By: Rosemary Jaramillo
When 22-year-old Alexandra Shvarzam scrolls through TikTok or X, formerly Twitter, she feels informed. Between trending stories and viral threads, it seems like she’s keeping up with what’s happening in the world.
But ask her about Bill C-18, the Canadian law behind why her Instagram feed no longer shows national news and she pauses. She’s never heard of it. She’s not alone.
Despite the sweeping impact of Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act, many young Canadians remain unaware of its existence. The legislation, passed in 2023, requires platforms such as Facebook and Google to compensate Canadian news organizations for sharing or hosting their content.
In response, Meta blocked access to news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada. Google briefly threatened to do the same before reaching an agreement with the federal government.
The debate between tech giants and lawmakers feels far removed from students like Shvarzman. In interviews with several young Canadians, only one recognized the bill by name. Most says they hadn’t noticed the block or understood why Canadian news had quietly vanished from their feeds. The lack of awareness reflects a broader shift in how young Canadians consume information.
According to the Digital News Report 2024, only 14 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 44 say they primarily access news through dedicated news websites or apps. While 29 per cent rely on social media to stay informed, a trend that leaves them vulnerable to missing key stories filtered out by the platforms themselves.
That shift hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“It’s been pretty negative,” says Dr. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, when describing the overall impact of Bill C-18. “The effects were predictable and predicted. It’s come to pass.”
Since the law came into effect, Meta has blocked Canadian news on Facebook and Instagram, a move Geist says has had “a pretty significant impact” on publishers. Google, meanwhile, reached an agreement with the federal government to avoid similar restrictions. However, Geist noted traffic patterns may still be shifting due to other factors such as AI-driven changes to search.
He described Meta’s approach as uprising. “News was not and is not, viewed as particularly valuable for them,” Geist says. “News link sends users away from the platform, not onto the platform.”
Meta is much happier having users post pictures of family or memes. Geist says that business logic helps explain why the company “steadfastly stood by that approach” to block news entirely. Google, on the other hand, maintained its access to news content, given its “corporate imperative” to provide a comprehensive search product.
But even with Google’s payments through the new collective, Geist questioned whether the legislation has helped at all. “It certainly hasn’t had the impact that I think its proponents had hoped,” he says. “The notion that somehow this would solve the challenges faced by some in legacy media, I think, is quite clearly not proven to be the case.”
For students, the consequences of the bill don’t show up in policy debates or newsroom revenue. They show up in the quiet absence of Canadian stories from the places they scroll every day.
Jessica Davenport, a previous Georgian College student, didn’t realize anything had changed until she was told directly. She still sees news on Instagram and YouTube Shorts, just not from Canadian outlets.
“I think I got so used to seeing news on my feed that maybe I just didn’t notice that it’s like not there as much anymore,” she says.
Like many young people interviewed, Davenport hadn’t heard of Bill C-18 before. Once she learned what it did, her reaction was blunt: “That feels stupid to me.”
Davenport says she worries about what that gap means for young people who depend on social platforms to stay informed.
She believes that younger generations are “plugged in all the time” and that news should not “be gate-kept from the people that it’s directed toward.”
She believes access to Canadian news is essential, even for those who aren’t heavy consumers.
“I do think it’s a basic human right to be kept informed of what’s going on in your own country and your home,” Davenport says.
Other students echoed this. The block hasn’t dramatically changed how they scroll, but it has changed what they see and what they don’t.
For Mariana Martinez-Vega, a journalism and political science graduate now studying law abroad, the shift in social media news is both jarring and nuanced. She prefers reading news directly from websites rather than social media, wary of misinformation and the echo chambers that algorithms can create.
For Martinez-Vega, the absence of Canadian news on platforms like Instagram feels less like protection from misinformation and more like censorship.
“Rather than them protecting us from misinformation,” she says. “It feels more like they are censoring.”
Martinez-Vega’s perspective highlights a segment of young Canadians who actively seek credible sources but are affected by platform restrictions. For students trying to contribute to news, smaller or emerging outlets now face higher barriers to reaching an audience.
U.S. News Consumption
For some students, the legislation is seen as having good intentions.
Julia Vellucci, a Humber Polytechnic journalism graduate, says she understood the legislation as an attempt to help news organizations by compensating them for using their content.
For her, the bill’s intention made sense, especially as someone entering an industry where compensation often doesn’t match the labour involved.
“You want these news organizations to be entitled to get what they deserve”, she says, noting that journalists put extensive work that isn’t always financially rewarded.
But despite understanding the rationale, she was frustrated by the fallout. She questioned whether blocking news was achieving anything meaningful.
“You can still get that news in other ways,” she says. “So I don’t really understand what the whole point of it was.”
That confusion deepened as the block persisted. Vellucci says she initially expected it to be temporary, maybe lasting only until platforms and the government negotiated some way to compensate outlets.
She says for young journalists the consequences were especially discouraging. As someone trying to share her published work as a student, at the time. She felt the block undercut the visibility students rely on.
She recalled posting her work just to see Instagram refuse to open them. It said nobody can view her work because the URL contained the word ‘news’. For Vellucci, this left her frustrated because she just wanted people to view her work.
Vellucci argued that blocking access on the platforms most young people use doesn’t strengthen the relationship between audiences and Canadian news; it weakens it, specifically, for those relying solely on social media.
At the same time, she emphasized that newsletters and official news websites remain unaffected, which means people can still access journalism, but only if they already know to look beyond social platforms.
Ultimately, she says, the situation shifted her sense of journalism’s place in democracy. The idea of removing an entire mode of access, she says, runs counter to the idea of keeping the public informed.
“Journalism, I think of it as a multi-media platform,” Vellucci says. “Since you got rid of that social media, it’s just kind of like, okay, you’re doing this to make a point, how long can you make this point for?”
While students are navigating the immediate, day-to-day consequences of the block, experts say their experiences point to a much larger systematic shift in how Canadian journalism is produced, accessed and sustained.
Professor Sherry Yu, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, emphasizes the broader systemic implications of Bill C-18 for Canadian journalism. Yu points out that while the act aims to support Canadian news organizations, its regulations unintentionally exclude smaller outlets. For example, media organizations must employ at least two full-time journalists to qualify for compensation, making one-person operations or very small publications ineligible.
Yu explains that the legislation is the product of multiple stakeholders, making its intentions complex and sometimes difficult to disentangle. The outcome has been uneven, with major organizations benefiting more than smaller ones.
She says Bill C-18 affects both production and consumption. Students and younger audiences often play hybrid roles: they are not only consumers of news but also contributors, posting opinions online or seeking to publish their work through smaller outlets. Restrictions on digital platforms reduce these opportunities, making it harder for emerging voices to reach audiences. For news consumers, limited access to certain platforms requires finding alternative ways to stay informed, which can create confusion or increase exposure to misinformation during this transitional period.
Yu cautions that young audiences cannot be easily generalized. Awareness and engagement vary widely: some know about the act and resources it provides, while others remain unaware. Their responses to these changes differ accordingly.
Regarding the legislation itself, Yu notes that its regulations are imperfect and could have been better tailored to the needs of small, financially vulnerable outlets. The unintended consequences have left some organizations disappointed and navigating a more complicated news environment. While the full impact of Bill C-18 is still emerging, it is clear that the effects will vary depending on the size and structure of the media organization, as well as the ways audiences engage with news content.
For students like Davenport and Shvarzam, the absence of Canadian stories on social media is confusing, while young journalists like Vellucci feel their work’s visibility is undermined.
Experts like Yu says that smaller outlets face new obstacles, even as larger organizations benefit. As the digital news landscape evolves, awareness and initiative will be key for younger audiences to stay informed and for journalism to remain relevant.