It's taking an L in the sense that the government doesn't want Facebook to ban news, they want Facebook to pay for linking news. Forcing people to leave their shitty echo chambers is good, but it's the opposite of what the government wants in this case.

Didn't the Canadian government beg meta to share news about the wildfires?

You need to go out and meet more people then. Upwards of 50% of an average news website's referrals come from Google. Add in Meta products (FB, Instagram, Whatsapp) and that can easily cross 70%-80%. All that traffic is about to drop down to 0 in the coming weeks.

They said "facebook" specifically, and that seems about right if boomers also include gen x idiots

Well this bill is not about facebook, but links posted anywhere on the internet. Google is also blocking Canadian news from search, news and other products. Sites like Reddit will follow if they cross $1B in revenue.

[delayed]

Facebook has 4 billion active users across the world. They are not all "boomers" and whatever else you want to call them. There will be much more negative impact on the world if all Facebook properties disappeared tomorrow then all of Canadian news media put together.

You keep roping in other properties into this, if you want to do that, use their parent company name. 4b users on facebook as in Facebook seems a bit of a reach to me at this point. 4b on all properties, ya maybe. Either way, while I could see it having a negative impact, it would mostly be as an advertising platform, and the net positive of that going away might bring it to neutral.

I know it's imused in some places as their primary messaging service or something, but it seems likely they're not doing much unique here.

So what is this harm you speak of?