He told me he’s “working really hard to prevent that outcome in Canada.” In other words, if Ottawa follows Australia and tables a bill forcing tech giants to share revenue with the news business, Facebook would drop the A-bomb on Canadian journalism as well.
Chan would prefer to work out partnerships with Canadian journalism. He said Facebook gave $10 million to various news projects in the past four years. He pledged “in 2021, we’ll do quite a bit more.” But don’t put a gun to our head, he basically said, or we’ll fight back.
Render unto Caesar
I actually share many of Chan’s views. Here’s one. Last fall, the lobby group representing the news industry in Canada published a report