A representative for the tech giant Meta said Monday that the company plans to block access to Canadian news content on its platforms if Parliament passes Bill C-18, which mandates that the company pay news publishers for hosting content.
“Ultimately, this legislation puts Meta in an unfavourable situation. In order to comply, we have to either operate in a flawed and unfair regulatory environment, or we have to end the availability of news content in Canada. With a heavy heart, we choose the latter,” Kevin Chan, Meta’s global policy director, said before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on May 8.
“As the Minister of Canadian Heritage has said, this is a business decision. It’s not something we want to do, but it is what we will have to do.”
‘Fundamentally Flawed’
Chan alleged Bill C-18 is based on a “fundamentally flawed premise” because Meta—which owns Facebook and Instagram—does not benefit unfairly from people sharing links to news content on its platforms.“Publishers choose to share their content because it benefits them to do so, whereas it isn’t particularly valuable to us at all,” he said, adding that news makes up 3 percent of the content users see in their feeds.
But Chan said news publishers find Meta’s services valuable, with the company estimating that Facebook Feed sent registered news publishers in Canada more than 1.9 billion clicks in the 12 months to April 2022, which he called “free marketing” worth more than $230 million.
“Of course, everyone wants quality journalism to thrive, but it makes no more sense to claim social media companies are taking money from publishers than to say car companies stole from the horse and cart industry,” he said.
Chan said while Canada has a long-standing reputation for believing in multilateralism and defending the free and open internet, Bill C-19 would be “a direct contradiction of that long-held and honourable tradition.”
He highlighted data from Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer, which estimates that most of the money generated by Bill C-18 will go to broadcasters and not to local and regional publishers.
“It’s ‘Robin Hood’ in reverse,” he said. “The Act would subsidize big broadcasters at the expense of independent publishers and digital news sites, skewing the playing field so it’s even harder for smaller players.”
Chan said also said that for a social media company to subsidize news publishers for content that isn’t important to their users, it would be akin to “asking email providers to pay the postal service for people because people don’t send letters anymore.”
Hearing Title Changed
The Committee had initially asked for Nicholas Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs and a former U.K. deputy prime minister, to appear in front of the committee. Clegg failed to show up on May 8 after initially pledging to appear, sending Chan in his place.Chan said Clegg decided not to appear because the title of the hearing was changed to a “much more confrontational one.”
“Clearly, it would be a very different hearing to the one Nick Clegg was invited to. As such, we have notified the committee that he will no longer be appearing,” the statement reads.
The committee agreed to change the name of the study and voted to issue another summons to have Clegg appear.
