Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta will remove news from Canada’s Facebook and Instagram after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau passed a law that forces media outlets to pay for content from the tech giants.
Meta confirmed Thursday that it plans to comply with the Online News Act by ending news availability on Facebook and Instagram for its Canadian users, as it previously suggested.
Meta would not offer details about the timeline for that move, but said it would pull local news from its site before the online news law takes effect. The bill will come into effect six months after receiving royal assent.
‘We’ve shared repeatedly that in order to comply with Bill C-18, which passed Parliament today, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada,’ Lisa said. Head of Mater Communications in Laventure, Canada.
Canada’s Senate passed a bill Thursday that would require Google and Meta to pay media outlets for news content shared or otherwise repurposed on their platforms.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta will remove news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau passed a law that forced media outlets to pay for the tech giants’ content.
Meta confirmed Thursday that it plans to comply with the Online News Act by ending news availability on Facebook and Instagram for its Canadian users, as it previously suggested. Meta would not offer details on the timeline for that move, but said it would pull local news from its site before the Online News Act takes effect.
The bill, which is set to become law, was passed amid a standoff between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government and Silicon Valley tech giants.
Ottawa says the law creates a level playing field between online advertising giants and the shrinking news industry. Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has vowed to face what he describes as ‘threats’ from Facebook and Google to remove journalism from their platforms.
Legacy media and broadcasters have hailed the bill, which promises to ‘increase fairness’ in the digital news marketplace and help bring more money to shrinking newsrooms. Tech giants including Meta and Google have been blamed for disrupting and dominating the ad industry in the past, taking on smaller, traditional players.
Laura Scaffidi, the minister’s spokeswoman, said Rodriguez was set to hold a meeting with Google on Thursday afternoon, which indicated that removing news links from its popular search engine was a possibility. The company did not comment on the matter.
Meta is already undergoing a test that blocks news for up to 5 percent of its Canadian users, and Google ran a similar test earlier this year.
The Online News Act requires both companies to enter into contracts with news publishers to pay for news content displayed on their sites if it helps the tech giants make money.
‘Tech giants no longer have obligations under this legislation immediately after the passage of Bill C-18. As part of this process, all details will be disclosed before a tech giant is designated under the law,’ said Scaffidi.
Canada’s Senate passed a bill Thursday that would require Google and Meta to pay media outlets for news content shared or otherwise repurposed on their platforms.
Canada isn’t the only country looking at laws that could force big tech to pay for news operations.
Australia passed a world-first law in 2021 that forced major tech companies to contract with media outlets to compensate them for their content.
Facebook initially blocked all news on its platform while the legislation was being debated in the Senate.
The historic move inadvertently blocked non-media pages including some run by the government and emergency services.
Facebook restored news to feeds after the government entered into licensing agreements with media publishers, agreeing not to enforce the code on companies and others like Google.
Lawmakers said in December that the bill — which struck more than 30 deals between tech companies and media outlets — was largely successful.
In addition, Meta has threatened to pull news content from its platforms in California if the state passes a bill forcing major tech companies to pay publishers a ‘journalistic usage fee’.
The proposed California journalism preservation law would force social media firms and companies, including Google, to pay a cut of advertising revenue to news publishers whose work appears on their websites.
The bill is designed to reverse a decline in the local news industry, forcing publishers who receive payments to invest 70 percent of their money in ‘news reporters and support staff’.
Meta said Wednesday that the law would create a ‘slush fund’ that would benefit major media companies and threatened to pull news from Facebook and Instagram accounts accessed in California, where it is headquartered.
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