Faceebook adamant on ban as Canada unveils new rules

Canada said it was addressing the concerns of digital corporations when it revealed new regulations for a law requiring internet giants to pay news organisations on Friday.

Facebook declared that it would continue its efforts to censor local news.

Canada said that the proposed regulations, which are intended to put the recently approved Online News Act into effect, would allay concerns at Alphabet’s Google and Facebook-parent Meta that they may be subject to limitless liability.

“The regulatory process is not equipped to address the fundamentally flawed premise of the Online News Act … today’s proposed regulations will not impact our business decision to end news availability in Canada,” Meta Canada’s head of public policy, Rachel Curran, said in a statement.

The Online News Act of Canada, which is a component of a global movement to make internet monopolies pay for news, was passed into law in June and is scheduled to take effect in December once regulations are complete.

The measure was passed in response to protests from the Canadian media sector, which sought more control of digital firms to stop them from driving news organisations out of the online advertising market.

Facebook and Google have both said that the rule is inapplicable to their companies, and Meta last month stopped allowing news sharing on its services in Canada.

Google is examining the new rules “to assess whether they resolve the serious structural issues” with the law, according to a spokesperson for the business.

Companies would have to proactively negotiate agreements with news publishers and pay a part of their global earnings, based on a predetermined calculation, under the proposed regulations.

According to a government official, the new measures are projected to bring in C$172 million ($126.6 million) annually from Google and roughly C$60 million annually from Facebook.