Canadians will no longer see the news on Facebook and Instagram

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.

Meta said that, imposing restrictions, define what constitutes news content based on how it is described in the Liberal government's "Online News Act" passed this summer.

Blocking access to news for Canadians is Meta's response to a bill requiring tech giants to enter into agreements that involve compensating Canadian news outlets for content hosted on or otherwise used by those very tech giants' platforms.

"For many months, we have been transparent about our concerns with the Online News Act. It is based on the incorrect premise that Meta benefits unfairly from news content shared on our platforms, when the reverse is actually true. News outlets voluntarily share content on Facebook and Instagram to expand their audiences and help their bottom line. In contrast, we know the people using our platforms don't come to us for news," says Curran.

The Canadian government, however, believes that the Act creates a level playing field for competition between online advertising giants and the news industry, which has fallen on hard times. The government said that since 2008, the country has closed about 500 media outlets in 335 communities in Canada, more than 20,000 journalists are unemployed, while companies like Google and Meta continue to make billions on advertising.

CBC/Radio-Canada said in a statement that Meta's move means that people who are used to relying on Facebook and Instagram as news providers will now be "left with only unverified sources in their feeds." The CBC say Meta's decision is an "irresponsible abuse of market power," adding that both the CBC itself and other media companies in Canada are calling on Meta to come to the table and pay compensation for news content.

The Online News Act will come into force by the end of 2023, when the government will develop the relevant rules. Meta states that they are not interested in participating in this process.