#Meta to Block Facebook and Instagram News Sharing in Canada

Canadian legislation designed to get U.S. digital tech giants to pay local publishers for news snippets shared or repurposed on their platforms has become law.

But passage of Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act, has so far not convinced Meta and Google to negotiate commercial licensing deals with Canadian publishers for their local platforms. Instead, Meta announced it will block Canadians from viewing or sharing news on its Facebook and Instagram sites north of the border.

“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,” Meta, a division of Facebook, said in a statement on Thursday.

Canadian representatives for Alphabet’s Google could not be reached for direct comment, but that digital giant has signaled it may also pull the plug on local news sharing north of the border. Google did an earlier test run that temporarily blocked news content for certain Canadian audiences.

The standoff with Silicon Valley tech giants has undermined efforts by the federal government in Ottawa to get Meta and Google — both major Internet gateways for Canadians — to share local revenues with news publishers after mandated negotiations.

“A free and independent press is fundamental to our democracy. It 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,” Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said in a statement.  

Passage of Bill C-18 is part of an ongoing revamp of Canada’s media regulatory regime that imposes first-time rules and obligations on American digital platforms operating locally and with outsized market muscle as competition from foreign online platforms continues to put local broadcasters and news publishers under pressure.

The country recently passed into law Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act, which will force digital platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify for the first time to subsidize local content.

Another round of lobbying in Ottawa will now take place as the CRTC, the country’s media regulator, is tapped to hammer out a new framework to ensure foreign streaming giants invest in local film and TV production, and also define how deep the Americans will dip into their pockets to do so.

The CRTC will similarly oversee the Online News Act and bargaining – including possible final-offer arbitration – between the U.S. digital platforms and Canadian news publishers. Bill C-18 follows similar legislation in Australia where Meta also blocked news content from reaching local users before establishing a fund to compensate local publishers.