This retaliation by the multinational for the passage of Bill C-18, which would include sharing some of the revenue Facebook and Google generate in Canada through traditional media, will disadvantage between 240,000 and 1.2 million Canadians in news broadcast by major national media are published.
This pressure from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is aimed squarely at the Trudeau administration to make changes to its bill, which is currently under consideration in the Senate, or simply withdraw it.
Recently, the giant Google also announced that it would be conducting trials in June to block certain Canadian users from seeing articles, reels and stories published by Canadian news media on its platforms.
In an interview on Friday at ICI Première, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez assured that he had no intention of being imposed.
You have the perfect example here of giant internet people who are rich, powerful and influential, with big lawyers coming to a sovereign country and saying, ‘I don’t like what you’re doing with your law. [alors] You’d better change it or I’ll retire.
“I see it as a threat. I have never operated under threat and never will. »
– A quote from Pablo Rodriguez, Canadian Heritage Minister
When asked if he might be willing to change his law, or at least discuss it with Meta bosses, the minister explained: “My door is always open.” They have my mobile number.
But I would say in general they don’t want to be regulated, he added. They fought C-11, my cultural community support bill, they fought C-18, which is designed to help our media and our newsrooms.
After Google, it’s up to Meta to block news media content on Facebook to challenge Ottawa’s bill that will make web giants pay for content shared on their platforms. Report by Valérie-Micaela Bain.
Canada is the second country in the world after Australia to have passed such a law. Australia was also the target of pressure from internet giants in February 2021 before an agreement was reached.
However, Pablo Rodriguez believes that Meta and Google could be tougher on this world in their crackdown on Canada, as it is a neighboring country to the United States where states, particularly California, are working on similar laws to protect their media.
He believes the web giants may therefore be tempted to use Canada as an example.
We will defend ourselves against that, replies Mr. Rodriguez. They don’t tell us how to write our bills any more than I tell them how to run their business.
The minister is also concerned about the impact that these arbitrary news bans on social networks could have at a time when citizens need the information provided by the government for their safety. He cited the current example of forest fires.
Mr Rodriguez recalled that several government Facebook pages had been taken down in retaliation in Australia.
A purely commercial decision
Meta is the parent company of the social networks Facebook and Instagram.
Photo: Portal/Dado Ruvic
Speaking for Meta, Rachel Curran, the company’s Public Policy Director for Canada, confirmed that trials will be conducted in June to check for potential issues before Facebook and Instagram block media content outright.
According to Ms. Curran, the removal of journalistic content from Meta’s platforms is a purely commercial decision. The amount the company makes from media reports is negligible, she said.
According to Meta, less than 3% of the posts Facebook users see in their news feed contain links to journalistic articles, a proportion that many users already consider excessive, she points out.
“We’re under a lot of competitive pressure and struggling to grab users’ time and attention,” Curran told The Canadian Press.
Of course, news has value from a social perspective. It is valuable for our democracy. However, she concludes that they simply don’t have much commercial or economic value to our company.