The city of Hamilton indicates support for Canada’s Bill C-18 by ceasing advertisements on Facebook and Instagram
On Oct. 11, Hamilton city council passed a motion to stop posting non-essential municipal government advertisements on social media platforms owned by Meta.
This move by the municipal government is an act in solidarity with the Canadian federal government’s recently filed Bill C-18.
This move by the municipal government is an act in solidarity with the Canadian federal government’s recently filed Bill C-18.
Bill C-18, the Online News Act received Royal Assent in June 2023. The act requires big tech companies, such as Meta, to come to agreements with Canadian news outlets in order to compensate them for featuring and sharing links to the outlets' content. As part of this bill, Meta could be required to pay as much as $234 million to news outlets in Canada.
In response to the legislation though, which Meta believes to be flawed, the company has made news content unavailable and unviewable to individuals residing in Canada.
People residing in Canada who attempt to access news content on Meta platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, are presented with a message stating that they cannot see news content in response to the legislation.
The motion to halt advertisements on Meta platforms in solidarity with Bill C-18 was put forth on Oct. 4 by councillor John-Paul Danko of Ward 8. Though support for the motion was not unanimous, with concerns being brought forth regarding the impact on the city’s ability to relay information to citizens, the motion passed two weeks after proposal.
Danko defended the motion by stating that while there may be an effect on reaching citizens, these can be managed. He also stated that Bill C-18 is important for protecting Canadian journalism and media outlets from large tech companies like Meta.
Danko defended the motion by stating that while there may be an effect on reaching citizens, these can be managed. He also stated that Bill C-18 is important for protecting Canadian journalism and media outlets from large tech companies like Meta.
The city of Hamilton is not alone in its decision to boycott Meta as a show of support for the Online News Act and the federal government. The governments of Quebec City and the Province of Quebec, as well as the federal government itself, have also made the same decision as Hamilton.
While talks between the federal government and Meta are ongoing, it remains unclear for how long Meta's news ban on their platforms will continue and when the situation will be resolved.
This is an ongoing story.
In response to Bill C-18, Meta has begun to block the content from the accounts of news outlets for Canadians on their platform
Bill C-18, the Online News Act, received Royal Assent in Jul. 2023. The bill was developed to encourage fairness in the sphere of Canadian digital news and it would require social media and other tech companies, such as Meta, to pay media outlets for use of their news content on any of companies’ platforms.
The Government of Canada introduced this bill in the hopes that it would ensure news outlets are being paid for their work. The government had predicted the act would give companies a total profit just over $300 million per year.
However, the act has sparked much conversation and controversy, particularly following the the reactions from Google and Meta.
Both Google and Meta had indicated their disapproval of the bill from the time it was first proposed. They believed that the revenue that they bring in as social media platforms justifies not being required to pay news media outlets.
Google in particular mentioned that referral from having links on their platforms has an annual revenue of $250 million.
When the bill was passed, Meta announced they would stop sharing Canadian news on Aug. 1 and would be continuing to do when the act came into effect in December.
When the bill was passed, Meta announced they would stop sharing Canadian news on Aug. 1 and would be continuing to do when the act came into effect in December.
The companies have since begun blocking Canadians from viewing news on their platforms. People in Canada can no longer see any Canadian news content on Instagram or Facebook, including the Silhouette’s content.
Additionally, people in Canada can also no longer see any news content from any international news outlets, such as the New York Times or BBC News.
As October begins, it has now been three months since the Meta's ban has impacted Canadian's abilities to view news through social media platforms.
The government is in talks with Meta and Google with the goal of coming an agreement some time in the coming months.
This is an ongoing story.
As a disclaimer, our Operating Policy states that we are limited to only having one page per issue dedicated to satire and parody. The Speculator on the back page of the physical issue took this up. We have not requested any exceptions to this, and everything you are about to read is factual.
Throughout the year, we run weekly meetings for each of our sections. If you want to contribute as a writer, photographer, videographer or have a passing interest in anything we do, our door is usually open and the emails on the “Contact Us” tab on our website are one of our main sources of communication.
This is all simple enough. One of the things new volunteers often state is that they did not realize that it was a possibility or that they were too intimidated by the prospect to write for a publication with a campus-wide reach. We have addressed the first one, but the second one is a bit more complicated.
While nerves and writing with the intent for a large number of people to read it takes time and experience, I am still working on that and some related perfectionist crises myself, one of the more immediate aids is to provide a bit of background of the type of people who you would likely be talking to. You do not need to know any of this, but it may make you more comfortable than receiving answers from a faceless media organization.
The office has a plastic horse with written characters like &, # and ? on it and wears glasses. It tends to wear a rubber dinosaur puppet as a mask, and sits next to a mini Zen garden. There is also a suspiciously high amount of winter holiday memorabilia, and a picture of a hairy-nosed wombat one our former editors adopted for a month over four years ago.
Our “Editors of McMaster’s student newspaper” plaque took around five years to be updated because the experience of being the Editor-in-Chief is considered to be far more important than the recognition. However, it had to be done recently because it would have been odd to update multiple rows at once.
The paper is known for having the most consistently degenerate staff at the yearly Canadian University Press’ conference. We do not have a journalism school, we bring as many staff members as possible and tend to overwhelm due to sheer numbers alone. It also used to be known as the best university publication in the country a few decades ago.
Given that the office has no windows or sunlight and has questionable air ventilation, staff members tend to become neurotic and loopy after a point. This tends to happen if production night, the night before the paper is placed on stands, goes past 8 p.m. Previous Editors-in-Chief attempted to get staff to go for breaks and walks to help out, but often received resistance because interrupting creative work is hard for people.
The Silhouette was also the last university paper in the country to move away from broadsheet size to tabloid, about half the size, and that only happened this decade. Part of that was a sense of pride to stick it to other papers that wimped out and switched earlier. The other part was that working until 3 a.m. in the morning to get the paper out by that afternoon was, apparently, enjoyable enough to keep doing it with staff, colleagues and friends.
There is a constant obsession with karaoke. In particular, anything our in-house DJ plays during the “80s Power Hour” slot, The Killers and most songs that could spur an existentialist crisis are popular choices.
In short, whomever you may want to talk to about contributing, advice or feedback is probably odd in their own way and far less intimidating than your typical TA or professor.
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Last year was great. After the results of our Silvision campaign back in early 2016, we started the process of bettering our content with the advice given from readers who took the time to let us know what they think. If you contributed to this, we appreciate it.
Most notably, your feedback helped us with the direction for two of our four current major print sections. Merging Lifestyle with ANDY to create a more conventional Arts & Culture section and refocusing the majority of the content to Hamilton helped raise the quality and relevancy of the paper.
The previously broad nature of Opinion was something that I agreed had to be changed as the section’s editor last year. We believed it was single-handedly bringing down the reputation of the paper.
The section hasn’t had bad or even average editors in the past, far from it, but it was an unfocused mess that meant nothing except an article or two to be embarrassed about publishing every week. Focusing on McMaster and topics related to McMaster students has resulted in a large deal of success.
We respect that this was only the beginnings of laying the foundation. You should expect those sections in particular to continue to improve in the future.
However, I anticipate there would be a few issues with doing a similar feedback campaign now. We might do it later in the year, don’t get me wrong, but hear me out for a second.
The main worry is that we have no real way of getting feedback from the average reader. If you have cared enough to reply about feedback in any situation, then you have cared more than the majority of people.
We received a decent number of responses, but it was low compared to the thousands of copies printed per issue and the stupidly high amount of people who use the website. Maybe investment in the product has increased since retailoring the sections, but I don’t want to get trapped continuously catering to our hardcore readers and forgetting a silent majority.
Let us experiment and take the initiative for a bit. The promises and plans for the upcoming year are based on a few educated guesses about what you like.
We swapped out a News Reporter position and added another Production Coordinator position. Our news content should not suffer as we can accept more volunteer pieces than last year, but the quality of our layouts will increase. The quality of articles should also increase as section editors will have more time to dedicate to writing, editing and volunteer management.
A full-time CFMU/Sil position will be hired. This person will aid in video, graphic design and online to increase quality and quantity across the board while increasing collaboration with partners around campus. You should expect more videos and lots of other multimedia to come.
Our online schedule will no longer be bound by our print. Instead of a mass of articles on Thursday, you will see new articles uploaded Monday to Thursday during the fall and winter terms. This one will take a bit of time, but we’ll get there.
Those are the big ones. We are not planning a complete revamp like last year, but we are going to improve on the fundamentals and see what happens. The bottom line is that you should continue to expect more.
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