JAKARTA – Meta released news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada towards the end of this year. It seems that this policy is starting to be resented by Threads users who want to access news.

A number of Threads users in Canada reported that they were unable to view news content and were receiving warnings stating: “Canadians cannot see this content.”

Users may also see a caption explaining that the content was removed due to Canadian government legislation. Following this notification, there is a strong belief that Meta is starting to limit access to news in Threads.

However, when asked directly about this limitation, Meta explained that they do not remove news content in Threads. The company said Threads knew insects or programming errors.

Even though Meta opposes the Online Information Act (UU), a Meta spokesperson said Engadget that this opposition does not apply to Threads, at least for the moment.

Last August, Meta began blocking all news access for Facebook and Instagram users in Canada. This blocking is a response to the policy of the Online Information Law which began to be implemented on Tuesday December 19.

Meta strongly opposes Canadian regulations that require its two platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to set aside compensation funds for the journalism sector. For them, the company has no commercial relationship with the media.

They have never forced all media in Canada to share news on their free platforms. Instead, journalists deliberately use Facebook and Instagram to make profits.

“Media choose to use our free service because it improves their bottom line and the release of today’s final regulations does not change our business decisions,” said Rachel Curran, Meta Canada’s public policy manager, cited in Reuters.

With the passage of the Online News Act in Canada, large technology companies with 20 million unique monthly users and annual revenues of up to US$748 million (Rs. 11.5 trillion) are obliged to provide a compensation. Besides Meta, Google is also subject to this rule.

Tag: meta platform inc bug uu online news canada facebook instagram