Mark Zuckerberg is coming through on his promises. Well, at least one.
On Friday, Meta announced that it no news posts will be available on Facebook and Instagram in Canada, a few weeks after testing its ability to follow through with the change.
The decision comes in response to Canada’s Online News Act, which passed through Canada’s Parliament and intends to « ensure fair revenue sharing between digital platforms and news outlets, » according to the Canadian government. In practice, it would require tech giants like Meta and Google to pay Canadian news outlets for the content those news outlets put on their sites. Since Meta and Google make money off of these posts and, for the most part, local news organizations see very little of that revenue. Moreover, these social media platforms disrupted the business models of news outlets so much so that some organizations are encouraging those very platforms to help the now-struggling newsrooms.
Facebook and Instagram are not having it.
« Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act (Bill C-18) taking effect, » the social media giant wrote in a news release. « We have repeatedly shared that in order to comply with Bill C-18, passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada. »
At this point, it’s Meta’s M.O. to refuse to help news publishers. It fought back against similar proposed laws in Australia and California by consistently saying it would rather remove news from its platforms altogether than to pay for news one bit.
