Online news act has negative effect on small publishers

The online news act was designed with legitimate objectives: enhancing fairness, supporting press independence, and promoting a diversity of news sources. Unfortunately, it has had some unintended negative consequences, according to Maxime Cohen, the Scale AI Chair in Data Science for Retail at McGill Desautels. “Meta responded by blocking Canadian news content from their platforms—Facebook and Instagram,” Cohen said in an interview with the Hub Dialogues podcast. “The act has distorted smaller publishers’ ability to use those platforms as a strategic complement that drives traffic to their websites.”