In Canada, News Content Might Disappear From Meta.

May 9, 2023

Meta responds to “flawed” legislation that would require it to pay news publishers to use their content on Instagram and Facebook.

If proposed legislation to establish a “fair revenue sharing” system becomes law, Meta is threatening to remove news content from Facebook and Instagram in Canada.

Why it matters If news content is blocked from being shared, publishers who rely on traffic, engagement, or brand awareness from Meta properties could suffer a significant loss.

What Meta stated: We should end the accessibility of information content on Facebook and Instagram in Canada,” as per Scratch Clegg, leader of worldwide undertakings at Meta. Referring to it as “imperfect regulation,” he added that this would make Canada the “main vote based system to put a cost on free connections to pages, which contradicts worldwide standards,” Bloomberg detailed.

U.S. legislation that would have allowed news organizations to collectively negotiate with social platforms over the terms on which their material appears on their sites led Meta to threaten to remove news from its platform last year. In 2021, Facebook also got into another fight with Australia.

Online News Act. According to the Government of Canada website, Bill C-18 “proposes a regime to regulate digital platforms that act as intermediaries in Canada’s news media ecosystem in order to enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news market.”

Google previously restricted admittance to news in Canada. Google tried blocking news in Google Search, Google Discover, and other Google surfaces across all Canadian publisher websites earlier this year. Only less than 4% of Canadians were eligible to take this test. In February, a spokesperson for Google informed Search Engine Land that this was a “potential product response to Bill C-18.”