Facebook warned on Friday that it might block sharing of stories content material on its platform in Canada over considerations about laws that will compel digital platforms to pay information publishers.

The Online News Act, launched in April, laid out guidelines to power platforms like Meta’s Facebook and Alphabet’s Google to barter business offers and pay information publishers for his or her content material, in a transfer much like a ground-breaking regulation handed in Australia final 12 months.

The laws is into consideration at a parliamentary committee, to which the US social media firm stated it has not been invited to share its considerations.

“We believe the Online News Act misrepresents the relationship between platforms and news publishers, and we call on the government to review its approach,” Marc Dinsdale, head of media partnerships at Meta Canada, stated in a weblog publish.

“In the face of adverse legislation based on false assumptions that defy the logic of how Facebook operates, we believe it’s important to be transparent about the possibility that we may be forced to reconsider allowing news content sharing in Canada,” Dinsdale wrote.

Canada’s Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who launched the invoice, stated in an announcement on Friday that the federal government continued to have “constructive conversations” with Facebook.

“All we’re asking the tech giants like Facebook to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work,” Rodriguez stated in an emailed assertion.

The laws proposes that digital platforms which have a “bargaining imbalance” with information companies – measured by metrics like a agency’s world income – should make honest offers that will then be assessed by a regulator.

Dinsdale stated information content material was not a draw for Facebook customers and didn’t deliver important income to the corporate.

When Australia, which has led world efforts to rein within the powers of tech companies, proposed laws forcing them to pay native media for information content material, Google threatened to shut its Australian search engine, whereas Facebook lower all third-party content material from Australian accounts for greater than per week.

Both finally struck offers with Australian media corporations after a sequence of amendments to the laws had been supplied.

© Thomson Reuters 2022