The giant Meta, owner of Facebook, has not ruled out partially cutting off access to its popular social network in Canada, if Bill C-18 aimed at obliging social networks to compensate the media is adopted.
At least that’s what Meta’s head of public policy in Canada, Rachel Curran, suggested at a meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security in Ottawa on Tuesday.
“We are still evaluating this law. We were unaware of its scope before it was recently tabled, but I must say that we have several concerns”, first mentioned Mr.me Curran in front of Canadian parliamentarians.
Asked by Conservative MP Raquel Dancho whether Meta could pose the same threat to Canada as it did in Australia, when the company went so far as to disconnect media pages from Facebook due to its dispute with the government, the responsible acknowledged that no option was excluded at this time.
“We will assess the details to determine what our response will be,” said M.me Curran.
“Our view is that when media outlets link to content on their platform, they receive significant value by doing so, and we do not control when or how or to what degree they publish news on our platform,” she added, stating that Meta is “committed to finding innovative solutions for the sustainability of the media industry in Canada.”
A Twitter representative who was testifying before the same committee wondered if the social network just bought by Elon Musk is affected by Bill C-18.
“Twitter, like the media industry, doesn’t make a lot of money from news. In fact, we don’t have anyone in Canada selling media content,” said Michele Austin, public policy manager for Twitter in Canada and the United States.
Like Canada with its Bill C-18, Australia passed its own legislation last year to force Facebook and other companies like Google to pay for media content shown on their platforms. The company reacted by cutting off access to media Facebook pages, but also to government pages by mistake, angering the country.
An agreement was reached between the company and the Australian government a few days later.