Zuckerberg gets last laugh in news battle with Liberal government

!nooticers

He who laughs last laughs longest.

That certainly seems to be the case for Facebook parent company Meta in its ongoing war of words with the Canadian government over paying for news content under its ill-conceived Online News Act.

After opting to remove news content its platforms, a study from the Media Ecosystem Observatory at the University of Toronto and McGill found that Facebook has seen no loss in usership despite an overwhelmingly negative impact on Canadian news outlets.

That means instead of being forced to pay for news content, Meta has actually benefitted at the expense of the Liberal government in Ottawa.

“We find little evidence that Facebook usage has been impacted by the ban. After the ban took effect, the collapse of Canadian news content production and engagement on Facebook did not appear to substantially affect users themselves,” the study reads.

“However, the ban undoubtedly had a major impact on Canadian news. Local news outlets have been particularly affected by the ban: while large, national news outlets were less reliant on Facebook for visibility and able to recoup some of their Facebook engagement regardless, hundreds of local news outlets have left the platform entirely, effectively gutting the visibility of local news content.”

The study analyzed the 987 Facebook pages of Canadian news outlets; 183 personal pages of politicians, commentators and advocacy groups; as well as 589 political and local community groups.

The study found that the Facebook pages of Canadian ‘political influencers' experienced neither an uptick nor a downturn in engagement. Facebook groups dedicated to discussing Canadian politics did not experience an exodus of members, nor a decline in frequency of posting.

And while sharing of news links became impossible, users quickly adapted by posting screenshots of news articles. “Meta's ban on news sharing in Canada does not appear to have had an adverse effect on the number and attentiveness of active Facebook users in Canada.”

The irony — or injustice — is that the Online News Act was aimed at protecting smaller news outlets. But in fact, the big subsidized media organizations were the ones that came out on top.

National news outlets lost about 64% of the engagement they previously had via Facebook users, while local news outlets lost about 85% of their Facebook engagement, the study said. About half of all local news outlets completely quit posting on Facebook within four months of the ban.

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