Canada demands Meta lift news ban to allow wildfire info sharing
The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta lift a "reckless" ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country.
Why does the responsibility fall on news organizations? The government pages are not banned on Facebook. Use those to disseminate important information. If Facebook is really the best way reach your citizens then pay them a fee to pin a post at the top of everybody's feed. Or mandate that they do it as part of the emergency services act.
The cbc might be government funded, but the rest of the news media are not. Their job is to hold politicians accountable, not organize evacuation efforts.
This is stupid. I don't use Facebook and I'm certainly no fan of Meta, but they didn't ban news links for the fun of it - they did it in response to the Canadian government making them pay news agencies for news links that gets shared on their services.
I think that's a stupid law, but the Canadians are entitled to do that if they want to. But that means they've intentionally increased the cost to Meta of permitting news links, and Meta has made a commercial decision based on this, which it's also entitled to do. Meta isn't a charity or a public sector agency and to expect this company (of all!) to behave like one is ludicrous.
This is pure cakeism.
Maybe don't rely on a free service from a multi billion dollar American company to disseminate public safety information.
They don't rely on it, they do have their own services. But they know that not everyone will use them, or check them hourly, like some people check Facebook.
They should pull themselves up by their hockey skate straps instead of passing dumb ass laws harassing foreign companies
The article doesn't say whether the Canadian government has offered to not tax Facebook for carrying the links to news articles that the law now requires be taxed.
There's no tax requirement. They're required to come to an agreement with the news outlets to compensate them.
So many corporate cock gobblers commenting on this topic.
Parasites like Meta infiltrated our society, did their damn best to become a monopoly, currently steal from smaller businesses, lost personal data from shitloads of people, makes you their product, and even fueled instability in entire countries. Then people wonder why a government wants to use it to perhaps save a few more lives. It's not like Meta is a company deserving of goodwill, so are you people getting a cent for this PR work or are you just suckers?
I wonder who should take the blame for being greedy though. The Canadian Bill C-19 was heavily influenced by lobbying from the Canadian news lobby group who even suggested the link charge.
Canadian news outlets suggest the link fee and then complain about the consequences.
https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2022/04/how-did-news-media-canada/
“In fact, not content with obtaining payments for reproduction of news content, it lobbied for a far broader approach that even includes payment for links or merely “facilitating access” to news content.”
This is a government mandate for one corporation to pay another corporation to share it’s product. This isn’t ‘helping the little guy’ or anything.
People still have the ability to just go directly to the news site. Or Google. Or the government’s Facebook page. Or the national alert system. And probably lots of other options I don’t know about.
The law (“you must pay for the news you show unless otherwise agreed”) seems reasonable. As does the response of “well it isn’t worth enough to pay for”.
Meta says users do not come to its platform for news and forcing the company to pay for content shared on its platforms is unsustainable for its business.
I agree with them here, news articles definitely aren't what I come to Facebook for.
Imagine making a law that could easily screw over non-government funded media and then being shocked when the media gets screwed over because of said law.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
OTTAWA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta (META.O) lift a "reckless" ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country.
Some people fleeing wildfires in the remote northern town of Yellowknife have complained to domestic media that the ban prevented them from sharing important data about the fires.
"Meta's reckless choice to block news ... is hurting access to vital information on Facebook and Instagram," Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said in a social media post.
Chris Bittle, a legislator for the ruling Liberal Party, complained on Thursday that "Meta's actions to block news are reckless and irresponsible."
In response, a Meta spokesperson said by email that the company had activated the "Safety Check" feature on Facebook that allows users to spread the word that they are safe in the wake of a natural disaster or a crisis.
Canadians can use Facebook and Instagram to access content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations, the spokesperson added.
The original article contains 314 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 44%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
People aren't going to miss our on wildfire news is they don't see it on Facebook. SMH
Why can't we have one platform that isn't controlled by one group? And if it's something like Lemmy why isn't it more popular?
Yeah federated platforms like lemmy are a potential solution. I would guess they aren't more popular because nobody directly profits from the success of these platforms, and since no one entity has control of it people in positions of power may be wary of adopting it.
Also a distributed platform is pretty much always going to be more complicated. This scares off the casual users that make up the majority of social media usernames.
Look at Linux; you can be more open, better on paper, cheaper, and even easier to use in some cases, but the success of online platforms is not a meritocracy. It's a pageant.
If Canada wants to post advertisements on Facebook, they already have an avenue to do this.
![[HN] Facebook won't lift ban in Canada even for sharing wildfire info](https://lemmy.uhhoh.com/pictrs/image/b4088d39-846a-4ad1-900a-4657c31f47fa.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=196)
