Facebook parent Meta said on Saturday it would stop making news content available to Canadians on its platforms if the country’s Online News Act is passed in its current form.
The House of Commons’ “Online News Act,” or Bill C-18, introduced in April last year, sets out rules to force platforms like Meta and Google to negotiate trade deals and pay news publishers for their contents.
“A legislative framework that forces us to pay for links or content that we don’t post, and which are not the reason why the vast majority of people use our platforms, is neither sustainable nor viable,” said a Meta spokesperson.
Meta’s decision comes after Google last month began testing limited news censorship as a possible response to the bill.
Canada’s media industry has called on the government for increased regulation of tech companies to allow the industry to recoup financial losses it suffers as tech giants like Google and Meta gain an ever-increasing share of the advertising market.
In a statement on Sunday, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said it was disappointing to see Facebook resort to threats instead of working in good faith with the Canadian government, and Bill C-18 has nothing to do with it. the way Facebook makes news available to citizens of the country.
“All we ask of Facebook is to negotiate fair deals with the media when they profit from their work,” Rodriguez said. “This is part of a disappointing trend this week that tech giants would rather pull news than pay their fair share.”
Last year, Facebook expressed concern about the law and warned it could be forced to block news sharing on its platform.
Source: Terra
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