Meta Will Ban Canadian News Outlets From Facebook If The Online News Act Is Implemented

Meta is not happy with the decisions coming forward by the Canadian Government.

The tech giant was informed that the country would soon be implementing its new Online News Act and that would in turn force leading tech giants like Google and Meta to compromise on advertising deals with some top local news publishers. And as you can imagine, no one wants to negotiate.

Therefore, Meta is issuing new threats of banning local news outlets from apps like Facebook, if and when the Act is implemented.

The goal of Canada’s Government was to carry out a balance in today’s locally based media market. This is where Google and Meta appear to be dominating and playing monopoly roles that prevent other competitors from making gains in their presence. Remember, these big names have most of the market share and they’re not taking a step back.

But this is where Meta comes in and claims that it does not need news content to make more gains, as mentioned in the legislation. Moreover, it’s a known fact that most people that use its apps are not doing so for the purpose of getting access to news content.

So if this new act gets implemented, it has full intentions of blocking all Canadian media outlets from its platforms completely.

If you actually go down memory lane, this is not new behavior from Meta. In 2021, something similar took place in Australia when the country’s government chose to implement a new Code that forced both Meta and Google into sharing advertising revenue with the country’s local publishers. This was related to all types of news content and any types of links to their respective websites.

Again, the goal here was to strike a balance between those large-scale platforms and other smaller operational ones so that local media outlets would continue to make money. It was also a great way to ensure local journalism remained sustained in today’s environment.

Both Meta and Google do not agree with such rules. They refer to them as flawed and senseless because they’re getting implemented on apps that are used to deliver audiences with news content.

No matter how much criticism and skepticism arose its way, the Australian Government chose to push ahead with this plan and that forced Meta into banning all local news publishers from working on its platforms as a whole.


Photo: Reuters/Yves Herman

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