Digital Freedom

Facebook and Instagram users in Canada may need more pictures of babies, pets, and food, because in less than six months they won't be able to share news links on those platforms.

Meta said it will impose that ban after Canada’s Parliament passed legislation(Opens in a new window) that will require large online platforms to compensate Canadian news sites in the next six months.

“Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act (Bill C-18(Opens in a new window)) taking effect,” Meta says(Opens in a new window).

The Online News Act(Opens in a new window) sets up a system of mandatory arbitration between every “digital news intermediary” (defined as “an online communications platform, including a search engine or social media service” that makes news content available in Canada) and news outlets designated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission(Opens in a new window) if “a significant bargaining power imbalance” exists between the intermediary and those outlets.

The bill defines making news available broadly enough to include just linking to it: reproducing “the news content, or any portion of it” or enabling access to it “by any means, including an index, aggregation, or ranking of news content.” It also defines “news outlet” broadly to cover any general-interest newsroom that employs at least two journalists in Canada and operates along recognized codes of journalistic ethics.

C-18 additionally imposes non-discrimination requirements on online platforms, to be enforced by the commission. The language there doesn’t address actions taken against news sites that spread misinformation, although it does let the commission consider whether a platform’s conduct matched its “normal course of business.”