Canadians will no longer see the news on Facebook and Instagram
Meta has officially announced that within a few weeks news will no longer be available on its platforms in Canada.
Meta Corp. officials said Tuesday that Canadians will stop seeing news posts in their Facebook and Instagram feeds in just a few weeks. The company conducted a test in June that limited access to news posts to nearly 5 percent of users. Now Meta says the measure is moving out of the testing phase.
"In order to provide clarity to the millions of Canadians and businesses who use our platforms, we are announcing today that we have begun the process of ending news availability permanently in Canada," shared Rachel Curran, who is Meta Canada's head of public policy. She previously served as an advisor to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
This means that Canadians will no longer be able to read and share news articles and other news content on Facebook and Instagram. It doesn't matter whether this content was published by local publishers and broadcasters or international ones. The blocking is expected to affect links to articles, reels and stories that disappear 24 hours after publication.
It is noted that such measures will affect only residents of Canada, other countries will not be affected the blocking of news.
Paul Deegan — president of News Media Canada — said such "intemperate" measures would damage the user experience and devalue Facebook:
"Without access to real fact-based news created by real journalists, Facebook will become far less attractive to users and advertisers. We expect more and more advertisers and their agencies will begin pulling advertising from the platform in response to this unilateral, undemocratic, and unreasonable move."
The federal government and some companies have already retaliated by removing their ads from Meta's platforms.
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