Canada’s Meta Pulls News From Facebook And Instagram

(CTN News) – According to Meta, the company will shut down access to news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada as a result of the country’s federal government passing the Online News Act, or Bill C-18.

This mandates that tech companies pay content rights fees to domestic media outlets to share user data.

According to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, in a statement Thursday, “we have made it clear that as a result of Bill C-18, which was passed in Parliament today, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada.”

Following Parliament’s decision, the company added that it is currently conducting several weeks of product tests so as to “end news availability in Canada” as a result of Parliament’s decision.

Earlier this year, a similar law was passed in Australia, mandating that digital platforms such as Facebook and Google pay domestic media outlets when links to their content are made in search engine results or news feeds.

This led Meta to take a similar approach in response to Facebook’s recent decisions to block users from seeing or sharing headlines on Facebook, which is similar to what it is currently doing in Canada.

According to reports, some pages for hospitals and emergency services were also blocked by the service.

The Australian government finally relented, and Meta was able to come to an agreement with the government through amendments to the law that allow tech companies two months to negotiate with media outlets before the law becomes effective.

Earlier this month, California lawmakers advanced a bipartisan bill that would require digital platforms to pay news outlets for the content they host on their platforms, making California the first state in the U.S. Meta to have contemplated such a measure.

If the legislation is approved by the state Senate and passed into law, it will require online platforms with a minimum of 50 million monthly active U.S. users or a billion worldwide active users or a net annual sales or market cap exceeding $550 billion to pay media outlets for hosting their content if the platform has a minimum of 50 million monthly active U.S. users or a billion global active users.

If the law passed in California, Meta said it would remove news from Facebook and Instagram, similar to what it does in Canada now that the law is in place.

It is important to note that while the temporary nature of these product tests is to be understood, we intend to permanently end the availability of news content in Canada following the passage of Bill C-18.

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