Facebook and Instagram block news over payment to publishers law

Gareth Corfield
Fri, 23 June 2023

Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook and Instagram have blocked news from being shared in Canada after a new law was passed forcing Big Tech companies to pay publishers for using their content.

Canada’s new Online News Act means social media and search giants such as Facebook parent Meta, Google, TikTok and others will have to pay publishers for reproducing news stories or snippets from them.

The law, which received royal assent on Thursday, is the latest move by countries which believe Big Tech’s near-monopoly on online advertising harms news publishers and starves the public of important information.

Justin Trudeau said earlier this month that Meta’s promised ban on news content being shared across Facebook and Instagram was “a real problem”.

Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, said it would carry out a threatened ban on news stories being shared on its platforms, in response to the law’s passage.

Its Canadian press office issued a statement, saying: “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.

Pablo Rodriguez, Canada’s heritage minister, said the new law “levels the playing field by putting the power of Big Tech in check and ensuring that even our smallest news business can benefit through this regime and receive fair compensation for their work”.

News publishers worldwide have long accused the likes of Google and Meta of unfairly profiting from their content by displaying it on their websites while keeping the lion’s share of advertising revenues to themselves.

Google recorded sales of $258bn (£202bn) during 2022, while Meta made revenues of $117bn over the same period.

Mr Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, said earlier this month: “The fact that these internet giants would rather cut off Canadians’ access to local news than pay their fair share is a real problem”, predicting: “It’s not going to work.”

Australia passed similar laws in 2021 aimed at forcing Big Tech to negotiate fair compensation rates with local news publishers.

An initial ban on news sharing by Facebook in Australia crumbled after the Australian government made key concessions.

Ministers promised not to enforce a legal bargaining code if Facebook voluntarily signed content licensing deals with a large enough number of publishers.

Rod Sims, the architect of Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, has said the resulting cash-for-content deals were worth more than A$200m (£105m) to the country’s A$2.5bn newspaper industry.