Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau disagrees with Facebook’s claim that news has no economic worth

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has stated that the business Meta Platforms Inc. is mistaken in believing journalism has no economic value. In that remark, he criticised Meta Platforms Inc.’s resistance to a proposed regulation requiring Facebook and other internet companies to pay for journalistic output, claiming that such a stance harms the economy and democracy.

The ‘Online News Act’ proposes guidelines requiring Facebook and Google platforms to establish commercial partnerships and compensate news publishers for their material. However, a Meta executive stated that the news provided had only social value for the corporation and no economic benefit.

The Meta firm unequivocally said links to newspaper stories constitute a tiny fraction of the information they distribute and that media organisations gain from putting their items on social networks.

The Google company, along with the Meta company, expressed a clear position that paying the media for articles posted on their websites would be completely unsustainable for their business development and that if the proposed law goes through, they will withdraw access to newspaper articles on their platforms in Canada.