Meta Platforms said Tuesday it has begun blocking access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada in response to a law that would require internet giants to pay news publishers.
The Canadian government quickly condemned the move as “irresponsible” and said the world was watching Canada’s progress.
The Online News Act passed by the Canadian Parliament will force platforms such as Google parent Alphabet and Meta to negotiate business deals with Canadian news publishers for their content.
“News outlets voluntarily share content on Facebook and Instagram to grow their audiences and drive profits,” said Rachel Curran, director of public policy at Meta Canada. “In contrast, we know the people who use our platforms Don’t look to us for news.”
“This is irresponsible,” Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, who is responsible for the government’s dealings with Meta, said in a statement Tuesday.
“They would rather prevent users from accessing high-quality local news than pay news organizations their fair share,” St. Onge said.
“We will continue to stand our ground. After all, if the government can’t support Canadians against Big Tech, who will?” she added.
Meta and Google said in June they would ban access to news on their platforms in the country, amid a campaign against the law that is part of a broader global trend to make tech companies pay for news.
Canadian public broadcaster CBC also called Meta’s move irresponsible and an “abuse of market power.”
The Canadian law is similar to a groundbreaking law passed in Australia in 2021 that prompted threats from Google and Facebook to restrict their services.
The two companies eventually reached an agreement with Australian media companies after legislative amendments were proposed.
But in the case of the Canadian law, Google argued that it was broader than those enacted in Australia and Europe because it priced links to news stories that appeared in search results and could apply to outlets that did not produce news.
Meta has said that links to news articles account for less than 3% of user feed content, arguing that news lacks economic value.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in May that the narrative was flawed and “a danger to our democracy and our economy.”
© Thomson Reuters 2023
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and was automatically generated from syndicated feeds.)
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