Facebook-parent Meta has threatened to suspend news content from its platforms in Canada if the country’s Online News Act is passed in its current version.
The Online News Act or Bill C-18, introduced in April last year, will enable news publishers to negotiate commercial deals with such leading platforms as Meta and Google. It will oblige tech companies to pay publishers for their news content.
Meta has strongly resisted the legislation, however.
“A legislative framework that compels us to pay for links or content that we do not post, and which are not the reason the vast majority of people use our platforms, is neither sustainable nor workable,” said a Meta spokesperson.
The news media industry in Canada has urged the government to increase regulation of tech companies. This would enable publishers to recover financial losses they have suffered in recent years due to Big Tech’s dominance over digital advertising. Meta and Google are known to profit heavily from news content and have repeatedly been called out for exploiting the digital ad market.
“All we’re asking Facebook to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work,” said Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez. “This is part of a disappointing trend this week that tech giants would rather pull news than pay their fair share.”
The minister expressed disappointment over Meta’s threat to remove news content from its platform altogether in case the legislation is adopted.
Meta’s response to the proposed law arrives a month after Google started testing limited news censorship in response to the Online News Act. Subsequently, Google was questioned by the Canadian parliament over the blocking of news content in the country for select users. It has claimed that the test is like any other regular product-related assessment conducted by the company and that no decisions have been taken regarding any permanent product changes for the Canadian market.
Meta first raised concern over the Online News Act in October last year, stating it did not scrape links to news content and that it was not a significant source of revenue for the company. Posts with links to news articles made up only three per cent of what Canadian consumers saw on their Facebook Feed; users told Meta they wanted to see less news and political content, Meta added.
Likewise in December 2022, Meta threatened to remove news content from Facebook and Instagram over the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) in US. It would allow media companies greater control over the revenue generated through their original content by leading social media giants.
In 2021, Meta briefly suspended news content from its platforms in Australia after a similar legislation was passed. The content was restored following successful talks between Meta and Australian media companies, which resulted in several amendments to the legislation.
The problem is even worse in countries like Pakistan, which lack both political economy and market power to hold the Big Tech accountable. Google and Meta skim nearly 85 per cent of the digital advertising revenue generated through news content in Pakistan. This both impedes and limits the space for mechanisms that can enable direct monetisation as media organisations are largely dependent on platform-based monetisation to generate revenue through their content.
The following research, conducted by Media Matters for Democracy (MMfD), takes a comprehensive look at Pakistan’s media economy and how news outlets are struggling to attain a sustainable digital footing against Big Tech’s exploitation of their original content.
State of Pakistan’s Media Economy: Impact on Independent Journalism
