this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Meta and X are acting preemptively before the government has even finalized how the system would work.
The law hasn’t even come into force. The regulations haven’t even been Gazetted and put through the public consultation period.
Meta and X feel that they shouldn’t be subject to the law of any other country. That’s what’s at the foundation of this.
Demonstrating what your response will be before the law goes into force seems like a good idea to me - the cost to Facebook is minimal and if people are going to change their minds, the earlier they do the easier it'll be to return to the status quo.
There's nothing above-the-law about this. The law sets the terms which Facebook must comply with if it wants to do business in Canada, but the law can't make Facebook keep doing business in Canada.
But Facebook is doing business in Canada while refusing to be subject to Canadian law or courts while doing it.
It’s platforms are up in Canada, recruiting members, collecting and monetizing data on Canadians.
There have been court cases and orders in Canada where both Meta and Google have refused to comply with judicial decisions on the grounds that only California and US federal courts have jurisdiction over them.
The law in this case could require Meta, Google and X to carry emergency information and links to it without monetization, just as it does for private broadcasters and cable carriers.
Got any links for that? That's pretty juicy.
Here is a Walrus feature on the story of a mother whose son went unexpectedly missing from the University of Toronto, and whose body was found washed up from Lake Ontario much later.
The family’s attempts to access her late son’s email and social media accounts from Google and Facebook went to court, and there was an order, but both refused to comply and insisted she take it through California courts (which she eventually did as part of a group case).
The mother’s efforts were also reported on by the Ottawa Citizen in several articles and a video, the CBC, and the Globe and Mail .
While this case raised significant questions of digital privacy and what should be the legal standard to access accounts posthumously in cases of missing and suspicious deaths, Facebook and Google fought the case on the grounds of jurisdiction and refused to comply with the Canadian court order.
Google
There's not a good article for meta. In 2017 they were going to be fined about $9mil for misrepresentation of what data was collected and how it was used, but looks like it's been repealed this year.
I don't know nearly enough about those court cases, international law, or treaties between the USA and Canada to say anything specific. But my general point is that ultimately Canada has a military and Facebook doesn't. Facebook can't do anything on Canadian territory unless the Canadian government permits it, and that includes refusing to comply with judicial decisions.
Canada makes the rules. Facebook just chooses whether to accept them or to leave.
(Even if Facebook had no physical presence in Canada or in any country that had relevant treaties with Canada, Canada could still order its ISPs and payment processors to block Facebook. However, Facebook does have offices in Canada so this is a moot point.)
True. But Meta hasn’t left as yet.
And there are users here suggesting that the Canadian government shouldn’t be attempting to legislate or regulate Meta.
"Should" can mean several different things in this context.
Is Canada capable of enforcing its legislation/regulation? Yes.
Does Canada have the moral right to legislate/regulate? Almost always yes. (I would say no if Canada just seized all of Facebook's property for no reason, but no one is proposing anything like that.)
Is it in practice a good idea for Canada to legislate/regulate? Maybe yes but maybe no, just like with any legislation/regulation.
Does it make sense for Canadians be surprised or offended if Facebook doesn't break the law but also doesn't cooperate with the intent of the legislation/regulation? Here's where I'm saying "no".
I don't consider myself evil, but If I were running Facebook, I would ask the experts working for me whether it was more profitable to pay Canadian news agencies or to stop letting Canadian people post links to news (keeping in mind that if Facebook pays Canadian news agencies, other countries will start demanding the same thing for their news agencies). The I would do whatever those experts said was going to be more profitable. My job wouldn't be to do what's best for Canada; it would be to do what's best for Facebook while complying with Canadian law. (In the same way that as a private citizen, I do what's best for me while complying with the law, not necessarily what's best for the government or for the nation.)
@StillPaisleyCat @ArbitraryValue
Looks like they're following the law pretty well here.
In return for being asked to pay for making links, they no longer make links.
Sure, Meta and Google can be nasty on other grounds (and fighting C-11 isn't nasty), but they're being quite law-abiding here.
Flouting the law would be sharing links and refusing to pay.
This is coming across like sealioning at this point.
THE LAW HAS NOT YET COME INTO EFFECT.
The law can come into effect whenever they want it to and the sites need to have their filtering systems ready and tested before that happens for them to be effective:
https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2023/08/the-bill-c-18-regulation-fake-out-setting-the-record-straight-on-when-bill-c-18-takes-effect-and-the-regulation-making-process/
Why is former Twitter even doing that? I thought only G and FB were affected, as it was based on company size. Supposedly Twitter is (still) not profitable, even.
No clue why, but it’s what the government is saying in its tweets.
Just goes to show how low the new owner is...
Stands to reason. If Canadians were creating laws around homicide for the first time, but the exact details weren't yet known, are you going to go around killing people while you still can, or are you going to respect the intent to the best of your ability knowing that Canadians do not want to be killed?
Logically, the latter, of course. Even if you don't quite get it right with respect to the final details, trying to respect the wishes is clearly better than ignoring them.
And they are no doubt right. There are cases where they have ignored Canadian court decisions around individuals without any consequences. And if that were the only thing of relevance, they could simply ignore this whole ordeal.
Trouble is that, when it comes to the mass user base, they need to appease the people of those countries, else they will leave. Facebook doesn't have a compelling business if they can only win over product and customers from one country. Its value is dependent on serving the entire world.
It is not like the people of Canada went to all the trouble of bringing this legislation to the table because they wanted to play a prank on Musk. They are serious about it. If Facebook showed that it didn't care the users would get pissed off and walk away.
You can screw around with individuals without noticing, but in this case Canadians as a whole called for action. Losing all Canadian users would be a significant loss to their business. Facebook had to do something. Going on killing for months until the details come out, even if technically allowable, is not a good look.