Montreal's local news outlets blocked by Meta in Bill C-18 fallout
CTV
As social media giant Meta pulls Canadian news content from its platforms, the nation's newsrooms, both big and small, are feeling the burn.
As social media giant Meta pulls Canadian news content from its platforms, the nation's newsrooms, both big and small, are feeling the burn.
Local news outlets like The Link, a Montreal student newspaper at Concordia University, rely on Facebook and Instagram to share their content.
"I woke up one morning to a bunch of [direct messages] and screenshots from students telling me, 'We can't see your content anymore.' That freaked us out and sent us into panic mode,'" The Link Editor-in-Chief Zachary Fortier told CTV News.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is dropping Canadian news from its network in response to Bill C-18, the federal Online News Act.
Passed in June, the act requires tech giants to compensate news outlets in order to host their content.
Paul Graif is the news director at K1037, a local radio station in Kahnawake on Montreal's south shore.
He says Facebook is a big part of public communication in his community, and without real news, it's a superhighway for false information.
