Canada’s Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault has been paying very close attention to Australia’s battle with Facebook over its proposed ruling to make the social media giant pay local news organizations for content.
The minister is watching these events unfold, of course, to see if a similar Canadian-specific solution is worth developing to help local news agencies in Canada, according to a report from the Financial Post.
In Australia, the government is battling with Facebook to make the company pay when it hosts local news content on its site, since its one of the largest spreaders of news in the world. As a rebuttal, Facebook told the nation that it would rather host no news content than pay for it.
Canada’s heritage minister is on team Australia in this fight, and the Financial Post’s report mentions that he said, “the Canadian government stands with our Australian partners and denounces any form of threats.”
While there’s no news yet regarding a Canadian-made solution to the rapid disappearance of local newsrooms across the country, it is nice to see the people responsible for watching over Canada’s cultural development looking to make changes to benefit the country.
It’s likely that Facebook and Australia are going to continue to feud for a long time, but if anything major comes out of the battle, we’ll make sure to cover it and how it impacts Canadians here.
Source: Financial Post
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