By Ismail Shakil

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday that Meta Platforms Inc.’s opposition to a bill that would force its Facebook unit and other internet companies to pay for journalistic content was based on a misconception that the information has no economic interest. value.

Speaking to a parliamentary committee on Trudeau government legislation on Monday, a Meta official said the news had social value, but not economic value for the company.

“If we’re being asked to compensate these publishers for material that has no economic value to us, that’s where the problem lies,” Rachel Curran, head of public policy for Meta in Canada, told the committee.

On Tuesday, Trudeau said “this argument made by the internet giants is not only wrong, but dangerous to our democracy and our economy.”

Facebook’s stance against paid news content “shows how deeply irresponsible and out of touch they are,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa.

The legislation, Bill C-18 or the ‘Online News Act’, proposes rules to force platforms like Alphabet’s Facebook and Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content, a similar move. to a pioneering law passed in Australia in 2021.

Both Google and Meta have warned that they would withdraw access to news articles on their platforms in Canada if the bill passes without amendment. Their main objection is that paying for links to news articles posted on their websites would not be sustainable for their business.

Facebook says links to news articles make up less than 3% of its users’ News Feed content and that journalists benefit from having their work published on the social network.

“Someone reporting the horrors of Bucha (in Ukraine) is not trying to get likes on their Facebook page,” Trudeau said.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing in Spanish by Juana Casas)