OTTAWA ― The Canadian government will stop buying ads on Facebook and Instagram amid a dispute over a new law on paying online news publishers that the Meta-owned platforms have opposed, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said recently.
The Online News Act, or Bill C-18, was passed into law last month, triggering Meta and Alphabet’s Google to say they would end news access on their platforms in Canada.
The government is finalizing rules that require the platforms to share some advertising revenue when the law is implemented by the end of this year.
“Canada is going to continue to stand firm and ensure that if social media platforms and internet giants want to use media, that they actually ensure that they’re paying their fair share for it,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Monteregie, Quebec according to Reuters.
The government still sees a path forward to resolving the quarrel and is open to discussions with the platforms, Rodriguez, who introduced the legislation, told reporters in Ottawa.
The legislation was drafted after calls from Canada’s media industry for tighter regulation of internet giants to allow news businesses to recoup financial losses suffered in the years that Facebook and Google gained a greater share of the online advertising market.
Rodriguez said that 80 per cent of all ad revenue in Canada, or almost C$10 billion ($7.5 billion) in 2022 went to Google and Facebook, and the Liberal government wants the two platforms to contribute to domestic journalism.
The decision to suspend government ads will cost Facebook and Instagram about C$10 million per year, he said.
Facebook “refused to discuss and they did not want to compensate the media accordingly and so we’ve decided to suspend advertising,” Rodriguez added, speaking alongside two of three Canadian opposition parties which also support the legislation.
Meta has previously said that news does not hold economic value for the company and that news organizations benefit from sharing their reports on Facebook.
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