Canadian Prime Minister Will Encourage Meta to Comply with Online News Law

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Tudeau (photo: dock. Prime Minister Minister)

JAKARTA – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Tudeau said that the government will continue to encourage Meta to comply with new rules regarding the distribution of profits to the journalist sector.

Under the newly passed Online News Act, large technology companies with 20 million unique monthly users and annual revenue of US$748 million (Rp. 11.5 trillion) are required to compensate Canadian news media.

However, Meta does not agree with these regulations. They even continue to block various Canadian media accounts on Facebook from paying compensation. However, the Canadian government still hasn't given up.

"We will continue to push Meta, which makes billions of dollars in profits even though they refuse to invest in journalistic rigor and media stability," said Trudeau, quoted by Reuters.

Meanwhile, Meta believes that they have no obligation to pay for news media. They never force the media to upload news on their platform. Instead, all these media decided to use the Meta platform.

“News outlets choose to use our free service because it helps their bottom line and the release of today's final regulations does not change our business decisions,” said Meta Canada's Head of Public Policy, Rachel Curran.

Apart from not having a business relationship, Meta considers that news does not bring economic value to their business. Therefore, since August, Meta has started blocking a number of media in various countries.