Labor sides with Canada in Meta fight

Michelle Rowland has met her Canadian counterpart as the two countries grapple with the shared challenge of how best to regulate big tech companies.

Mark Zuckerberg, head of US tech giant Meta. Picture: AFP

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has met her Canadian counterpart as the two countries grapple with the shared challenge of how best to regulate big tech companies that operate in foreign jurisdictions with unchecked power.

In Canada, Meta continues to block news articles on its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, as it thumbs its nose at the country’s Online News Act, which is similar to the news media bargaining code in Australia insofar as it requires tech firms to negotiate payment agreements with news outlets.

Meta will on Tuesday start “deprecating” Facebook News from its Australian platform, which means by the end of this week local users won’t have access to the site’s dedicated tab for news content.

This move breaches Meta’s commercial deals with Australian publishers and will likely see it “designated” by the federal government under the terms of the code.

Ms Rowland had a one-on-one meeting in March with Pascale St-Onge, Minister of Canadian Heritage, who has ministerial carriage of the issue in her country.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Ms Rowland said Ms St-Onge expressed the view that the Mark Zuckerberg-controlled global company “had put itself above governments and regulators, and that is what she terms the ‘Meta agenda’”.

“The Meta agenda is not exclusive to Australia, it’s not exclusive to Canada,” Ms Rowland said.

“We see it being played out in the US, in Europe … it’s a playbook they have.

“(It’s) not only their market power, but when you combine that with a lack of transparency, a lack of regulation – and the way in which they react to any regulation or potential regulation – it demonstrates a complete disregard of the fundamental tenets of what we value in terms of our media ecosystem.

“Australia and Canada are like-minded liberal democracies who share these values around public interest journalism and the value of the fourth estate.”

Ms Rowland said Ms St-Onge warned that Meta’s pulling of news content was no more sophisticated than the way in which Facebook removed news from its site in Australia in 2021, thus raising fears that if all news material does get pulled from the Meta platform, community service material might also disappear, as it did three years ago.

The Communications Minister said she will continue to engage with Ms St-Onge on the issue.

“It really does validate the stance taken by governments that want to assert their sovereignty,” Ms Rowland said.

“Meta is testing the frameworks of both our countries and the government considers it paramount that any entity operating in Australia must abide by Australian law.

“The market power of this entity is not getting smaller.”