Move comes in response to Canadian legislation requiring internet giants to pay news publishers
Guardian staff and agencies Tue 1 Aug 2023 22.14 BST
Meta has begun the process to end access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada, the company said on Tuesday.
The move comes in response to legislation in the country requiring internet giants to pay news publishers.
The findings suggest that Facebook users seek out content that aligns with their views.
Meta’s communications director, Andy Stone, said the changes will roll out in the coming weeks.
Canada’s heritage minister, Pascale St-Onge, who is in charge of the government’s dealings with Meta, called the move irresponsible.
“[Meta] would rather block their users from accessing good quality and local news instead of paying their fair share to news organizations,” St-Onge said in a statement on Tuesday. “We’re going to keep standing our ground. After all, if the government can’t stand up for Canadians against tech giants, who will?”
Canada’s public broadcast CBC also called Meta’s move irresponsible and said that it was “an abuse of their market power”.
The Online News Act, passed by the Canadian parliament, would force platforms like Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and Meta to negotiate commercial deals with Canadian news publishers for their content.
The legislation is part of a broader global trend of governments trying to make tech firms pay for news. Canada’s legislation is similar to a ground-breaking law that Australia passed in 2021 and had triggered threats from Google and Facebook to curtail their services. Both the companies eventually struck deals with Australian media firms after amendments to the legislation were offered.
In the US, the state of California has also considered a similar law. In that case, too, Meta has threatened to withdraw services from the state if the legislation goes through.
On the Canadian law, Google has argued that it is broader than those enacted in Australia and Europe as it puts a price on news story links displayed in search results and can apply to outlets that do not produce news.
Meta had said links to news articles make up less than 3% of the content on its users’ feed and argued that news lacked economic value.
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, had said in May that such an argument was flawed and “dangerous to our democracy, to our economy”.
The government should up the ante. Facebook should be treated as a publisher. Make them legally liable for all of the libel, defamation and slander etc being thrown around on their sites. Now THAT would throw a monkey wrench into profitability.
Having said that, even my 83 year old father can navigate his way to CBC, CTV and Toronto Star without issue, and he still gets a paper home delivered. He’s only ever gone to FB for family stuff, never news. I’m not sure how much effect Zuck’s hissy fit is going to have on most people.
I recently got a library card with comes with free access to PressReader. To be honest, I’ve found myself really enjoying reading digital copies of paper newspapers again through it. I can finally just read an article and not have to have it immediately followed by all the bullshit comments that social media and the direct news agency websites have. It felt so simple and fresh.
It would throw a monkey wrench into Canadian profitability. Something tells me Meta would be a-okay leaving the Canadian market if Trudeau tries to pull something like this.
Nature would finally heal itself. People would rejoice in the streets. I hope social media in it’s current form dies off in my lifetime.