Why news posts vanish from Facebook in Canada, and what works instead
Why do news posts vanish from Facebook in Canada? Meta says it blocks news there to comply with the Online News Act. On Oct. 21, our Page posts with news links showed as sent but stayed out of our feed. Link-free photo posts showed right away.
Topics: Community
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Since August 2023, Meta has blocked news on Facebook and Instagram for people in Canada. On Oct. 21, 2026, Windsor News saw what that looks like for a local news Page.
What Meta says
The Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18, received Royal Assent on June 22, 2023. The law requires the largest digital platforms to bargain with Canadian news businesses for the use of their news content.
On Aug. 1, 2023, Meta said that, "in order to comply with the Online News Act," it had begun ending news availability in Canada. Meta said news links and content posted by news publishers and broadcasters in Canada would no longer be viewable by people in Canada, and that people in Canada would no longer be able to view or share news content on Facebook and Instagram.
What happened to us
On Oct. 21, posts on the Windsor News Facebook Page that included links to our stories, or a "Full story" line with a link, showed as sent in our scheduling tool. They could still be opened by their direct address. But they were left out of the Page's visible feed.
Photo and video posts with no links showed in the feed right away, whether we posted them through the scheduling tool or by hand. Posts in a Facebook group were not affected. The Page had no violations.
This is Windsor News's own experience. Meta has not told us how its system decides what to hide, and other Pages may see different results.
What works for us now
On Facebook, we post the story itself, in words and a card or video, with no links.
Full stories, with sources, stay on windsornewsdesk.ca.
We also post on X (@WindsorNewsDesk), Bluesky, Telegram (@windsornews) and by newsletter.
If you run a local Page in Windsor-Essex and your posts are going missing, check whether they carry news links.
