Wrote this up on Twitter (y’all know what I’m talking about, so no need to call it something else), reposting it here. Basically calling for critics to engage with the past decade (and longer) of literature on platform governance, especially regarding platform power, platforms as infrastructure and platform non-neutrality.

If I weren’t in the middle of a million other things, I’d have provided links to what I mean by the “platform governance literature,” but basically you can start with Tarleton Gillespie’s foundational 2010 article, Robert Gorwa’s “What is Platform Governance?” Natasha Tusikov’s 2016 book Chokepoints: Global Private Regulation on the Internet (which has so much to say on the regulatory push-and-pull between macrointermediaries (i.e., platforms) and governments), Nick Srnicek’s Platform Capitalism, my 2020 article, “Global platform governance and the internet-governance impossibility theorem”, and Natasha’s and my latest book, The New Knowledge: Information, Data and the Remaking of Global Power. And on the Australian case, it would be nice if critics would at least refer to the positive review it’s gotten from the Australian Treasury, either to trash it or praise it.

Meta’s arguments justifying its blocking of Canadian news media (and @TheBeaverton?) rely on an outdated view of “platforms” as neutral conduits, one-way providers of value to its voluntary users. They’re not, and never have been. #C18 #platformgovernance

I read critiques of C-18 that blame the government for Meta’s *choice* to block Canadian media and it’s immediately clear that too many critics have not engaged with a decade of platform governance literature.

Including how platforms’ goal is to create monopolies. Their goal is to become indispensable infrastructure. Their goal is to attack democratic governments’ ability to regulate (US and EU excluded). All of which are in play here and which complicate the gov’t bad-Meta good POV.

On platform neutrality: in reality, both intermediaries and news media create value. This value is social *and* economic. They are all part of our information ecosystem. Platforms are not neutral. Their actions (algorithms, advertising monopoly) affect others.

Meta and Google have not been good stewards of this ecosystem, be it their ad-driven search degradation or fomenting an actual genocide (Facebook, Rohingya). It’s not insane to require them to pay to support the ecosystem into which they’ve inserted themselves.

It’s disingenuous to argue that by blocking Canadian media Meta’s just following the law, making themselves a non-news intermediary. They have spent the past decade selling themselves as indispensable media infrastructure. Remember the (falsehood-driven) Pivot to Video?

What’s happening: these companies spent a decade positioning themselves as indispensable media infrastructure. (And infrastructure that shouldn’t be regulated. Because the Internet.) Tempted by the platforms, including by their lies (e.g., pivot to video), media jumped on board.

Google and Meta spent money on individual deals w media cos to forestall regulation. Why? B/c mandatory bargaining, eg as found in C-18, would remove their power over media companies. They could no longer decide who gets what money and on what terms.

Now, having established their position as essential media infrastructure, they’re cashing in their chips and attempting to tell us who’s boss.

C-18 BTW, is an advance over the Australian model, where (secret) negotiation can happen outside their Code, at the platforms’ discretion. C-18 is fairer and more democratic.

This isn’t about money, or paying a “fair” amount. These very profitable companies will throw around money if they feel like it. This is about power. Specifically, platform power to refuse to be governed by democratic parliaments.

The principle at stake isn’t free information flows. We know (again the scholarship has moved on from early 2000s internet libertarianism) that information quality matters as much as the flow of this information. Free flows don’t matter much if the flows are garbage.

To be clear, for all its flaws, the regulatory coverage and transparency aspects of the bill are things to be celebrated. Transparency, accountability are good, democratic values. These are what Meta and Google, and their defenders, are stomping on. It’s bizarre.

If anything, the government erred in taking too soft a line with the platforms, leaving it up to them to negotiate deals. We now know that this sign of respect for their autonomy was seen as an attack. The gov’t should have been more hard-nosed from the beginning.

This fight, again, is not about money or fairness. It’s about platforms rejecting the right of governments to regulate platforms. Which means that this was a fight that we were going to have one way or another. Cold comfort for Canadian media, but there you are.

Which means that the only way out is through. Governments were always going to have to take on platform power. The best that can be said now is that governments should stop operating under the illusion that these platforms are in any way neutral. They’re anti-democratic rivals.