Move comes in response to Canadian legislation requiring internet giants to pay news publishers
Didn’t meta (Facebook) also threatened to remove news from Australia when a similar law passed? And they did nothing.
Because they struck a deal with the media companies in that case. That hasn’t happened with Canada. They’re gonna do it this time, and I’m sure Canada will be fine without getting its news through Facebook.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Meta has begun the process to end access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada, the company said on Tuesday.
The move comes in response to legislation in the country requiring internet giants to pay news publishers.
Canada’s heritage minister, Pascale St-Onge, who is in charge of the government’s dealings with Meta, called the move irresponsible.
Canada’s public broadcast CBC also called Meta’s move irresponsible and said that it was “an abuse of their market power”.
Canada’s legislation is similar to a ground-breaking law that Australia passed in 2021 and had triggered threats from Google and Facebook to curtail their services.
This is good news, I think fb will lose more than the Canadian news publishers by doing this
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Meta had said links to news articles make up less than 3% of the content on its users’ feed and argued that news lacked economic value.
Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, had said in May that such an argument was flawed and “dangerous to our democracy, to our economy”.
I can believe it. My feed barely contains anyone I know or follow. Last time I checked, 31/36 things in my feed were things I never asked to see. Facebook is like watching network TV except it’s only commercials and every fifteen minutes they take a break and let you know how a friend is doing.
I don’t go there very often.
It can’t be a flawed argument if it reflects reality. So if we accept Meta’s information to be accurate, then they’re just stating a fact. FB users don’t care about news articles, so attempts to wring money out of a third party isn’t going to work, as we can see here.
I’ve always been dubious of the “you should pay us to send us traffic” stance that news organizations seem to take every 5 or so years. It never works out.
good riddance
People get news from meta? They should cancel all news access
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I did! I can only delete it once.
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