Meta's news ban is preventing Canadians from sharing vital information about the wildfires ripping through western Canada
(www.businessinsider.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 20 Aug 2023 10:00
https://lemmy.world/post/3487364
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 20 Aug 2023 10:00
https://lemmy.world/post/3487364
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.
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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!
How about not relying on Facebook for such things?
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.
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.
Facebook is not a legitimate news source. It never has been. This is not a failing of Facebook. It is a failing of the people who decided to rely on Facebook for news.
“News” from Facebook tells them shit like horse de-wormer will save them from smoke inhalation or bleaching their asshole will prevent the spread of forest fires. Facebook is a conservative manipulation machine. It is not a news source.
No, but it acted as a way for people to share links to legitimate news in times of crisis if that was where they normally communicated, and now they can’t. Similarly, people got used to accessing Twitter to find realtime information on local events, and now that’s also largely cut off.
I’m not defending the companies. I’m not defending people’s dependence on them. I’m pointing out that the need exists in this moment, and that this isn’t the moment to be shaming people who are actively fleeing a wildfire for decrying the fact that governments’ and corporations’ choices are impacting their ability to share information in a crisis.
JFC
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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
A lot of First Nations people check Facebook because their band will be advising them on evac orders and providing updates that literally nobody else in the world will be doing (not news, not BC, not Can Gov, not NGOs… well, potentially BC Fire Service).
There is the problem…
Huh, what’s the problem? What the shitfuck are you talking about?
There’s nothing stopping their band from communicating with them, the block is only on links to news sites.
I know, man. I was responding to the comments about why do people use Facebook? And the answer is that First Nations governments use it to communicate with their membership.
And for pointing out this simple fact I got downvotes for no fucking conceivable reason
Probably because you went off topic and got misunderstood by others. The comment you were replying to was saying people shouldn’t be using Facebook for news, in the context of the article about the tax on links to news sites. It’s not very clear what your reply about first nation bands have to do with that.
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.
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
I came here to say something similar. Both sides are playing a game of chicken and the citizens/users are paying the price.
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.
I don’t really fault them for getting their filtering/blocking systems setup and tested ahead of time before they are liable, considering the estimated cost of $329.2 million per year between Google and Meta:
pbo-dpb.ca/…/RP-2223-017-M--cost-estimate-bill-c-…
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: www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/…/royal-assent
(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: theglobeandmail.com/…/article-bill-c18-online-new…
ottawacitizen.com/…/online-streaming-news-bills-w…
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 don’t even like Meta and I agree, the law is horrible
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 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:
www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/…/royal-assent
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.
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?
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.
Social networks are a utility. They need to be free, accessible, chronological (not algorithm led) feeds that are available to all people.
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.
the government’s argument in implementing the link tax was that facebook doesn’t provide any value, they just take news for free and make a profit off it.
so facebook stopped linking to news. and now they’re complaining because facebook isn’t providing the valuable service that they used to. so does facebook provide value by linking to news, or not?
Some people are complaining, certainly not everyone.
And no, it’s not a valuable service. Just go to CTV or CBC news websites and get all the wildfire news you need. People do not need to get their news from Facebook.
i mean, i mostly agree. i don’t get my news from facebook, and most people i know who use facebook say it’s a generally more pleasant experience without news on the site.
but when i say “now they’re complaining” i don’t just mean random people. the people that are complaining are Justin Trudeau and David Eby. If they want facebook to link to news sites, they shouldn’t charge facebook money for that. most websites pay facebook money to link to them.
Yup, no fan of Meta, but this law was a bad idea
For just about anything you can always find “people” that complain about it: I mean, Flat-Earthers complain of their views getting “unfair treatment”.
That doesn’t at all mean it’s bad or even that such a view is anywhere representative of what even a significant minority of people thinks.
Somebody complaining about something is only a valid threshold for “newsworthy” for a “news” media which is clickbait prone or little more than the mouthpiece of a specific political side.
(Not Canadian, don’t really have a side in there, just pointing out what I see as a general rule).
Same thing happened in Australia with similar legislation… the problem is, local county fire authorities who don’t receive sufficient funding utilise social media to provide regular updates… Meta (facebook at the time) shut off access for the day, and people went batshit. It definitely exposed a real flaw in that sparsely located, small county fire authorities don’t have a good way to communicate to the people during bushfires.
The problem here is that they want to reach a wide audience… and the wide audience are more likely to be using something owned by Meta to seek information.
I hope someone stands up to the Meta mafia. Governments listen the fuck up and make it so your people aren’t reliant on foreign entities to obtain vital information.
[EDIT] I’ll also add that while the county fire authorities in Australia might have apps to communicate, these are run by the state governments, so the reach of the individual apps is pretty variable. People who live in bushfire prone areas will probably have an app and their radio going to listen out on alerts to leave, but visitors, new residents, people passing through etc are pretty unlikely to think to download the CFA app for the state.
In Canada fire authorities can still post, they just can’t link to news articles.
Yeah this feels like people with terrible habits being forced to learn new ones
If more people learn to get their info from reliable sources, that’s a win imo
‘oh look, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions’
I feel for people, but this is exactly what the government legislated. We can’t demand they pay a tax if they want to do business and then get mad when they decide to not do that business here.
Almost like the Canadian government is a clownshow from start to finish. Speaking as a Canadian.
If only there was some site where people could get news and information. Some sort of… News… Site? The radio? TV?
Radio is always better than Facebook, but seems people have upgraded their trust.
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.