Lol, what do they expect to be done about this? Is the government supposed to force Facebook to show their content, yet also pay to do it? I hate Facebook but I’m so glad they’re doing this because link taxes are fucking stupid.

Yeah, I am not Canadian so I’m sure there’s some information/nuance I don’t understand here, but from what I can tell from looking at a few articles from different sources:

• Canadian government passes a law that would require Facebook to pay and/or share ad revenue for every link out (posted by the media outlet, not by Facebook) to an external news website

• Facebook says they don’t want to do that, and will stop showing news links to comply with the law

• Canadian government says “no not like that” and now wants to force them to allow links to news outlets, which de facto forces them to pay/share revenue with those media outlets

Like I said, I’m assuming there may be something I’m missing here, so please any kind Canadians who can help fill in the blanks would be appreciated

You’ve got the just of it. Their argument is that meta benefits as the post w/ the the link and preview is content they use in their feed to keep users engaged. Presumably in said feed they’d also be ads.

This would also apply to any user posting a link to an article, not just the news agencies.

(Not arguing with you, just with the concept of the bill)

Doesn’t the news outlet benefit from the traffic and clicks generated from that user engagement?

What’s the government’s rationale for social media platforms to subsidize media outlets monetarily in addition to driving people to their content?

Because most people don't click, they just read the summary of the article in their feed. They're claiming that aggregators don't share revenue from summarized articles.