Meta and X are acting preemptively before the government has even finalized how the system would work.

Stands to reason. If Canadians were creating laws around homicide for the first time, but the exact details weren't yet known, are you going to go around killing people while you still can, or are you going to respect the intent to the best of your ability knowing that Canadians do not want to be killed?

Logically, the latter, of course. Even if you don't quite get it right with respect to the final details, trying to respect the wishes is clearly better than ignoring them.

Meta and X feel that they shouldn’t be subject to the law of any other country.

And they are no doubt right. There are cases where they have ignored Canadian court decisions around individuals without any consequences. And if that were the only thing of relevance, they could simply ignore this whole ordeal.

Trouble is that, when it comes to the mass user base, they need to appease the people of those countries, else they will leave. Facebook doesn't have a compelling business if they can only win over product and customers from one country. Its value is dependent on serving the entire world.

It is not like the people of Canada went to all the trouble of bringing this legislation to the table because they wanted to play a prank on Musk. They are serious about it. If Facebook showed that it didn't care the users would get pissed off and walk away.

You can screw around with individuals without noticing, but in this case Canadians as a whole called for action. Losing all Canadian users would be a significant loss to their business. Facebook had to do something. Going on killing for months until the details come out, even if technically allowable, is not a good look.