After the Canadian government officially passed the new online news bill, which will charge news usage fees to technology companies such as Google and Meta to maintain fairness in the operation of news companies, Meta immediately issued astatementIt said that users in Canada will not be able to access local news and broadcast content through Facebook and Instagram services.
This is not the first time Meta has made this adjustment. As early as when the Australian government passed the new news bill in 2021, Meta immediately prevented services such as Facebook from accessing local news and advertising content to avoid affecting its own service operation model.
In addition, the U.S. Congress proposed a plan at the end of last year toPress Competition and Protection Act (Journalism Competition and Preservation Act) as a project that must be passed. Meta also stated at the time that if this bill was officially passed, it would consider removing news content from platforms such as Facebook.
As for Google, it has not yet followed the same approach and emphasized that it had proposed feasible measures before the relevant bill was passed. However, the Canadian government has not given any relevant response, and also stated that it is still communicating with government personnel.
Prior to this, Google has cooperated with local government agencies in many places to help news companies expand the content dissemination effects through their services through local investment. At the same time, it also allows news companies to obtain the due traffic monetization benefits, and users can also obtain news information through convenient Internet services.
However, many believe that even though technology companies such as Google and Meta emphasize helping to increase the visibility of news content sharing, in reality, many people no longer click on the link to view the full content after reading the news headlines and thumbnails. Instead, they pay more attention to other shared content on social platforms. Therefore, they believe that the technology companies' emphasis on achieving traffic diversion through platforms is not very effective.
