Meta has announced plans to remove all news content from Facebook and Instagram in Canada ahead of a new law coming into effect that would force the platforms to share revenue with publishers.

The Online News Act, known as Bill C-18, will force big technology companies to compensate news publishers for content that appears on their platforms, with Google also impacted by the legislation.

“Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act (Bill C-18) taking effect,” Facebook said in a blog post.



“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.”

Ottawa has said the law creates a level playing field between online advertising giants and the shrinking news industry. Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has promised to push back on what he describes as “threats” from Facebook and Google to remove journalism from their platforms.

Way to go!

Would the news publishers also pay Meta for traffic to their news websites gotten from these social media sites?

If anything, there's a reason why there are platforms like Subtrack.

And by news publishers, how would we define this? AIT is news publisher in Nigeria, for example, but gets relatively low Facebook interaction, but random gossip columns get more interactions than these outlets so who gets to be paid?

News publishers would have to include a large demography then and even at that, it'd be interesting to see how the payment structure works. YouTube is doing this with videos so, well, maybe.