The Canadian government quickly denounced the move as "irresponsible,"
and said the world is watching the process play out in Canada.
The Online News Act, passed by the Canadian parliament,
would force platforms like Google parent Alphabet and Meta to negotiate
commercial deals with Canadian news publishers for their content.
"News outlets voluntarily share content on Facebook and
Instagram to expand their audiences and help their bottom line," Rachel
Curran, Meta's head of public policy in Canada, said. "In contrast, we
know the people using our platforms don't come to us for news."
Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, who is in charge
of the government's dealings with Meta, said in a Tuesday statement: "This
is irresponsible."
"They would rather block their users from accessing
good quality and local news instead of paying their fair share to news
organizations," St-Onge said.
"We're going to keep standing our ground. After all, if
the Government can't stand up for Canadians against tech giants, who will?” she
added.
In a campaign against the law, which is part of a broader
global trend to make tech firms pay for news, both Meta and Google said in June
they would block access to news on their platforms in the country.
Canada's public broadcast CBC also called Meta's move
irresponsible and that it was "an abuse of their market power."
The Canadian law is similar to a ground-breaking law that
Australia passed in 2021 and triggered threats from Google and Facebook to
curtail their services.
Both companies eventually struck deals with Australian media
firms after amendments to the legislation were offered.
But on Canadian law, Google has argued that it is broader
than those enacted in Australia and Europe as it puts a price on news story
links displayed in search results and can apply to outlets that do not produce
news.
Meta had said links to news articles make up less than 3
percent of the content on its users' feeds and argued that news lacked economic
value.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had said in May that
such an argument was flawed and "dangerous to our democracy, to our
economy." © Reuters