More than 30 advertisers in Canada — including the federal, Quebec and British Columbia governments — say they will pull advertising in protest at the move, said Paul Deegan, chief executive of trade association News Media Canada. Canada accounted for about US$3 billion of Meta’s US$117 billion annual revenues in 2022, according to regulatory filings.
The company is running the very real risk of losing more in revenue than they would pay news businesses under the Online News ActMeta has at times sought to court publishers, with brief initiatives around video clips, for example, or, in 2019, with deals for content to run on the Facebook News Tab product.
Research commissioned by Meta and published in March found that posts linked to current events accounted for less than three per cent of people’s Facebook feeds. Around a fifth of users in the U.S., U.K. and Canada consider that “too much” news.Article content It added: “Unfortunately, the regulatory process is not equipped to make changes to the fundamental features of the legislation that have always been problematic, and so we plan to comply by ending news availability in Canada in the coming weeks.”Article content
But he added: “It’s good that we are shaking up the industry it might create outcomes for a more viable structural future.” Meta’s retreat from news comes in the wake of allegations that its failures to moderate its apps sufficiently contributed to discord around former U.S. president Donald Trump’s election as well as the riots in January 2021 when a mob stormed the Capitol building.