By Ahmad Hathout
The CRTC is investigating whether Facebook has been allowing Canadian news on its platform in violation of the Online News Act.
Meta, the parent of the social media giant, said it will not be sharing news links to Canadian news content because it disagrees with the new law that requires large technology platforms to pay Canadian news companies to host those links.
But in a letter dated Friday, the CRTC’s executive director of broadcasting said it has fielded reports that the social media giant is still hosting the content.
“As you know, in response to the Online News Act (the Act), Meta Platforms Inc. (Meta) announced that users in Canada would no longer be able to view or share news content on its platforms,” Scott Shortliffe said in the letter. “However, the CRTC has been made aware of reports that news content from Canadian news outlets continues to be available on Meta’s platforms in Canada.”
The regulator is gathering comments by October 11 on whether Meta is complying with the law.
The large platforms had to notify the CRTC within 180 days if they were subject to the rules in the first year. That deadline has since passed, and Facebook has not changed its position on paying for Canadian news links.
Google, however, did comply, and agreed to put an inflation-indexed annual amount of $100 million toward a news link fund, whose liaison is the Canadian Journalism Collective-Collectif Canadien de Journalisme. The CRTC is now considering whether to formalize the agreement for a five-year term and under what conditions.
Facebook and Google dominate the digital advertising space, which is often blamed for the decline in the traditional news business revenue model.
