Meta’s news ban is preventing Canadians from sharing vital information about the wildfires ripping through western Canada::Canadians are calling on Meta to lift its news ban so they can share news about the wildfires in the Northwest Territories and British Columbia.
How about not relying on Facebook for such things?
It’s very hard to find the resources. The government sites are not SEO optimized, the URLs change, sometimes there’s better info on local news websites. People are trying to share these vital resources with one another on social networks that already exist, and are finding that they cannot. In a time of crisis, you can’t quickly set up another network on a different platform. Many people don’t even know about better platforms.
What are the good resources? Because I just searched “Canada wildfire info” and got the Canadian Wild land Fire Information System" seems like a good place to start? Stop using Facebook for this shit (or anything else)
I don’t use Facebook, but many affected by the wildfires do.
government sites can still be linked to through facebook. that’s not the issue.
facebook isn’t linking to news sites. if you want news from news sites, go to the news sites. the “vital resources” aren’t on CTV
I’m not responding to any more comments on this, but it’s evident that a lot of you have never lived through a wildfire. All of the resources you need get centralized on local news sites (like Castanet for Kelowna) in a way that makes it easy to figure out what’s happening. Many of the updates that local officials broadcast daily never get transcribed or posted anywhere except for local news sites such as that.
It’s very hard to find the resources.
JFC
That’s 100% intentional by the way. Surprise surprise the Canadian government/provincial governments have every incentive and desire to downplay and cover up the severity of the wildfires that were in part caused by their negligence and utter failure of an ecological policy. Just ask the people in Yellowknife who had the narrative changed from “there is absolutely nothing wrong, you’re all perfectly safe, no need to leave or panic, seriously stay in your homes” to “just kidding you’re actually a day away from burning to death.”
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There is the problem…
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There’s nothing stopping their band from communicating with them, the block is only on links to news sites.
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Have you tried rubbing a lamp?
Facebook has been abusing people’s mental illnesses for decades. It will take more than a statement on lemmy to fix that.
The fires are happening today.
That’s a great sentiment for the more tech-inclined folk, but for the masses, smug tech superiority doesn’t mean much. People are going to use what they use; it’s better to embrace what they’re using than to shout into a vaccuum that millions of people need to stop enjoying what they like, and start enjoying what you enjoy.
smug tech superiority
I can’t tell if this is satire or not… Are you seriously implying that going to any search engine (aka the url bar to most folks) and typing in 2-3 key words regarding what you want to know about is for “tech-inclined” folks? Please tell me you forgot the /s
Bruh just make people Download a app to warn about catastrophic events in general?
And the BC government has such an app, plus an email broadcast service, plus a phone alert service. It’s easy enough to sign up for that I’ve seen people in their 80s using it. And once you’ve signed up, you’ll be notified of any emergencies in your area.
As much as Meta shouldn’t be relied on for news, Canada creating legislation which stops Meta showing news then crying when Meta doesn’t show news is frankly laughable and I don’t know how their government didn’t see it coming
Lol Meta has some good PR. The government did not stop Meta from sharing news. They stopped them from profiting off someone else’s work without paying for it. Meta was told they had to start paying and decided to stop showing it entirely.
The Government telling meta and Google they’d have to pay to link has led to this entirely predictable result, and the companies said they would block links since very early on in the process. Independent experts (e.g., Michael Geist) also said that C18 was a bad idea.
It’s ridiculous to complain about someone complying with laws that you (the government) drafted and passed.
The laws aren’t even in effect now. They pulled it as a bargaining chip like they did in Australia. They could show wildfire news for free right now and choose not to.
They didn’t have to pay to link — they had to pay to publish. As in, links are fine, adding a summary based on the content of that link is not.
That said, C18 was definitely a bad idea, and Meta spun it to their advantage.
Considering the undue influence Meta had over WHICH news people saw, I think Meta made the right choice.
And
TwitterX - shame on them for requiring login to search for emergency hashtags. But nobody’s talking about that one.From the text of the bill: https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent
Making available of news content (2) For the purposes of this Act, news content is made available if
(a) the news content, or any portion of it, is reproduced; or
(b) access to the news content, or any portion of it, is facilitated by any means, including an index, aggregation or ranking of news content.
(b) sounds like just linking or indexing it would count as making it available, and thus require payment.
That seems to be backed up by at least a couple of the news sites: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-bill-c18-online-news-law-explained/
What is Bill C-18? Bill C-18 is legislation that would force tech companies such as Google and Meta to negotiate compensation deals with news organizations for posting or linking to their work.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/online-streaming-news-bills-whats-next
At the Heritage committee, Liberal MPs resisted efforts from the Conservatives to take links out of the bill […]
They told Meta that they had to pay to so much as host links to news sites on their platforms.
ie they had to pay to literally direct users to news sites, where news sites would make money off advertising to them, allowing the news sites to double dip. If anyone’s got good PR, it’s the news sites (would you believe it, the news sites have good connections with the press?)
There were ways to stop Meta from scraping news sites, but they decided to effectively stop them from even sharing news. They could’ve stopped the bill at purely “reproducing” news, but no, they got greedy and decided to make them pay for the privilege to give news sites free advertising. Why on earth would Meta agree to that, and why is it surprising that they just turned around and said no?
Also to be extra extra super clear, the news sites ALWAYS has control over the view of snippets and previews and indexing via HTML headers, HTTP headers, and robots.txt. They’re just pretending they didn’t have full control over how that was displayed.
I seriously do not understand where this idea of “profiting off someone else’s work” even comes from. I am on Meta’s side here 100%.
I didn’t pay much attention when this was happening. Are there size requirements or something? How does lemmy.ca or sh.itjust.works avoid paying?
There’s no set size but there needs to be an imbalance of power:
https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent
Application 6 This Act applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to the following factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses:
(a) the size of the intermediary or the operator;
(b) whether the market for the intermediary gives the operator a strategic advantage over news businesses; and
(c) whether the intermediary occupies a prominent market position.
I hate meta and I actually went out of my way to get my family and friends off of their platforms, but in this case I don’t think they’re in the wrong. Even if we roll with the logic that they should be paying for these links, then what is wrong with them deciding to not profit off of the links now by not showing them? Isn’t that the right thing to do?
It seems to me the news agencies and the Canadian government just wants extra revenue, and when their plan didn’t go as expected they’re now just crying and bit**ing about facing consequences of their actions.
For their next trick, the Canadian government will raise gas taxes and impose new tolls on all major highways, and then complain when people ignore orders to evacuate burning cities.
If only there was some site where people could get news and information. Some sort of… News… Site? The radio? TV?
The kids are alright.
Can assure you that lots of news and evacuation coordination information is still being shared. The same groups that were able to evacuate 95% of the population of a territory in a few days were able to adapt to sharing news differently pretty easily.
This is mainly the result of the Canadian government grasping for anything to blame Facebook for not playing their stupid games, but the fact that this argument is getting any traction at all suggests that the notion of personal responsibility is in an alarming state.
Apparently, if you’re a grown adult who only gets their news from a single company that isn’t even primarily a news company, even after knowing they’ve banned domestic news that could be relevant to your safety, it’s that company’s job to be a complete news source, not your job to look at actual news.
Amazingly, some people actually want to be treated like children and have their thinking and choosing done for them, and those people are a godsend to those who demand unreasonable amounts of control. “Poor Mr. Headuphisass is going to suffer the direct consequences of his actions if you don’t do x, y, and z that happen to align with our interests, you monster!”. Blegh.
How the fuck is meta the most used means of that information being given to those who need it? What the fuck man how did we let that happen. Imagine the places that haven’t had something to test their systems of communication. Damn.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In June, Canadian lawmakers passed a bill that would require companies like Meta and Google to pay news outlets to share their content.
In response, Meta banned users in Canada from viewing or sharing news content on its sites beginning August 1.
“Meta’s reckless choice to block news before the Act is in force is hurting access to vital information on Facebook and Instagram,” Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge tweeted Friday.
Here, residents are posting copied-and-pasted versions of news articles and live reported updates to circumvent the ban and continue sharing vital information about the wildfires.
And in British Columbia, just southwest of the Northwest Territories, officials have declared a state of emergency as nearly 400 wildfires burn and thousands are evacuated from the city of Kelowna and the surrounding region, CBC News reports.
“People in Canada can continue to use our technologies to connect with their communities and access reputable information, including content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations.”
The original article contains 375 words, the summary contains 163 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Canadian government’s news link tax is preventing Canadians from sharing vital information about the wildfires ripping through western Canada
Let’s place blame where blame is due.
C-18 isn’t even in effect. This is literally just Meta trying to force the hand of the government. They did the same thing in Australia.
And? You believe Meta/Google should have waited to block links?
Yes? Why not?
Social networks are a utility. They need to be free, accessible, chronological (not algorithm led) feeds that are available to all people.
Who knew that all it’d take was interest rates for tech companies to go full evil
In this case, it’s the Canadian government that is evil. Imagine them telling lemmy sites that they had to pay for news? It’s basically the same thing.
It’s a complete destruction of the free and open internet. Canada doesn’t get to declare war on the internet and then cry because Meta responded exactly how they said they would respond.
Depending on tech companies to not be evil is always a losing strategy. Tax them harder and build a better alert system.
