Meta announced that Facebook is preparing to block news sharing in Canada, and the reason is Canadian legislation, which requires big tech companies to compensate media.

As stated in The Wall Street Journalfor Meta, the Online News Act is seen as a proposal that “unfairly benefits from its relationship with publishers” and “distorts the relationship between platforms and news publishers”.

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The law requires tech companies — such as Facebook and Google — to share their revenue with publishers who publish and aggregate information. The proposal is a way to compensate the vehicles that produce the news for their work.

The country’s parliamentary committee is reviewing the legislation and hearing testimony. Last week, Facebook said it was not asked to testify about the law.

“Faced with adverse legislation based on false assumptions that defy the logic of how Facebook operates, we believe it is important that we be transparent about the possibility that we may be forced to consider continuing to allow news sharing. content in Canada,” said Marc Dinsdale, head of media partnerships at Meta’s Canadian unit.

The law is very similar to a measure applied in Australia in 2021, which required Google and Facebook to pay for shared media content in the country. With the approval of the Media Negotiation Code, companies will have to negotiate with Australian agencies to link or use the content.

Meta ended by saying that he called on the Canadian government to review legislation acting “in favor of public service journalism”.

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