The Silicon Valley tech giant is following in the steps of, which blocked news links for about five weeks earlier this year for some of its Canadian users in response to a controversial Liberal government bill.
Rachel Curran, head of public policy for Meta Canada, said this first temporary move will affect one to five per cent of its 24 million Canadian users, with the number of those impacted fluctuating throughout the test.Meta set to block news on Facebook, Instagram from Canadian users Meta said it is picking random news publishers that will be notified that some people in Canada will not be able to see or share their news content throughout the test. They will still be able to access their accounts, pages, businesses suites and advertising.
Curran said affected Canadians will still be able to use their platforms to access information from a variety of sources including government pages, organizations and universities. Curran said removing journalism from Meta’s platforms is a business decision, and the company makes “negligible amounts” of revenue from news content.