Meta to test limiting news posts on Facebook in Canada
Meta will start restricting news posts on Facebook and Instagram in Canada because it just doesn’t want to pay.
On Thursday, the social media giant basically stated that it hated Canada’s proposal Online News Act(opens in a new tab) so much so that it will test pulling news from their sites across the country. Over the next few weeks, Meta will begin testing on its social media platforms that will prevent some users and publishers from viewing and sharing some news content in Canada. Affected users and publishers will be notified Reuters reported(opens in a new tab).
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The Online News Act, introduced last April, aims to “ensure fair revenue sharing between digital platforms and news outlets.” according to the Canadian government(opens in a new tab). In practice, platforms like Meta and Google will be required to pay Canadian news outlets for the content they publish on social media sites. The argument is that Meta launched social media platforms that messed up news outlets’ business models — so social media should help fund now-struggling newsrooms.
Meta and Google are fairly consistent in their reactions to such proposed legislation – which has also hit Australia and Australia California. You want them to pay for messages? They will just remove the messages altogether.
“Publishers choose to share their content because it’s useful to them, while it’s not particularly valuable to us at all. Therefore, we have made the difficult decision that if this flawed law is passed, we must stop the availability of news content on Facebook and Instagram in Canada.”
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This test is part of your answer. Of course, the Canadian government is not too happy about that. Google has also introduced similar tests(opens in a new tab).
“When a big tech company … tells us, ‘If you don’t do this or that, I’ll pull the plug’ — that’s a threat. I have never done anything because I was afraid of a threat,” Canadian Minister of Culture Pablo Rodriguez, who introduced the bill, said Reuters(opens in a new tab).
This seems to be one of Meta’s biggest fights right now. It comes just days after Meta said it would not publish news in California if the state passed the California Journalism Preservation Act, a law that would require tech platforms to keep a portion of the money they make from advertising , to pass on to local news agencies.
