Facebook persists and signs. Senior brass at Meta, the tech giant’s parent company, refused to promise federal lawmakers that the temporary blocking of access to news in Australia would never happen again in Canada.
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“If the bill [C-18] is adopted as proposed, we may be forced to consider whether we should take any action,” said Marc Dinsdale, director of media partnerships for Canada at Meta, during his appearance in committee on Friday.
He was responding to Liberal Anthony Housefather who asked him if the company really intended to “reconsider allowing the sharing of news content in Canada on Facebook”, as he described it in a post in online last week.
Recall that Facebook had intentionally blocked not only Australian journalistic content on its site, but also certain Australian government, hospital and emergency services pages at the same time and by mistake.
Mr. Dinsdale acknowledged that these were “mistakes”, and that the same thing does not happen in Canada in the event of a blocking of journalistic content.
The deterrent came the day after Australia passed a law requiring tech giants to contribute media content. The blackmail had lasted less than two weeks, and Facebook had drawn the wrath of the Australian company.
Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez’s Bill C-18 plans to force dominant platforms like Facebook and Google to enter into agreements with journalistic entities in the country to help pay for the content they produce.
Although worded more vaguely during his appearance in committee on Friday, the thinly veiled threat earned him and his colleague Kevin Chan severe criticism, in particular from the mouth of Liberal MP Chris Bittle.
“It is absolutely outrageous. Meta is behaving like the robber barons of modern times”, he launched to his interlocutors, who attended the session by videoconference.
The language used by Mr. Bittle did not sit well with curator Rachael Thomas. She asked the chair of the committee to intervene to call the member to order, but the latter added another layer.
Kevin Chan, director of global policy at Meta, said that by using Facebook to share their content, media companies benefit from “free marketing”.
Mr. Chan, who worked for several years in the Privy Council Office of Justin Trudeau, also argued that the bill as currently proposed went against the “founding” principles of internet freedom.
Meta intends to table in Parliament its recommendations for amendments to the bill. The Parliamentary Budget Officer recently estimated that the media community could collect $329.2 million per year under these agreements.
“It’s not surprising, but it’s disappointing to see Facebook doing the same thing they did in Australia,” the Department of Heritage said in a written statement. “We have always been open to strengthening the bill, but we are not open to doing nothing. Facebook can still choose to work with the government and parliamentarians.”