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Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Meta, the company run by Mark Zuckerberg, has announced plans to remove all news content from Facebook and Instagram in Canada. The move comes ahead of a new law that will force platforms to share their revenue with news publishers.

The Online News Act, known as Bill C-18, would require big tech companies to compensate news publishers for content appearing on their platforms. Not only Facebook and Instagram are under Meta, but Google is also affected by the law.

“Today we confirmed that the availability of news on Facebook and Instagram to all users in Canada will be discontinued before the coming into force of the Online News Act (Bill C-18),” said said Meta in a blog post, quoted by The Independent, Monday (6/26/2023).

“We have repeatedly stated that in order to comply with Bill C-18, which passed Parliament today, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will not be no longer available to people accessing our platform in Canada. Meta added.

The Canadian government says the law aims to create a level playing field between online advertising giants and the media companies involved.

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez pledged to fend off what he said were “threats” from Facebook and Google to remove journalism from their platforms.

Meta’s plan to comply with the new law by blocking all news is also likely to hurt news organizations, which derive web traffic from stories posted on Facebook and Instagram.

The tech giant didn’t provide details on the timeline for the news’ takedown. However, the new Canadian law will come into force six months after being approved.

Meta, based in Menlo Park, Calif., has taken similar steps in the past. In 2021, they blocked News from its Australian platform after the country passed a law requiring tech companies to pay news publishers. But then the two parties came to an agreement with an Australian publisher.

Laura Scaffidi, the minister’s spokeswoman, said Rodriguez would hold a meeting on Thursday afternoon with Google, which did not rule out they would follow Meta’s decision to remove news links from Google’s search engine. .

Meta is running a news blocking trial for up to five percent of its Canadian users, and Google ran a similar test earlier this year.

The Online News Act requires the two companies to enter into agreements with news publishers to pay them for news content appearing on their sites if it helps tech giants like Facebook and Google gain traction. ‘money.

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