Agreed! The media in Canada asked for this, expecting a big payday and now they are getting screwed (fewer eyeballs means less money from advertising) with themselves to blame.

I am no fan of Meta.

But…

This is maybe 10% meta’s fault, but 90% the government’s.

The law they passed was completely ridiculous in that it would force meta and others to pay Canadian news companies for each link posted. A concept that anyone with an understanding of either the internet or economics could have told you would lead to the situation we are in now.

Any business would react the same way and the have publicly been saying this is what they would do since the law was in the planning/proposal phase. Experts have likewise predicted this. But the government here seemed to think that nobody would dare defy the ‘mighty’ Canadian government. The fact is we have a smaller population than California alone, and it’s not worth it for meta or other companies to comply with this law.

It’s almost like the feds here watched the “Canada wants some of that internet money” episode of South Park and thought “great idea!!”