Meta has previously chosen to remove news link sharing on Facebook in Canada – in order to avoid the need to pay media companies for the use of content in that country. This was criticized by many, but at the time Meta stated that sharing news on their platform did not have a large impact – leaving them with no need to pay media companies.
Further to that, now the independent data analysis company is seen showing agreement with what Meta said before. According to the data monitored and analyzed, the rate of Facebook usage in Canada has not changed since the removal of news link sharing. Active users of Facebook in Canada remained more or less the same, including the time spent on the platform also did not experience any drastic changes.
This at once shows that Meta's move for their business is accurate, and there is no need for them to pay media companies for publishing content on their platforms. Meta itself states that news sharing is only around 3% of all content sharing on the platform.
Regardless, these measures and legislation are seen to have more of an impact on the media companies themselves, where their traffic is drastically reduced – and likely impacting their revenue as well.
With this move, is Canada's decision to come up with legislation requiring platforms to pay for news content a huge mistake – and might other countries not follow suit after this?