LAGOS, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA) – Meta Platforms announced on Tuesday that it has started the process of removing access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada in response to a legislation mandating internet firms to pay news publishers.
Quickly criticizing the action as “irresponsible,” the Canadian government asserted that the entire world was watching how the process was being handled in Canada.
The Canadian Parliament’s Online News Act will compel companies like Google parent Alphabet and Meta to bargain for revenue-sharing agreements with local news organizations for their content.
“News outlets voluntarily share content on Facebook and Instagram to expand their audiences and help their bottom line,” Rachel Curran, Meta’s head of public policy in Canada, said. “In contrast, we know the people using our platforms don’t come to us for news.”
Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, who is in charge of the government’s dealings with Meta, said in a Tuesday statement: “This is irresponsible.”
“They would rather block their users from accessing good quality and local news instead of paying their fair share to news organizations,” St-Onge said.
“We’re going to keep standing our ground. After all, if the Government can’t stand up for Canadians against tech giants, who will?” she added.
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Both Meta and Google said in June that they will restrict access to news on their platforms in the nation as part of a battle against the law, which is a component of a larger worldwide push to demand digital companies pay for news.
Meta was criticized by Canada’s national broadcaster CBC as being reckless and “an abuse of their market power.”
The Australian law, which was groundbreaking at the time and led to threats of service reductions from Google and Facebook, is identical to the Canadian law.
After the law was changed, both companies finally signed agreements with Australian media companies.
However, Google has maintained that the Canadian rule is more expansive than those in Australia and Europe since it places a price on news article links that are displayed in search results and might apply to sources that do not create news.
Meta had contended that news lacked economic value by claiming that connections to news stories made up less than 3% of the information in its users’ feeds.
According to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, such an argument is faulty and “dangerous to our democracy, to our economy.”