Meta has announced that it will cut access to news for the Canadian users as the company refused to go along with the government’s plan to have social media companies pay publishers for news articles.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram has announced that it will no longer serve news articles to Canadian users. The decision comes as the Canadian government prepares to bring Bill C-18 into effect.
The Bill, C-18, dubbed as the Online News Act was proposed to the Canadian parliament last year and required social media companies like Facebook to make commercial deals with news agencies in order to serve news on their platform. The government backed the proposal noting that the bill would help the Canadian news agencies and publication houses to receive compensation and a share of ad-revenue for their news articles.
In 2020, online advertising revenues in Canada reached $9.7 billion, with two companies taking in more than 80 percent of those revenues. It’s time to address this market imbalance.
Bill C-18 would require tech giants to make fair commercial deals with outlets for the news and information that is shared on their platforms.
As the bill received royal assent on Thursday, Meta announced that it plans to cut news content from its platform in Canada.
