Meta removed news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms last August for Canadian users in response to the Liberal government's Online News Act.
OTTAWA — The time, money and effort Iain Burns put into growing an audience on Facebook for several local news outlets in British Columbia felt like it disappeared in a single day.
"We lost 70 per cent of our audience when that happened," along with 50 per cent of revenue, said Burns in an interview from Kelowna, B.C. Some outlets "have gone dark entirely because they're no longer getting the ad revenue being driven from Facebook to their sites," said Aengus Bridgman, who directs the Media Ecosystem Observatory.Some outlets were able to maintain engagement on their Facebook pages because their news is still viewable outside Canada, and they have maintained an international audience.
They analyzed the Facebook pages of 987 Canadian news outlets, 183 politicians, commentators and advocacy groups, as well as 589 political and local community groups. "Just from a reach point of view, it is very sad to spend hours and hours on a really good story, a proper good exclusive, and publish it, and then see it gets maybe 20 per cent of the reach it would have got before August 2023," Burns said.
In response, Meta removed news links from its platform and Google was granted an exemption to the law by agreeing to pay Canadian news outlets $100 million a year.
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