Canada Demands Meta Lift News Ban To Allow Wildfire Info Sharing - Slashdot
source link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/08/18/215222/canada-demands-meta-lift-news-ban-to-allow-wildfire-info-sharing
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Canada Demands Meta Lift News Ban To Allow Wildfire Info Sharing
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"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. "We are calling on them to reinstate news sharing today for the safety of Canadians facing this emergency. We need more news right now, not less," she said. Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez earlier said the ban meant people did not have access to crucial information. Chris Bittle, a legislator for the ruling Liberal Party, complained on Thursday that "Meta's actions to block news are reckless and irresponsible." Ollie Williams, who runs Yellowknife's Cabin Radio digital radio station, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that people were posting screen shots of information on Facebook since they could not share links to news feeds. A Meta spokesperson responded by saying that the company had activated the "Safety Check" feature on Facebook that allows users to mark that they are safe in the wake of a natural disaster or a crisis.
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You mean passing laws to try to extort money out of a foreign company might have undesirable side effects!?
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Its Almost as if No one could seen this coming and as if NO other country tried same dumb idea with it FAILING just as bad.
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Neither the UK nor the EU have received this lack of success memo yet.
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Almost as if the blade were sharp on both sides... cutting both ways... a double edged sword, if you will.
I'm not saying that Zuckerfuck wants people to die to prove his point to the Canadian government... just that this situation is very much proving the point that if you cut off your nose to spite your face, you may regret it.
(have I mixed enough metaphors yet?)
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More like a population of people who becomes so dependent on social media that they can't get information any other way any longer has bad side effects.
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That hasn't happened though. It's just political gas lighting.
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Why is this undesirable? This is a beneficial side effect. The less people rely on Facebook to shape their view of the world the better the world will be. There are plenty of ways those of us in Canada can get access to reliable news and Facebook is not one of them. The message from the Federal Government should be how to share news and communicate without having everything under Facebook's control.
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Because we're talking about public safety instead of gatekeeping?
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Because we're talking about public safety instead of gatekeeping?
Not at all. Facebook should never ever be relied on for public safety as current events aptly demonstrate. Fortunately, it is not at all necessary for public safety since there are many, many other ways to stay informed. Indeed, you have to wonder why the government, whose primary concern should be public safety, is not telling people to use these alternatives instead of trying to score points against Facebook.
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Who said "relying"? The point is to get public safety messages out as broadly as possible, not train everybody for a future in Starfleet.
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If nobody is relying on Facebook then there is no public safety concern because they will have got the message from elsewhere. You can't have it both ways.
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I don't like Facebook or even
Meta (Instagram booted me out of my account until i fed those assholes a phone # this week...) but... no. I'm not taking a position on whether or not this is overreach just yet, I need to mull that over. But public safety is not the battlefield to play "let's hurt what we don't like!" -
It's still poor policy that hinders the reach of public safety messaging. No one should rely on it but that doesn't mean it doesn't have huge reach that can get the message out to people rapidly. The government is trying to pretend that Facebook and Google are responding unprovoked and out of malice towards the public. No one is buying their gas lighting.
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Whenever there's a quake, a flood or a wildfire, I always check Facebook first for the latest news!/s
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Facebook wasn't writing those news stories. The news that has disappeared off Facebook is still the same articles written by the same people. That doesn't change the world for the better. It just opens up a new vector for misinformation when people start sharing fake screen shots with made up headlines and no link to validate with.
How to share news and communicate except for the most efficient and popular ways to share news and communicate? You're also forgetting Google will be delisting news as well s
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Canada "Demands"?
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That is just as funny as France "Demands"
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I see the humor in that perspective as well. Though it's useful to remind ourselves that social media is cancer of the mind. It provokes outrage and generally encourages people to be their worst selves, both when criticizing other and when desperately wanting some reaction for self. That's not to mention the ADD-like mental patterns that form in adults that start to be too much online.
So the other perspective is that the US has spewed this net-cancer onto the rest of the world, and the only reasonable count
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extort? you mean META using news channels to remain relevant to their users and not compensating the news agencies for said content is fine? Them protesting the law forcing them to negotiate a deal with news agencies by stopping ALL news sharing... that by META and by it's users in regions affected by an environmental emergency is perfectly fine so that people who for what ever dumb reason rely on Facebook to get their news./s I'm not judging them (the people), maybe they don't trust networks, and only t
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By your logic, since they don't currently have those news channels, they are not currently relevant to their users.
Ergo, it's no big deal that they don't have those news channels.
Perhaps you should rethink your "logic."
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by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday August 18, 2023 @06:44PM (#63778906)
We have CBC television and radio pretty much everywhere in the country where there are more than 3 people. If you have the Internet, you're somewhere with enough population density you'd have to be pretty dense personally to not know about an evacuation order.
People who need Facebook to tell them they're in the path of a fire should probably just be allowed to burn for the good of the gene pool.
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Yeah, very unlike you are getting news somewhere else in these situations. But I guess this is the governments way of crying uncle without actually yelling it.
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I guess it's the way of them just whining we want you to give us money but won't but trying to find a different way to do it? Like 'for the children' or 'for the wildfires' kind of thing I guess.
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Truth. Canadians have easy access to this info. In addition the British Columbia Wildfire Service [gov.bc.ca] has detailed information if required, but the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is definitely a good source, and widely available online, by AM and FM radio, and TV. Similarly, the Northwest Territories has detailed information [gov.nt.ca] and CBC. In fact all provinces and territories have excellent online resources. I agree that people who only know how to use social media to get this kind of information dilute th
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You don't even need a mobile phone of your own. A few months ago when I was on a plane that landed back in Edmonton everyone's mobile phone started making the emergency alert sound when they turned it on. On asking a fellow passenger what the noise was about it turned out the alerts from the fires in Edson, a couple of hours drive east of Edmonton, were triggering phones registered in Edmonton too.
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Based on the Starlink coverage map Canada appears to have internet coverage from coast to coast to coast now. Looks like aren't selling to the urban centers yet but like you mention they are already served.
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Here's an idea that will get you much more traction: tell people to stop getting "news" from Facebook.
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Whoa, what are you from 30 years ago or something? You can't use common sense in this day and age! It's 2023!
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The next thing they'll be complaining about is that phone manufacturers aren't making their phones heat-tolerant enough because they melt before the users can check Facebook to see if there is a fire heading their way.
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Meanwhile studies have shown social media to be the fastest way for people to learn about major breaking news including emergencies.
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Funny, the emergency alert system lets my phone know there is a tornado coming my way WELL before some random dumbass on facebook lets me know.
Sounds to me like Canada just needs to upgrade their emergency alert systems so it's actually useful. But I suppose it's cheaper to try and shovel that price tag off on facebook too.
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Orly? What's the increase in fires from? Not enough carbon tax or because people voted for trump?
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In Hawaii, it's faulty power lines/infrastructure.
In California it's faulty lines/infrastructure.
In Canada it's because, well, it's because they always have wildfires (they have a wildfire season, donchaknow!)
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Over a decade of really weak wildfire seasons helps set the stage for a really big one.
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A build up of kindling from over a decade of decreased fires is a major contributor. The natives have known of this cycle for thousands of years.
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the way you get it is the way Gavin Newsom & the Democrats did with insulin: you threaten to start making it yourself.
Call Facebook and tell them: You do this or the gov't makes it's own Facebook, and every Canadian citizen gets an account. No ads, secure and no sharing your personal details with the highest bidders.
Basically Public Access for the Internet. Like what we here in the States used to do with Cable TV.
Do that and Zuck will fall over himself to do whatever you tell him. The one th-
No one would use that, assuming it was even usable in the first place. After the Canadian government froze the bank accounts of people who contributed to the truck protest, you'd have to be a complete moron to give them your data. Also, it's worthless for the millions of Canadians who have friends or family outside of Canada. I don't think you thought through your idea at all.
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No one would use that, assuming it was even usable in the first place
The Chinese WeChat system disagrees with your statement.
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ouch.
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I don't know what that is, but given it's China, how much choice do people have? As disgusting as some of Canada's actions may have been, China would have have been a completely different level. Throngs wouldn't have gotten to the point of having to lock down bank accounts because a tank would have driven over the protesters before it ever came to that.
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WeChat was not built by the government, and it's certainly not something any government would have been able to build. That's a private entity thing owned by a private entity that works with the government (and by works with... it means provides whatever monitoring and censorship the government requires of them).
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Oh man, wait until you hear about the CRA.
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You do this or the gov't makes it's own Facebook, and every Canadian citizen gets an account
It would be an empty threat. You and I should both know that this is an undertaking the government wouldn't be capable of doing -- typically they barely run their own website.
Remember the fiasco that was the ACA marketplace website launch? They spent close to $1 Billion on consulting just to make that, and it barely worked - and something like what they did wouldn't scale to the level necessary to run a social
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Bahahahahahahahahah! Canadian Facebook! That will be about as awesome as Canadian music and TV shows. BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Stop it! My sides hurt from all that laughing!
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Canada attempted to extort money from Facebook.
Facebook denied it.
Canada is crying because in the course of avoiding their extortion attempt, Facebook cut off important news to Canadian users.Get fucked Trudeau. You caused this!
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Speaking as an adult Canadian, I can confirm that what Lord Kano says is absolutely TRUE. The idiocy of the current JustInept Tru-D'oh! "LPC" government is clear:
The fact is that most "news organizations" benefit in one important way from the platforms built by Meta and Google, in that platforms (currently) directly and indirectly provide exposure to those news organizations by allowing posts of links to those news sites by their customers or by third party or platform-provided news aggregators. So in this way, the benefit of the platforms to the news organizations is positive and it makes no sense to "charge" the platform for posting news links. Indeed, there are multiple "news organizations" that have stated they will go under if the platforms start blocking the posting of their links.
The problem is that there IS an area where the platforms have caused severe cash flow problems for the news organizations, and that area is advertising. Advertisers see little benefit in paying news organizations for posting ads when the platforms can provide them with much better exposure for their ads. Historically, the news organizations have been funded by their advertising, and the new reality is that particular financial model no longer works for them. Revenue from advertising has dried up and the platforms are happily eating the news organizations' lunches.
So, just like a buggy whip company demanding government assistance when everybody drives cars, the news organizations are desperate to find a new revenue source. Somehow the LPC government has decided that they can go after the platforms on behalf of the news organizations in exchange for positive coverage from those news organizations. (Oops, was I not supposed to say that part out loud?) The only reason we're hearing whining from the LPC talking heads about "stealing" and "paying their fair share" is because the LPC has learned that if you tell a lie loud enough and often enough, it eventually starts to be believed.
What's happened here is that the strategy to shake down the platforms for money has failed as they are not willing to play ball. Now the LPC government looks like the incompetent grifters they are, as the platforms simply (and rightly!) refuse to pay the extortion fees.
Bottom line is that the news organizations need to understand that the old business model is gone and is not coming back, and trying to lobby the government to keep them afloat is reprehensible and will never work.
It's really sad.
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As another Canadian, I largely agree.
I've yet to hear of a single informed person who believes in Bill C-18 - it's an example of government intending to solve a problem, but doing so in a completely ineffective and incompetent way.
First, news isn't "blocked" - ISPs are not preventing traffic from going to the sources. Bill C-18 is poorly constructed and limits the incentives (and ability as a result) for the dissemination and promotion of news on certain channels. Very different.
It's typical"well inte
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It's not just that the advertisers get more or better exposure from social media, news papers still deliver quality impressions and click thrus but online tracking has really shined a light on the value of ads and they have plummeted. You could even argue they've become undervalued. People no longer have to guess about their ROI for an ad campaign and there is a ton of inventory, they'll pay a price that they can calculate a profit on.
The news papers were getting away with a monopoly on classifieds too.
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So no one should pay for news
No... Typically online the news is Ad-Supported, and provided from media websites for free. It's not that which Facebook minds -- they won't accept being asked to pay a price for providing users web links to news providers' news articles out of their own pockets.
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No, it's not extortion. It's an inconvenience to Meta and they decided not to participate. Their total right.
With your analogy, Facebook decided to leave the paper at the news stand. And now the Canadian government is crying Meta isn't buying the paper!!
(who the heck still buys a paper?)
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www.michaelgeist.ca/blog/
"Blocking of news links on Facebook and Instagram in Canada has becomes increasingly widespread in recent days, leading to a growing number of public comments from media outlets and reporters expressing surprise or shock about the scope of the link blocking. Indeed, outlets with blocked links include university student newspapers, radio stations, and foreign news outlets. While there may have been some errors (Facebook has a page to seek review of any blocked link decision), the inc
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The Law of Unintended Consequences. Passing laws that have scopes that shortsighted legislators don't think about. All of this was predicted, just not the exact circumstances. I'm glad Facebook has stuck with this policy.
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No one in power that is. Seems like most any six year old could have predicted this.
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Yea they should talked to people else where Like maybe someone in spain about what they would see would happen.
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Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. People have become lazy. Sites that claimed Facebook was taking away their revenue are either not that attractive or are just mostly irrelevant. Traditional media is dead. Facebook is still bad. Terrance and Phillip were right all alone when they sung their song Blame Canada.
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For one, they aren't. They're a private corporation. For two, if you want to use them as a public utility, then don't try to extort money from them.
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You call it extortion? I disagree. Here's what actually happened.
Meta essentially gutted the ability of news outlets to earn money through advertising. It pursued a scorched-earth policy that destroyed any ad competitors in its space except for Google.
Then it promised news outlets a way to drive traffic: Send people to Facebook; set up a Facebook page, and we'll drive traffic. The news organizations foolishly fell for that and became dependent on a platform they didn't own.
Now that Meta has all the power, it can give a big F.U. to the new outlets it helped to kill off.
I have no sympathy for Meta. It is evil. I like the idea of the Canadian government funding a free version of Facebook without ads to undercut Meta, but unfortunately I don't think it's feasible... starting a social network platform to compete with Facebook is basically impossible.
I'd love to see Facebook broken up. Google too, for many of the same reasons. Or else to have Canadian courts to find that Meta has abused its monopoly position and to impose a fine commensurate with the damage it has done.
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The EU and the UK are pursuing the antitrust line, and threatening to break up Facebook/Meta. Canada should see if we can join in.
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Well, FaceFuck did decide they are an Irish company (to avoid US taxes), so let the EU tear them apart... not our problem.
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I have zero love for facebook, but facebook didn't convince them, news outlets thought they could use facebook to get more attention for themselves. It didn't work, it's called business. It was a poor choice.
You can't' force people to watch the news, to watch your ads, or use your products, and that's what they're screaming about. People didn't care enough about the news to visit their news website, but the news could get impressions from facebook, and they're like, SEE! They want to see our stuff!
When it's not true.Like when website refuse to work without taking of adblockers. Many of them have found their content isn't valued enough and people just go somewhere else.
There is a big difference between being able to throw something in front of them to kill time, versus getting them to put in effort for something to pay money or watch content they don't want to watch like ads.All that's happening is delusional people thinking people that just come across their stuff or willing to kill time watching it for free are somehow ripe customers just waiting to be charged or profited in some way like an ad, and then when it doesn't work they throw a temper-tantrum like a 4 year old.
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The point is: Facebook abused its monopoly power to kill off all local competition in the online advertising space.
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Well I can't disagree with that. I just don't think it means facebook must carry their content and pay for it.
I'm also fine if facebook went away, I don't think we benefit as a society from it. I also don't really care for online advertising either, I'm fine if that also died.
I only want advertisements of the products and features I'm looking for at the time, not for them to try and use tactics to manipulating me into buying something I don't actually need or really want.
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What is wrong with people!! Make a better Meta or Google, or whatever. If there is a good model, and people such as yourself are a market, a product will appear. Heck, if this is such a up in arms deal why hasn't one appears already?
Break up Meta? Google? Keep going, and you won't have to worry about it. Canadian courts? What you'll find is they will just block your country and you won't have any of it. Sometime you might just get what you ask for. Wonder how well you would deal without either of
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What part of "abuse of monopoly position" is hard to understand?
If Facebook did block Canada, that would be fantastic, because then it would not be able to abuse its monopoly position here and competitors would be able to survive.
I agree it's not much of a contest. A corporation is going up against the will of a democratically-elected government. The corporation must not be allowed to win.
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You act like Meta has no choice but to pay the Canadian government to serve Canadian customers - why would Meta do that?
Meta can easily block every single Canadian user based on ISP and or IP address, and avoid paying Canada for the privilege of serving Canadian customers.
The math isn't hard - take the estimated revenue canadian users generate, subtract the cost to serve Canadian customers, then subtract the fees the Canadian government wants, and that tells you the profit Meta could make.
The issue isn't Ca
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Exactly. And what's particularly insidious is how people start siding with fucking FACEBOOK.
People are actually defending fucking FACEBOOK.
Give your head a shake people.
If you're siding with fucking FACEBOOK you're probably on the wrong side.
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Or Parliament can repeal the law before somebody dies.
Their choice. How much dirt does CBC have on them?
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You pass idiotic laws knowing that Meta, et al. are going to stop allowing news content on their sites then you don't get to whine about it. Talk about a Marie-Antoinette moment!
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"Let them eat Facebook!"
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Isn't ironic that the Canadian Government which uses its news agencies as propaganda arms, want facebook to pay them for the privilege of carrying their propaganda, and now force facebook to pay them for being forced to carry their propaganda.
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Please point to any CBC article that says anything untrue. For it to be propaganda it must either be untrue or all other opposing media must be completely blocked.
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Hating the CBC and calling it a propaganda outlet... well, that's a right-wing thing and they say it even when there's a right-wing government in power.
What they really fear is information, because it can contradict their beliefs.
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Exactly, any truth is 'propaganda' to them. Because they believe things first and expect mefia outlets to validate their beliefs. Propiganda is just a convienent word to dismiss something that doesn't validate what they already believe.
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by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Friday August 18, 2023 @08:16PM (#63779108)
Your error is in thinking propaganda must be untrue.
"Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented."
So selectively selected true facts can be propaganda, especially those intended to appeal to emotion. For instance the constant fear porn that makes up nearly all broadcast news, because after all, fear drives ad revenue.
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I didn't say it had to be untrue. Read again.
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Petard... hoisted by ones own.
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Propaganda - information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
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Why is no one reading past the word 'or'? Simple logical concept.
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Alright Alanis. We get it.
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They don't want to pay to carry the news. You demanded they pay for it, so they said we'll remove it then to be in compliance with you, then you throw a fit because they're not letting you share news? You mean you're throwing a fit because you can't force them to pay you for something they're not interested in paying for.
You got what you deserved. I know, the big R word of doom, Responsibility! With the A word of doom! Accountability. You are accountable and responsible for the consequences of your choices, like trying to force facebook to pay to carry your news.
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Funny part is the media companies got a nice thing called Fair Dealing in the copyright act that they can use someone else's photos that relate to a news event with out having to compensate them for it and just have to give a simple copy right notice credit.
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Do they need more than the ability to force a message onto every single cell phone? Are they still using land lines up there in woods?
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>"Do they need more than the ability to force a message onto every single cell phone? "
They shouldn't have the ability to do that, either. It is already horribly abused and annoying as hell. Thankfully my mobile phone has an OFF setting for those, without rooting it. And that is exactly what I used after the Nth false weather warning, stupid "elderly" or "amber" alert when I was inside all day, and several other useless nonsense interruptions to my life/sleep/whatever for no valid reason.
Now my local
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Canada: Stop stealing content! You need to pay for that! Facebook: OK we'll stop. Canada: Noooo not like that!
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Seriously. If they can access Facebook, they can also access a web browser and simply look at actual news sites. Canada is just trying to leverage stupidity to force compliance on a private business, of something that will actively hurt said business.
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I guess for these folks... Facebook is the "internet".
Maybe someone should publish a new "internet" app that looks like the Facebook app and sell that?
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While Mark, a good fraction of non-technical people, and maybe half of engs are normal or cool, too many senior engineers and managers are cartoonish corporate assholes.
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Actions have their consequences, and yes, this includes government actions as well.
And they are now in the "finding out" portion of it. They made a decision to ask for money for sharing news, and Facebook decided not to pay. What did they think? Things stay exactly the same, except for the paying part? Nope, this is a very well known phenomenon, and happened many times in the past. (Look up why US lost its yacht building business ~30 years, ago, and never actually gained it back).
The Canadian government can
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Sad that such a news starved country seems to have only FB & IG to communicate with. Maybe they should go back to the 20th century where other means existed before the social media sh*t show.
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