Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Advertisers in Canada are starting to leave Meta or Facebook, as they boycott media companies that publish information on their platforms. Like the Stingray Group, which suspended all advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

Stingray, a Montreal-based music and video content company, said the move was a response to Canada’s blocking of Meta news content.

“We cannot tolerate Meta’s recent decision to block information from Canadian news media publishers and the potential implications this could have on Canadian news content,” said Eric Boyko, co-founder and chief management of Stingray (2023).

“As a result, we have decided to temporarily suspend our advertising on Facebook and Instagram.”

Stingray is just one of many recent Canadian companies to remove advertising from Meta. They followed the governments of British Columbia, the federal government of Canada, the governments of Quebec and Ottawa, and other governments in Canada who also pulled ads from Meta.

According to a Reuters report, Quebec unions have also suspended all advertising, as well as Canadian telecommunications operators Quebecor and Cogeco, which operate radio stations in Quebec.

As previously reported, Meta’s subsidiaries, namely Facebook and Instagram, have started blocking news content in Canada in the form of text, photos and videos.

This decision follows the “Online Information Act” passed in Canada in June. The settlement requires platform providers such as Google and Meta to pay compensation to media companies, as producers of news content distributed via social media and other internet services.

Not only local media content, but also international news will be blocked on Facebook and Instagram platforms in Canada.

Facebook said this action had to be taken because it could not meet the requested compensation policy. Indeed, platform advertising revenues have declined over the past two years, following the increasingly massive growth of online services.

Expect the same rules in Indonesia

The regulations that apply in Canada are also proclaimed by the President of the Republic of Indonesia Joko Widodo (Jokowi) through the “Publisher Rights” policy. Kominfo and several institutions would work on this policy.

Publishers’ rights are seen as a policy that will save the media sector. Broadly speaking, publishers’ rights require platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay compensation in the form of a sum of money to media companies.

Google has officially commented on the speech. One of the points requested by Google is that the discussion on this rule involves an independent institution that can see the interests of the different parties.

For information, before Canada and Indonesia, Australia had already implemented a similar policy. Google and Facebook had threatened to block it, but finally managed to agree on the rules of the game in the country.

(pgr/pgr)