The Bizarre Asymmetry of Blocked News Outlets In Canada

Why are some outlets blocked and others aren't?

In a disastrous series of legislative failures, Canada passed Bill C-18 in June which mandated Instagram, Meta, and Google to compensate Canadian media outlets for permitting circulation of their content. Predictably, Meta refused to abide by the strict 4% link tax, forcing them to block all news sources on their platforms for Canadian users in August and September of this year. The impasse between Meta and the Canadian government remains stagnant.

“Unlike search engines, we do not proactively pull news from the internet to place in our users’ feeds and we have long been clear that the only way we can reasonably comply with the Online News Act is by ending news availability for people in Canada,” Meta representative Scott Reid told The New York Times in a piece this week on the Canadian government’s new deal with Google.

The blocking of news outlets on Meta and Instagram has caused many problems on both platforms, such as Canadians being unable to read and share stories on ruinous wildfires across the country in the summer months.

BBC in August 2023: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66535401

The economic impact on Canadian media has also been deleterious as referral traffic has declined by 30% in some outlets have lost tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

However, one adverse outcome of Bill C-18 that has received no coverage is the bizarre asymmetry of blocked news sources. While most news sources are inaccessible — such as The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The New York Post, CNN, NBC, Newsmax, Fox News, and The Wall Street Journal — there are umpteen exceptions. Several prominent media outlets remain accessible to Canadian users. For example, Forbes, Rolling Stone, The American Spectator, and The Daily Wire, Vogue, and US Insider are not blocked for Canadian Instagram users. Even media giants such as Yahoo News, New York Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly are accessible on Instagram.

There is no clear ideological, categorical, or financial distinction which explains which outlets are blocked and which aren’t. It's not obvious, for example, size or audience has any relevant association since my small college newspaper — The Cascade — is blocked just as major outlets like NPR are. Meanwhile, relatively smaller, independent magazines such as the (socialist) Jacobin Magazine and (conservative) City Journal are unblocked.

Most bizarrely, a number of media outlets have some branches blocked, but others open. For example, The Daily Wire’s main page is accessible, but the smaller Daily Wire Plus account is inaccessible. Why would a leading conservative media outlet with 2.2 million Instagram followers remain visible, but its smaller affiliated account (10% of the following) used to promote movies and additional content be blocked?

Similarly with Yahoo News — Yahoo News Australia is blocked, but not the main Yahoo News page — and others such as Forbes Mexico and Forbes Australia (blocked, while the main Forbes account is not). The Axios Charlotte page is also accessible, but Axios is not. Independent outlets are also asymmetrically impacted. Matt Taibbi’s Racket News Instagram page is still accessible, but Glenn Greenwald’s System Update is not:

(Lucky for both Matt and Glenn in this case — whatever the future of their visibility for Canadian social media users — since they clearly don’t rely on Instagram for content promotion like other outlets do.)

Below is a comprehensive (but not total) list of outlier outlets which are mysteriously uncensored on Instagram, unlike the vast majority of news media:

Vox, Vulture, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, LA Weekly, US Insider, Forbes (and Forbes Australia), Racket News, Daily Mail Australia, Yahoo News, MSN, The Verge, Axios Charlotte, Insider Tech, New York Weekly, London Review of Books, Cosmopolitan, US Weekly, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Wired, Bon Appétit, CNBC Arabia, The American Spectator, Commentary Magazine, The Federalist, CBC, Daily Wire, Hollywood Reporter, People Magazine, GQ, Jacobin Magazine, Quillette, City Journal, Vanity Fair, National Geographic

The story becomes even more bizarre since many of these outlets are censored on Meta. Searches for The Daily Wire, Vox, New York Magazine, and other outlets yield “People in Canada can’t see this content” responses.

The list of outlets available on both Meta and Instagram is smaller than the list for just Instagram accessibility:

Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, Forbes Australia, London Review of Books, Cosmopolitan, US Weekly, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Wired, Bon Appétit, Commentary Magazine, The Federalist, National Geographic, People Magazine, GQ, Jacobin Magazine, Quillette

There is a provided list of “possible criteria” from Meta and Instagram to decide which outlets to block in response to Bill C-18, but none of them explain the umpteen, asymmetrical exceptions to the general rule. Hopefully, Instagram and Meta provide some explanation why some outlets are still able to advertise and promote their content in Canada, while others remain categorically excluded on the platform.

Currently, the vast majority of media outlets — from philosophical blogs and student newspapers to elite magazines and multi-million-dollar corporate giants — have lost key traffic in Canada. Canadian media outlets, especially smaller, independent ones, are suffering the most from the consequences of misguided regulatory policy that was destined to fail. The Trudeau government has vastly expanded its reach to the online realm, seeking to regulate social media and podcast platforms with increasing force. I previously wrote about Canada’s vague, new regulations for podcast platforms which were ostensibly designed to “promote Canadian content,” but it raises every legitimate suspicion that it may go much further in shaping the ideological media landscape in the country.

Worry not, however. The mainstream media will hold the government accountable. Consider this golden line in Canada’s top CBC outlet — subsidized by tax-payer dollars — in a piece answering readers questions about Bill C-18:

CBC News would also be blocked. The CBC's corporate stance is in favour of the bill.

Why would the corporate stance of a media publisher favour a bill that would block its news content on social media? Follow the money.