Google News is a news aggregator service developed by Google. It presents a continuous flow of links to articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines. Google News is available as an app on Android, iOS, and the Web.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is the chief competition regulator of the Government of Australia, located within the Department of the Treasury. It was established in 1995 with the amalgamation of the Australian Trade Practices Commission and the Prices Surveillance Authority to administer the Trade Practices Act 1974, which was renamed the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 on 1 January 2011. The ACCC's mandate is to protect consumer rights and business rights and obligations, to perform industry regulation and price monitoring, and to prevent illegal anti-competitive behaviour.
Mass media in Australia spans traditional and digital formats, and caters mostly to its predominantly English-speaking population. It is delivered in a variety of formats including radio, television, paper, internet and IPTV. Varieties include local, regional, state, federal and international sources of media, reporting on Australian news, opinion, policy, issues and culture.
Michael Allen Geist is a Canadian academic, and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He is the editor of four books on copyright law and privacy law, and he edits two newsletters on Canadian information technology and privacy law.
In Canada, appeals by the judiciary to community standards and the public interest are the ultimate determinants of which forms of expression may legally be published, broadcast, or otherwise publicly disseminated. Other public organisations with the authority to censor include some tribunals and courts under provincial human rights laws, and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, along with self-policing associations of private corporations such as the Canadian Association of Broadcasters and the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), formerly Brixton Endeavors, is a British not-for-profit NGO company with offices in London and Washington, D.C. with the stated purpose of stopping the spread of online hate speech and disinformation. It campaigns to deplatform people that it believes promote hate or misinformation, and campaigns to restrict media organisations such as The Daily Wire from advertising. CCDH is a member of the Stop Hate For Profit coalition.
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by American technology conglomerate Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities. Since 2006, Facebook allows everyone to register from 13 years old, except in the case of a handful of nations, where the age limit is 14 years. As of December 2022, Facebook claimed almost 3 billion monthly active users. As of October 2023, Facebook ranked as the third-most-visited website in the world, with 22.56% of its traffic coming from the United States. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.
Canada ranks as 28th in the world for Internet usage with an estimated 35.34 million users or 93% of the population as of 2021. According to Harvard researchers, Canada has some of the lowest internet standards among OECD countries, as a result of high costs and slow internet speeds.
The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as Roskomnadzor (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian mass media. Its areas of responsibility include electronic media, mass communications, information technology and telecommunications, supervising compliance with the law, protecting the confidentiality of personal data being processed, and organizing the work of the radio-frequency service.
Net neutrality in Canada is a debated issue, but not to the degree of partisanship in other nations, such as the United States, in part because of its federal regulatory structure and pre-existing supportive laws that were enacted decades before the debate arose. In Canada, Internet service providers (ISPs) generally provide Internet service in a neutral manner. Some notable incidents otherwise have included Bell Canada's throttling of certain protocols and Telus's censorship of a specific website critical of the company.
In the United States, Section 230 is a section of the Communications Act of 1934 that was enacted as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which is Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and generally provides immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by its users. At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 32 languages including English, Hindi, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.
Canadian online media is content aimed at a Canadian audience through the medium of the Internet. Presently, online media can be accessed by computers, smart-phones, gaming consoles, Smart TVs, MP3 players, and tablets. The characteristics of Canadian online media are strongly shaped by the Canadian communications industry, even though their statistics and findings are more often than not associated with American research. Large media companies are increasingly on the move to start up online platforms for news and television content. The exponential growth of Canadians' dependency on online content for entertainment and information has been evident in the recent decades. However, it has proven slow for Canadian online media to catch up with the constant increase of American online media. Regardless of medium, entertainment and information hubs are not solely focusing on satisfying the audience they have, but are also heavily expanding their reach to new global audiences.
Facebook has been involved in multiple controversies involving censorship of content, removing or omitting information from its services in order to comply with company policies, legal demands, and government censorship laws.
Advertising revenue is the monetary income that individuals and businesses earn from displaying paid advertisements on their websites, social media channels, or other platforms surrounding their internet-based content. In September 2018, the U.S Internet advertising market was estimated to be worth $111 billion, with market share being held mostly between Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. These companies earn revenue through online advertising but also have initiated pathways for individual users and social media influencers to earn an income. Individuals and businesses can earn advertising revenue through advertising networks such as Google AdSense, YouTube monetization, or Outbrain.
Meta Platforms, Inc., doing business as Meta, and formerly named Facebook, Inc., and TheFacebook, Inc., is an American multinational technology conglomerate based in Menlo Park, California. The company owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, among other products and services. Meta ranks among the largest American information technology companies, alongside other Big Five corporations Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. The company was ranked #31 on the Forbes Global 2000 ranking in 2023. In 2022, Meta was the company with the third-highest expenditure on research and development worldwide, with R&D expenditure amounting to US$35.3 billion.
Meta Platforms, Inc., has been involved in many lawsuits since its founding in 2004.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) is an EU regulation adopted in 2022 that addresses illegal content, transparent advertising and disinformation. It updates the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000 in EU law, and was proposed alongside the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The News Media Bargaining Code is a law designed to have large technology platforms that operate in Australia pay local news publishers for the news content made available or linked on their platforms. The law's definition of news is broad, including "content that reports, investigates or explains ... current issues or events of public significance for Australians at a local, regional or national level." Originating in April 2020, when the Australian Government asked the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) to begin drafting it, it achieved broad support in the Australian Parliament but staunch opposition from Facebook and Google. In response, on 18 February 2021, Facebook blocked Australian users from sharing or viewing news content on its platform. The Australian government strongly criticised the move, saying it demonstrated the "immense market power of these digital social giants". A few days later, Australia and Facebook came to an agreement on restoring news pages.
The Online Streaming Act, commonly known as Bill C-11, is a bill introduced in the 44th Canadian Parliament. It was first introduced on November 3, 2020, by Minister of Canadian Heritage Steven Guilbeault during the second session of the 43rd Canadian Parliament. Commonly known as Bill C-10, the bill was passed in the House of Commons on June 22, 2021, but failed to pass the Senate before Parliament was dissolved for a federal election. It was reintroduced with amendments as the Online Streaming Act during the first session of the 44th Canadian Parliament in February 2022, passed in the House of Commons on June 21, 2022, and passed in the Senate on February 2, 2023. It received royal assent on April 27, 2023, after the consideration of amendments by the House.
