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Meta Threatens To Pull News Content From Facebook And Instagram In Canada

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Meta has warned the Canadian government that it will pull news links from Facebook and Instagram if plans go ahead to make social media platforms pay publishers for their content.

Bill C-18 would require companies such as Meta and Google to strike deals with Canadian media companies to pay for linking to their content online - potentially hundreds of millions of dollars per year. It's already passed through the House of Commons, and is now being considered by the Senate’s Committee on Transport and Communications.

"Ultimately, this legislation puts Meta in an invidious position. In order to comply, we have to either operate in a flawed and unfair regulatory environment, or we have to end the availability of news content in Canada," says president of global affairs, Nick Clegg.

"With a heavy heart we choose the latter. As the Minister of Canadian Heritage has said, this is a business decision. It’s not something we want to do, but it is what we will have to do."

Meta's concern, it says, is that most of the funds generated by the Act will go to broadcasters, rather than the local and regional publishers it was supposed to support - 'Robin Hood in reverse', says Clegg.

And while the proposals have been compared to similar plans in Australia, they go further, he says, making Canada the first democracy in the world to charge for links to web pages.

Clegg was due to appear yesterday in front of a Senate committee hearing to discuss the bill, but pulled out, claiming that the focus of the meeting appeared to have changed.

"Meta’s President, Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, had been due to speak later today at a hearing of Canada’s Heritage Committee entitled ‘The Response of Companies in the Information Technology Sector to Bill C-18’. This was an opportunity to present and discuss Meta’s position in relation to Canada’s draft Online News Act (C-18), as Meta representatives did at a Senate committee last week," the company says in a statement.

"Late on Thursday, the committee notified Meta that the title of the hearing had changed to ‘Tech Giants’ Current and Ongoing Use of Intimidation and Subversion Tactics to Evade Regulation in Canada and Across the World’. Clearly, it would be a very different hearing to the one Nick Clegg was invited to."

As a result, Clegg pulled out shortly before the meeting. Instead, he sent Kevin Chan, the company’s global policy director, and Rachel Curran, public policy head for Canada, who told the committee that the company was already working on a content blocking strategy for news links in Canada.

Meta is also attempting to disassociate itself from Google, with Clegg saying that the company doesn’t solicit, need or collect content from news websites to put on its services, with users or publishers choosing to share it themselves.

And, he says, Facebook Feed sent registered news publishers in Canada more than 1.9 billion clicks in the 12 months to April 2022 - 'free marketing', he says, worth more than $230 million.

"The truth is, our users don’t come to us for news. They come to share the ups and downs of life, the things that make them happy and sad, that interest them and entertain them," he says.

"Links to news stories are a tiny proportion of that – less than three percent of the content they see in their Facebook Feed."

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