The Failure of Bill C-18

If having news links appear on Facebook benefits Meta more than it does news outlets...

... how do you explain The New York Times promoting one of their news stories on Facebook via paid advertising, as shown in the screenshot below?*

In 2023, when Meta declared it would end access to news on its social media sites for all Canadian users if Bill C-18 (which would require the largest online platforms to pay news organizations for any news links shared via their sites) was enacted, there was outrage.

"Facebook benefits from having news links, so they should pay publishers!"

Facebook's response?

"News" made up a negligible percentage of all content shared on Facebook, and the traffic that Facebook sent to news publishers (who could potentially monetize it by enacting paywalls, or by convincing people to subscribe while they were on the site to read the article they discovered via social media) benefited news organizations far more than it benefited Facebook.

Bill C-18 was passed.

And, as promised, Meta removed the ability for users to share news links.

Now, fast forward three years to the present day...

Meta is doing just fine. The company's market capitalization in 2023 was $1.21 trillion, and today, it's $2.23 trillion... almost double.

News publishers are still struggling. Arguably even more than they were, since their content is no longer being discovered as easily as it used to be when it appeared on social media platforms used by billions every day.

And consumers?

We've arguably never been inundated with more misinformation, and it's almost certainly not a coincidence that this has happened at the same time as legitimate news sources have become less visible.

(In an April 2025 press release, a director at The Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy shared that Meta's response to Bill C-18 led to "the removal of 11 million views of journalism a day in Canada.")

I'm not a Meta apologist.

But I do like facts.

And I like it when things make sense.

And the facts indicate that Bill C-18, while perhaps well-intentioned, is a failure...

... and that repealing it may be a net positive for Canadians.

But perhaps we should ask The New York Times what they think?

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* I captured this screenshot myself on February 13, 2026. I'm already a NYT subscriber, so I'm not sure why this ad spend was wasted on me, but that's a topic for another post.