[canadiantim]

Canada, just look at Bill C-18. If that's not enough, they are about to try to pass an "anti-hate" bill as well targeting the internet, e.g. demanding taking down any content flagged as hate within 24 hours or massive penalties, so of course the default will be censorship to avoid penalties.

[Kbelicius]

> Canada, just look at Bill C-18.

I'm not from Canada and taking a cursory look at what this bill does I don't see any censorship here. Could you explain?

[retrac]

> The primary component of Bill C-18 is a provision that *allows an eligible news business (acting alone or in a group) to initiate mandatory bargaining* with a digital news intermediary—an online communications platform (such as a search engine or social media service, excluding platforms whose primary purpose is to allow users to communicate with each other privately) that reproduces news content in whole or in part, or otherwise facilitates access to it by any means—if it is determined that there is a "significant bargaining power imbalance" between the intermediary's operator and the news business (based on size, strategic advantages, and whether they hold a "prominent market position")

Those who qualify as "news businesses" and are eligible to impose mandatory purchase of their news products, will have government-mandated carriage on social media platforms operating in Canada. Their news and stories will reach much further and with more spread, than those who do not qualify or participate.

In practice it benefits the major corporations like Rogers and Bell Media, and will not likely be of benefit to your local town newsletter, or someone trying to blow a whistle on the government. Unless it's a qualified "news business" as defined in the act, that content is now required to be de-emphasized, so you and I are less likely to see it.

Political censorship is not the intent of C-18, nor is it likely a consequence. (The real point of it is to subsidize the ailing major media corporations in Canada.) But when you start picking which messages will be amplified, you are implicitly turning down the volume on other messages, and it is, I think, by the broadest definition, a type of censorship.

[canadiantim]

It is just whoever the CRTC/Heritage Minister deems to be a Digital News Intermediary. If designated then these companies will have to pay to use links pointing to large media companies in Canada. The price will be determined either through negotiation or forced arbitration, but regardless Bill C-18 is a tax on news links in Canada. The effect of which is of course censorship even if it's not targeted but instead content-neutral. This will hurt the smaller publishers more than the larger publishers (who are actively getting monetary compensation) and so Bill C-18 effectively censors small news media in Canada.

If anyone is wondering the criteria for being deemed a Digital News Intermediary, there are two requirements: 1. a platform must be in a position of a “significant bargaining imbalance” between themselves and the news businesses. This is determined by the CTRC / Heritage Minister and is based on several factors (outlined in section 6 of the bill): e.g. "whether such an imbalance exists, including the size of the platform, whether the market gives the platform a strategic advantage, and if the platform occupies a prominent market position. According to Rodriguez (the Heritage Minister), only two platforms meet this standard: Google and Meta. This is why platforms such as Microsoft (with Bing and LinkedIn), Twitter, and Apple are not subject to the law even though they feature news links. 2. The second requirement is that the digital news intermediary must make news available content available to persons in Canada. If the platform does not make news content available, it is not a digital news intermediary.

[canadiantim]

Sure, no problem. Bill C-18 is a tax on links to news articles. Currently the regulator in charge of implementing the law is only targeting 2 large companies: Google and Meta (you may have heard Meta stopped news sharing within Canada as a result and Google is considering the same), but it's expected for the regulator to apply this law to progressively more companies over time. But I would argue this severely restricts the free flow of information on the internet, which is effectively censorship (because it's removing news links from the internet, atleast in Canada)

[AlexandrB]

It's more of a kind of trade war than censorship since the links being removed are removed in a content-neutral manner, not based on whether they support/oppose a specific viewpoint. Also, it's Meta that decided to remove the links of paying the tax. Removing links was not mandated by the government.

Having said that, it's a very stupid law.

[canadiantim]

You're right the links are removed in a content-neutral manner, but the law also hurts smaller publishers more than larger publishers because the larger publishers are getting direct money contributions from the government to compensate them but the smaller ones aren't. So the most likely net effect of the law is to put out of business a lot of smaller news media in Canada and only the well-connected large news businesses will remain.

[lukeschlather]

C-18 is about copyright. You can argue all copyright is censorship in the same way, which while I think is a valid viewpoint it's not really a good argument, copyright and censorship should be treated as two different things.

Put another way, if it should be legal for Google to do whatever they want with copyrighted content, I should also be able to do whatever I want with Google's intellectual property. You've got a status quo bias by looking at C-18 as "aggressively pushing for censorship" but ignoring Google's successful "censorship" of people who would copy other copyrighted works.

[canadiantim]

Is C-18 about copyright because it's about the content of news articles? I haven't really heard Bill C-18 being about copyright before. Are news articles copyrighted content? Honest questions, I'm not sure.

You are right I do have a bias. I'm not particularly trusting of Google or Meta, but in this particular argument I would side with them (even though as you point out Google in particular has been successful in other types of censorship)