Tensions between Ottawa and tech giants further escalated on Wednesday over Canada’s recently passed Online News Act.
Back in February, Google Canada ran a five-week test in which it limited access to news content for around four per cent of its Canadian users.
“It is publishers that benefit from being on our platforms, not the reverse,” Rachel Curran, Meta Canada’s head of public policy, told the committee. She said posts linking to news articles are less than three per cent of what people see in their Facebook feeds, and more than 90 per cent of views on news publishers’ articles are on links posted by the publishers themselves.
“The unprecedented decision to put a price on links creates uncertainty for our products and exposes us to uncapped financial liability simply for facilitating Canadians’ access to news from Canadian publishers,” he said in an online post on June 29, adding “we’re disappointed it has come to this.”Article content
But a small amount of Canadian users may have already noticed a change in recent weeks. That’s because Meta, like Google, launched a temporary test last month, blocking news for up to five per cent of its 24 million Canadian users on Facebook and Instagram. It also ended an agreement with The Canadian Press that saw the digital giant support the hiring of a limited number of emerging journalists at the national newswire service.
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