like what would you like
Speaker 2: to see as the future of news and media in
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so those are two different things, right, Like, I
Speaker 1: think ultimately what's going to happen is that this framework
Speaker 1: is going to be put into place where the tech
Speaker 1: companies are going to have to pay the news publishers.
Speaker 1: I think it's entirely possible that Meta keeps news off
Speaker 1: of its platforms and just doesn't doesn't engage with this scheme.
Speaker 1: I think it's much more likely that Google finds some
Speaker 1: form of accommodation with the government so that they do
Speaker 1: still make agreements with the news publishers and pay them
Speaker 1: some degree of money to still have news on its platform,
Speaker 1: because I think news is still more important to the
Speaker 1: Google Search engine and the Google News product than news
Speaker 1: is to you know, Facebook and Instagram, right, So I
Speaker 1: think that is ultimately what we're going to see happen.
Speaker 1: And you know, there'll be some people angry about that,
Speaker 1: and I don't particularly like it, and it's not going
Speaker 1: to solve the problems in Canadian media, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's that, right. I think like if we were thinking
Speaker 1: kind of bigger picture about what I would want to
Speaker 1: see is you know, I think that we can recognize
Speaker 1: that the business model of media makes absolutely no sense
Speaker 1: right now and is fundamentally broken. I would like to
Speaker 1: see things like maybe attacks on the revenue of Google
Speaker 1: and Facebook, like attacks on digital ad revenue that then
Speaker 1: goes into a fund that can fund journalism, and then
Speaker 1: maybe the government sets up some kind of funding mechanism
Speaker 1: that could maybe even have some degree of public input
Speaker 1: in order to publicly fund good, investigative and local journalism,
Speaker 1: which is something that we're lacking in Canada right now
Speaker 1: because of the degree of cuts that have happened. And
Speaker 1: I think one thing that is important to remember, as
Speaker 1: I'm sure many of your listeners are, you know, in
Speaker 1: the United States, is that Canada does have a large
Speaker 1: public broadcaster called the CBC. And I think that you know,
Speaker 1: the CBC is decently funded, but when you compare it
Speaker 1: to other public broadcasters in Europe and other parts of
Speaker 1: the world other than the United States, it's not funded
Speaker 1: nearly as well as some of those other ones. And
Speaker 1: I think that one kind of immediate way that we
Speaker 1: can start to heal the glims of journalism in Canada
Speaker 1: and kind of the news deserts that have arisen around
Speaker 1: the country is really to increase the budget of the
Speaker 1: CBC so that they can do more local reporting and
Speaker 1: more investigative journalism, as the private media market has been
Speaker 1: really unable to provide those things. You know, there are
Speaker 1: other bright spots with like independent media and like left
Speaker 1: wing media that have been kind of getting started in Canada,
Speaker 1: but of course they always face funding challenges that are
Speaker 1: even worse in Canada than the United States because the
Speaker 1: market is so much smaller, right, So I think that ultimately,
Speaker 1: because of the nature of the Canadian media market and
Speaker 1: just the way that Canada works, that we do need
Speaker 1: some sort of like a public funding mechanism and a
Speaker 1: government solution if we're ever going to address the problems
Speaker 1: in Canadian media. The government is trying to solve that
Speaker 1: just by you know, connecting news publishers to Google and Facebook,
Speaker 1: and I you know, I'm worried that that's not going
Speaker 1: to produce what we actually want, but it looks like
Speaker 1: that's the direction we're headed for now.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, Facebook just does not care about any of us.
Speaker 2: The wildfires have already killed at least eleven people and
Speaker 2: displaced thousands. If Facebook were to bring back news to
Speaker 2: the platform, even temporarily, just to help mitigate the harm
Speaker 2: of this nightmare, they wouldn't even have to pay anything
Speaker 2: to do it, because the law requiring Facebook to pay
Speaker 2: news publishers is not yet in effect.
Speaker 1: What Meta has decided to do in Canada really shows
Speaker 1: us that this is a platform that does not care
Speaker 1: about its users. It does not really give a damn
Speaker 1: about the people using the platform. You know, users of
Speaker 1: Facebook right now are being evacuated from their homes in
Speaker 1: places in Canada are under threat from wildfires. They are
Speaker 1: finding workarounds to share information through the platforms that they
Speaker 1: are dependent on. Because let's be clear, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of regular people do rely on Facebook and do
Speaker 1: still use Facebook. And I think it's very smug when
Speaker 1: I see kind of people who are more kind of
Speaker 1: techy and in the tech conversation saying like why would
Speaker 1: people look at news on Facebook and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: Like these are not your macedon users. These are not
Speaker 1: to people going to seek out the decentralized alternatives to
Speaker 1: the web and stuff. These are people who signed up
Speaker 1: to Facebook, like over a decade ago and are still
Speaker 1: using it even as it declined because that's where all
Speaker 1: their friends are, and even as it's gotten worse, like
Speaker 1: they haven't really gone anywhere else. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that they should be punished because that is how they
Speaker 1: use the web, and that is how they've been taught
Speaker 1: to use the web. And so I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to be more critical of Meta and of Facebook.
Speaker 1: We were doing that for a while and then everyone
Speaker 1: seemed to start to praise Mark Zuckerberg recently because he
Speaker 1: launched a Twitter competitor. So you know, I think that
Speaker 1: we need to keep up to kind of the the
Speaker 1: critical views on this on this company, because yes, it's
Speaker 1: happening in Canada right now, and people in Canada are
Speaker 1: being affected, and Meta doesn't care because it has what
Speaker 1: two or three billion more users that will look at
Speaker 1: the ads on its platform even if some of the
Speaker 1: Canadian users die in wildfires, and so it doesn't care
Speaker 1: about that, but it's going to do this, and other
Speaker 1: jurisdictions as well as places like California and New Zealand
Speaker 1: and you know, other parts of the world try to
Speaker 1: move forward with something similar. Facebook does not care about you,
Speaker 1: does not care about anyone who uses the service. It
Speaker 1: only cares about its bottom line. And I think that
Speaker 1: we should recognize that much more because it's not just
Speaker 1: the case with Facebook. It's the Facebook, it's the case
Speaker 1: with many of these tech companies, and you know, they've
Speaker 1: been kind of light off the hook with this stuff
Speaker 1: for a bit too long. I think absolutely.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you mentioned that I hate how people are, like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe it's a good thing that people aren't getting their
Speaker 2: news from Facebook. Tell that to like my mom, who
Speaker 2: like that especially gets her news, Like I'm like, you
Speaker 2: don't have to like it. You might think that it's
Speaker 2: not good, like it just is like you don't have like,
Speaker 2: you don't have to like it. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that they don't deserve information that could actually save their lives,
Speaker 2: because that is how they show up to the media
Speaker 2: ecosystem exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's why we've seen people sharing screenshots of news
Speaker 1: articles on Facebook so that their friends and family can
Speaker 1: see what is happening, can get the updates about evacuations
Speaker 1: and wildfires and things like that, because they can't actually
Speaker 1: share news articles and Facebook is stopping them from doing that.
Speaker 1: So you see that people are finding ways around, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of the barriers that Facebook has put up
Speaker 1: for them. And I'm sure that people will find other
Speaker 1: ways of getting information ultimately, but let's be clear that
Speaker 1: Facebook made this change very recently, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you know, in the middle of a summer where a
Speaker 1: lot of people are facing difficulties across Canada and certainly
Speaker 1: you know in other parts of the world, but Canada
Speaker 1: is where they shut off news, and so it's made
Speaker 1: it more difficult for those people to get kind of
Speaker 1: potentially life saving information. And Facebook doesn't care about that,
Speaker 1: even though the law is not actually in effect and
Speaker 1: it would not be charged if it let people share
Speaker 1: news right now, but it has decided it won't do that.
Speaker 2: Well, one thing I can say is that I will
Speaker 2: always put my faith in the resilience of people. Everyday
Speaker 2: people to find those workarounds even as tech billionaires are
Speaker 2: trying to make it so much harder for them. They
Speaker 2: shouldn't have to do this, to be clearer. But people
Speaker 2: are resilient and people are always going to find a way.
Speaker 2: It's the one thing I'll always believe in. Yep, me too,
Speaker 2: got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I
Speaker 2: just want to say hi. You can reach us at
Speaker 2: Hello at tegody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 2: for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Speaker 2: Girls on the Internet was created by me bridget Toad.
Speaker 2: It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 2: is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 2: sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: bridget Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 2: and review us on Apple podcast For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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