I had no idea when I woke up this morning that I was going to spend most of my day trying to contact an unresponsive multi-billion-dollar media corporation and trying to save The Typescript from the predations of late-capitalist corporate colonialism. I thought I might go for a run in the morning, lift some weights at the gym, grade assignments in the summer history course that I teach at Rutgers University, and maybe read a book. But, ya know? Shit happens.
The Typescript’s Associate Editor Theresa Smalec informed me this morning (last night, in fact, but I had put my devices to bed by then) that she had heard from readers that our articles could not be viewed on Facebook from Canada. It seems that we got caught up in Meta Platforms Inc.’s dispute with the Canadian government.
To be honest, I was skeptical at first. Meta had said it would block Canadian users’ access to content from Canadian news sites shared on the Facebook platform in retaliation for the passage of the Online News Act (Bill C-18) passed by the Parliament of Canada in late-June, and subsequently signed into law. Although I and both of my Associate Editors are Canadian expats, The Typescript is not a Canadian publication (we are legally based in New Jersey), nor do we publish anything remotely resembling news… Unless poetry, essays, and book reviews are your idea of the news.
I checked it out, asked some Canadian friends to see if they could find us on Facebook, and lo-and-behold, there we were, blocked just like the CBC, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. One friend sent me this screen cap from his phone:
The Canadian Online News Act requires social media platforms – “digital news intermediaries” in the language of the Act – who make news content available to Canadian users to begin paying royalties for the Canadian news content shared on their platforms. The law does not apply to content produced outside of Canada, since that is beyond the Canadian government’s jurisdiction, nor does it set the rate, or even the mechanism by which these fees should be paid. It simply establishes the principal that Canadian news producers should be paid and, in the language of the Act:
“The Bill introduces a new bargaining framework intended to support news businesses to secure fair compensation when their news content is made available by dominant digital news intermediaries and generates economic gain. It seeks to support balanced negotiations between the businesses that operate dominant digital news intermediaries and the businesses responsible for the news outlets that produce this news content.”
This is not a tax; nor are Meta, Google, or the Platform Formerly Known as Twitter immediately subject to pay the Globe and Mail and the CBC royalty fees. Nor do all online platforms on which people share news – email, message boards, cats, etc. – fall under the jurisdiction of C-18: “The Act will only apply to digital news intermediaries if there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between the operators of a digital news intermediary and the news outlets producing the news content a digital news intermediary makes available.”
If you happen to be a $185 billion corporation (compared to about $300 million for the CBC) that earns revenue by (a) advertising to users drawn to your platform to consume other companies’ content and (b) by using personal targeting data provided by users to sell space to corporate advertisers and (c) selling users’ personal and behavioral data – including which news sites they read, the Canadian government is asking you to share the wealth. Facebook is not a neutral, common-carrier, of course, it is a company whose business model is based on sharing other people’s intellectual property. When you share other people’s intellectual property for profit without compensation or permission, you are committing piracy.
If I shared Facebook’s proprietary source code on the Internet – even without the intent or ability to profit from it – you can be pretty sure that Meta’s senior counsel Jennifer Newstead and her legal team would come down on me with the full force of the law. That is how intellectual property and copyright works.
Meta believes that it is so big (I mean… It really is big) and important that it should not be required to even consider paying Canadian news producers, or to enter into negotiations with those producers in order to establish a compensation regime, let alone pay for anything. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t get rich ($107 billion at last count) by treating people fairly, let alone even thinking about treating people fairly. As his fellow tycoons Elon Musk and Donald Trump have shown, great wealth and power put one above the law and all other considerations of the social contract. This is a Hobbesian world of omnium contra omnes; they are the winners, the predators that feed off their inferiors, and the rest of us, from private individuals to smaller companies, are their fodder.
That is what makes Meta’s digital blockade of news in Canada so troubling. One might argue that C-18 has flaws – to my mind, it is too vague – or that it demands that corporations like Meta make disclosures about revenues and usage to Canadian news organizations and federal regulators that they might find uncomfortable. But in a free-market economy in a democratic society, even huge conglomerates have an obligation to treat their customers (in this case, their news suppliers) fairly and within the law, and to act within the legal boundaries. This is something that Meta simply refuses to do, and has imposed an embargo on Canadians to force a sovereign government to come to heel.
The embargo of Canada has very little to do with the merits of the law, and everything to do with establishing dominance in late-stage capitalism’s ruling hierarchy, where democracy and national sovereignty count for nothing and governments serve their corporate masters.
Meta has coyly and dishonestly insisted that it is merely adhering to the letter of the law, but the truth is that Zuckerberg is making an example of those impudent Canadians to every other country that would deign to assert its sovereignty. That much is made clear by the fact that not only Canadian news sites, with whom Meta might have to negotiate compensation, are blocked but all news sites around the world, from the Washington Post to The Guardian. Meta is not declining to participate in C-18’s compensation regime; it has imposed a punitive blockade on every single Canadian.
To make matters worse, it does not even apply only to news organizations; as The Typescript’s plight demonstrates, Meta is applying its ban to all kinds of media. The only thing that we have in common with Macleans in Canada or Newsweek in the US is that Facebook categorizes our page as a “magazine.” That’s a pretty broad category, but it is worth noting that, even then, the ban is completely arbitrary. We are blocked from Facebook in Canada, but the venerable American literary journal Bookforum is not; neither, it seems, are news-oriented Substacks by celebrity commentators like Michael Moore.
This is not negotiation, nor fair business practice; it is corporate colonialism.
This not the first time that a vast American corporation has felt frustrated by the democratic will of a sovereign government. American corporations have a long history of exploiting foreign countries for their resources. Meta is hoping to turn Canada into another banana republic. At least they haven’t asked the US government to intervene or sent in their own mercenaries to butcher people and seize control of the government like the United Fruit Company did in Guatemala in 1954, or had the CIA engineer a military coup, like the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP) did in Iran in 1953. At least not yet. And that, I suppose is a mercy.
For a proverbial “little magazine” like ours, this could be the kiss of death. We have worked diligently over the last few years to blur the cultural boundaries between the country where we live, and the country where we were born. The project of cultivating a cultural conversation between people regardless of borders has been a central part of our mission from the beginning. So, we have published work by Canadian writers like Fred Wah and the late Robert Hogg, alongside contributions by American, British, Australian, Spanish, and Brazilian poets, essayists, and writers of fiction. We have run commentary on Indigenous issues in Canada, together with commentaries and essays on American, Latin American, and European politics.
Although we reside in the United States we, as expatriates – indeed, as citizens of something greater than just one geopolitical authority or another – have sought to build a cultural meeting point that transcends borders. In the process, we have, thanks to our readers, acquired a reputation for literary excellence in many parts of the world, including Canada. About a quarter of our traffic originates from Canadian IP addresses, and a little less than half, from all geographical locations, comes from Facebook referrals. You don’t have to crunch the numbers to know what this means to The Typescript.
The whole world is literally watching; Meta’s temper tantrum is front-page news around the world, even if that information is being censored on Facebook in Canada. Sovereign governments in Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America are watching to see if Ottawa will back down to Meta’s corporate gunboat “diplomacy.” We hope that Canada will stand firm and not give an inch. The law is imperfect and needs improvement, but there can be no discussion about that when Canadians are being held hostage by a corporate bully. To back down would be to legitimize a kind of colonialist terrorism.
For now, our Canadian readers can still find us by navigating to The Typescript on the web (here), and by subscribing to our weekly mailing of new articles. Canadians can follow other publications, both in and outside of Canada, by downloading their apps and making a point of visiting their websites. And they should; Meta is too capricious and powerful a corporation to allow it to exert this kind of power.
To continue to follow the news on Facebook in Canada, or in any other country that might incur Meta’s wrath, consider installing a Virtual Private Network (VPN) on your device. This allows you to tunnel your Internet connection to an origination point outside of Meta’s blockade, where Zuckerberg can’t determine what you can see on Facebook. I use the Mullvad VPN, which is easy to use, costs about US$5.00/month and can be installed on Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, and Android devices. There are also dozens of other VPNs available, offering all kinds of additional services and functionality, from many other vendors.
In the playbook of late-stage capitalism that Zuckerberg is following page-by-page, you are not the citizen of a sovereign country with democratic rights, but merely and simultaneously a consumer and commodity that vast corporations like Meta bleed for profit.
The Typescript is back from our summer hiatus tanned, rested, and strong. Let’s fight this.