There are sovereign states. Some are very powerful, with hundred or more millions of inhabitants. And the majority of states; the medium and small size. Some are poor, some are very developed, and definitely not poor.  Among the last category is Canada – huge in land size, but not in population or economic output.

And there are corporations. International, spanning the globe. No land, no natural resources, no population. But huge in profits. Mega corporations. Did I say ‘mega’?  Yes, mega in size and Meta in the name. Facebook for example. Or Google comes to mind also.  These corporations rely on the internet, there is business model is quite literally un in the cloud. You know, the internet cloud. Yet their earnings are kept in banks on Earth. Earnings that are bigger than many of the medium and small size countries.

We all know how important to our everyday life Google and Facebook become. Google is the main source of all our information. If you are not an academic (and even they use Google) – you ask Google all your questions. I mean truly, on every conceivable subject. It is you largest mall in the world containing information: about the average size of a penis to information about nuclear fusion.  It knows more about your family genealogy than your grandma.

Facebook has become what gossip in the neighborhood used to be, it is the largest gallery of pictures of your garden and the gardens of all Royal Houses in the world;  it contains links to articles from just about all the newspapers and magazines in the world. It also contains a lot of false articles about the so-called ‘Earth is flat’ theories. The conspirators’ myth, the anti-abortionists, the religious zealots.  All your escapades to exotic beaches in your and your wife’s collection of skimpy beachwear. Even you stupid faces, when you were dancing totally drunk and one of your friends took that photo. Remember? No to so much? Don’t worry – Facebook remembers.  Hey, some of the pictures I took and didn’t save anywhere are not lost, either. They are most likely somewhere in my old posts on Facebook, LOL.  Tsss…, don’t worry, I didn’t post any of the nudes I took of you at that party, remember?

Now, why do I write about Google and Facebook? As I said these companies make gazillions of dollars by providing free access to sources of information. Mainly newspapers and magazines. Magazines, newspapers, and public TV programming as we know is doing rather badly in recent years.  Hundreds of titles just evaporated. After all, if you can get free access to an article through these links on Google and Facebook – why would you want to pay for it? I do it, too. Used to buy every day at least one newspaper and some weekly editions, some monthly and quarterly journals, regularly. Now a lot less. A lot. And we need good, old-school journalism. Not some wacko’s opinions.  Sometimes not being informed is less dangerous than being fed false information instead of good checked and rechecked facts.

Our, Canadian Government recently introduced (not signed into law yet, but our prime minister promised today, that his government has every intention of adopting that legislation) new legislation that will require both of these internet giants to pay small dividends to Canadian newspapers for using their links to magazines for free. Both Google and Meta (Facebook) reacted angrily that they will not do it and will simply block Canadian content from their platforms. That is as plain ‘hostage taking’ as I have ever seen.

Google’s threat is less dangerous. Yes, it is by far the largest search engine, but hardly the only search engine available. If you want access to Canadian sources, you can easily do it through Yahoo, Mozilla, Safari, or simply Microsoft Edge browser, or Open Source browser. It is just a click away on your keyboard. Facebook is hard to replace and we are very used to it. At this moment I don’t think there is as popular and widely accepted other platform that offers the same services.

But is it right? Is it ethical? I don’t think so.