Canada's Parliament passed legislation that will force Facebook to share more profits with news publishers, a move that led parent company Meta to ban the sharing of news on its platforms.
Canada's legislative body passed C-18, also known as the Online News Act, on Thursday. The law would force Big Tech companies to negotiate compensation deals with news organizations so that they must pay them for all content published on their platforms. Facebook quickly responded to its passage by announcing that it would no longer share news on its platform in Canada.
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“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,” Meta wrote in a blog post.
Canada's leadership appeared unfazed by the gesture. “Facebook knows very well that they have no obligations under the act right now," Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez wrote in an email to the National Post. "Following Royal Assent of Bill C-18, the Government will engage in a regulatory and implementation process. If the Government can’t stand up for Canadians against tech giants, who will?”
Google confirmed that it is also in negotiations with the Canadian government and that it intended to seek a resolution that did not end with ending news service in Canada.
Facebook has threatened to pull news in past tussles with governments.
Congress is considering a similar bill in the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. The bill was pushed through the Senate Judiciary Committee last term but failed to pass due to disagreements about amendments. Meta made similar threats over the JCPA. The bill was recently passed by committee and is waiting to be considered by the Senate. It is expected to run into resistance in the House, as Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) emphasized that the bill would be "dead on the floor."
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The company banned sharing and viewing news stories in Australia after the country passed a law requiring the Big Tech giant to pay news outlets for their content. The ban was reversed within days after international pressure.