Speaking to a parliamentary committee concerning the Trudeau authorities’s laws on Monday, a Meta official mentioned news has a social worth, however not an financial worth to the corporate.
“If we are being asked to compensate these publishers for material that has no economic value to us, that’s where the problem is,” Meta’s head of public coverage in Canada, Rachel Curran, instructed the committee.
Trudeau on Tuesday mentioned, “that argument that the internet giants are putting forward is not just flawed, it’s dangerous to our democracy, to our economy.”
Facebook’s stance in opposition to paying news content material “shows how deeply irresponsible and out of touch they are,” Trudeau instructed reporters in Ottawa.
The laws, invoice C-18 or the “Online News Act”, proposes guidelines to pressure platforms like Facebook and Alphabet’s Google to barter business offers and pay news publishers for his or her content material, a transfer just like a ground-breaking legislation handed in Australia in 2021.
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Both Google and Meta have warned they’d withdraw entry to news articles on their platforms in Canada if the invoice is handed into legislation with out amendments. Their principal objection is paying for hyperlinks to news articles posted on their web sites that they are saying can be unsustainable for his or her companies. Facebook says hyperlinks to news articles make up lower than 3% of the content material on its customers’ feed, and that journalists profit from posting their work on the social media platform.
“Someone reporting on the horrors in Bucha (in Ukraine) is not trying to get likes on their Facebook page,” Trudeau mentioned.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com