Diane Francis: Google, Facebook and the apologists for Big Tech bully tactics

financialpost.com:

A showdown is underway between America’s tech giants Facebook and Google and Canada because Ottawa is finally going to force them to pay for copyrighted content produced by Canadian media companies that they have stolen for decades. Bill C-18 is Ottawa’s version of what Australia pulled off in 2021, which has been very successful.

But last week Google played hardball and threatened to pull Canadian news from Google Search and its other products in Canada, and also to kill existing financial deals that help encourage journalism with publishers.

The controversy has drawn out critics who have attacked the media’s right to have an opinion about its own self-interest and future. For instance, one critic, Ottawa academic Michael Geist, took a gratuitous swipe at Postmedia coverage for “blurring editorial and lobbying” by confusing the stance in support of Bill C-18 taken in a recent National Post editorial as, apparently, influencing news coverage, and causing “harm to independence of the press.” Editorials have long reflected the opinion of publishers, while news stories relate the facts and developments surrounding the legislation. Readers, save him, know the difference.

Another one, podcaster Jesse Brown, declared the “casualty” caused by this legislation is that journalists have turned into “propagandists” when their job is to “fairly cover Big Tech and government.” He points to a scathing critique of Google’s and Facebook’s tactics by the Canadian Association of Journalists. Again this misses the mark completely. The CAJ is an advocacy organization and its job is to “advocate,” which it did by excoriating Big Tech for being bullies.

The same bully-boy tactics from the tech giants were deployed in Australia two years ago