Canada decision from Meta
Andy Stone, director of meta policy communications, on X (Twitter) said, “As we’ve long said, if Canada’s flawed Online News Act passes, we will have to end news broadcasting on FB and IG in Canada. ” he said.
In June, the Canadian Parliament passed the Online News Act, a law that forces tech platforms to negotiate with publishers to ensure “fair revenue sharing” on their content. When these agreements are not made voluntarily, the law allows for mandatory arbitration as a “last resort”, a result that the tech side may not like.
All Facebook and Instagram users in Canada will eventually begin to see limitations on news as the new policy goes into effect in the coming weeks. The changes will apply to publishers as well as users who share news and links. Similarly, Google is actually affected by this law. The search giant plans to implement its own news blackout in search results following the law.
Canadian legislators acted out of concern that online platforms were unfairly harming the news industry. It is stated that technology giants have been using the content obtained from publishers for free for a long time, causing the collapse of the news industry.