Facebook is threatening to axe news content sharing on its platform as Canada’s federal government gets one step closer to imposing a new law forcing social media companies to share profits with news publishers.
The Online News Act, which was first unveiled back in April, will force major social media platforms such as Meta Platforms and Google to create contracts with Canadian news publishers and compensate them for revenue generated by their content. The proposed rules are currently being mulled over by the parliamentary committee, and Facebook is complaining it wasn’t included in the discussions. “We believe the Online News Act misrepresents the relationship between platforms and news publishers, and we call on the government to review its approach,” wrote Meta Canada head of media partnerships Marc Dinsdale in a blog post.
“In the face of adverse legislation based on false assumptions that defy the logic of how Facebook operates, we believe it’s important to be transparent about the possibility that we may be forced to reconsider allowing news content sharing in Canada,” he added. Pablo Rodriguez, Canada’s Heritage Minister, instead argued that major social media conglomerates such as Meta Platforms must make reasonable deals with news content creators that are then overlooked by a regulator. “All we’re asking the tech giants like Facebook to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work,” Rodriguez said on Friday.
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A similar law forcing tech giants to pay local media for news content was passed in Australia last year, prompting Facebook to axe all third-party content in the country for over a week, while Google threatened to shut down its Australian search engine. The Australian government eventually ended up making amendments to the legislation and both social media giants ended up making deals with news content creators.
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