Washington, D.C. — In response to news that Google will remove Canadian news links from their products after the passage of Bill C-18, the Online News Act — a bill that would level the playing field for Big Tech and digital platforms — which follows a similar move by Meta last week, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“Google and Meta don’t want to pay journalists for their work — and they are willing to blackmail governments that dare to hold them accountable,” said Erik Peinert, Research Manager and Editor at the American Economic Liberties Project. “This plan failed in Australia and it should fail again. We encourage Canadian lawmakers to move forward in implementing the Online News Act and urge U.S. lawmakers to follow their lead by passing the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.”

In 2021, when Australian regulators sought to pass legislation similar to the JCPA, Meta, then Facebook, similarly threatened to restrict Australian publishers and people from sharing news content on its platform. Meta ultimately retracted that threat. That Australian legislation has since proved successful at its aims, spurring new growth in the Australian media sector not seen for decades. After a similar law, the California Journalism Protection Act was moved through the California California State Assembly just a month ago, Meta threatened to cut off services to the entire state.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.