Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday criticized Meta for blocking domestic news from its platforms, saying the Facebook-parent was prioritizing profit over safety as devastating wildfires force tens of thousands to evacuate their homes.
Trudeau’s comments represent the latest government attack on Meta, which this month started blocking news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms for all users in Canada in response to a new law requiring internet giants to pay for news articles.
Canada: “If you want to link to news, you have to pay”
Facebook: “We’d rather just not link to news”
Canada: passes law
Facebook: blocks news
Canada: :o
Canada just make a mastodon instance and get all the Canadians onto the fediverse. Do it and it will be awesome.
There are several goverments, like the Dutch, that have already set up their own instances.
Japan has done the same for Earthquake notifications, after dropping TwiXtter
The feds can’t even make a web form work properly, them running a Mastodon instance would be an epic train wreck.
I doubt it’s on their radar.
It is a trend on all governments to push public services to third parties and, as consequence, social media platforms. How many we see that have their own websites but news and updates only available on twitter or facebook? It’s insane, imho.
It’s because 2 billion people a day login to instagram but no one is visiting Calgary.ca and the people asked for everything important to them to be in one place so instagram it is. Meta should have to pay to use someone else’s work, this isn’t a radical idea, what’s radical is that meta has just decided it’s going to be a supreme leech for free while making billions and there’s nothing anyone can do about them being assholes
It’s not just that 2 billion people access the third party vs the main page, is that you can’t go cheaper than free using the third party and to me that’s the problem. Governments selling themselves cheap to big data is the issue. Screw it if Calgary.ca doesn’t get 2 billion accesses a day, that’s not why it exists! In that I think you missed my point.
Nobody reads the sites. For every org only using Twitter there are two using a custom cms that costs half a mil each year and getting two visits a year.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Now these clowns are whining about safety since they didnt get their payday. Brilliant.
Oh fuck off Canada. Big old case of well if it isn’t the consequences of my actions.
People should get their news for things like this from local government agencies. Say RSS right on the government sites. If people even need to go to social media for it then the government is dialing in its own duties.
Threaten to ban the whole fuckin site and he done with it. Garbage ass social platform. See how they play ball then.
Spoken like a true Liberal.
If it weren’t for the government dicking with the internet, the social media aggregators wouldn’t have given up linking to news articles.
Now you just expect them to “play ball” or else.
The joys of living in a country not being totally bent over by the corporations.
Like the news organizations that lobbied this stupid law into existence?
You mean the news organizations that didn’t give a platform to the alt right, Q anon, 1%ers, 3%ers, orange vest movements, separatists, truckers convoy, covidiots, neo nazi groups, proud boys, RFKers, etc etc etc? Those news orgs?
What the fuck are you on about? This was lobbied for by the Postmedia, CTV, etc, etc, etc.
Lol what are you insinuating? Postmedia is right leaning but in no way shape or form is it on the same level or did it inflict the same damage as Meta and it’s brands.
Canada shouldn’t become a country where the government decides what we see, hear, and do. They already meddle in that too much, and blocking websites that aren’t engaging in illegal activity is absurd. Will they block the Fediverse next?
All Meta is doing here is complying with the new law. The government said “pay to link to news sites or stop linking to them” and that’s exactly what Meta is doing. It’s another stupid law pushed by corporate Canada for their own benefit, and now they’re surprised at the most obvious outcome.
They don’t police what we hear, see, or do. At all. What they should do is ban platforms that refuse to be responsible for the misinformation on their platforms. Especially when that misinformation leads to emergencies like the trucker convoy. Or the misinformation that lead to the vast amount of anti-vaxx sentiment. Just need to look at our closest neighbors to see how well unfettered free speech is going.
This place is a commie echo chamber even more deranged than Reddit was. Good luck expressing any sort of dissenting opinion.
Wahhh my chosen megacorp has to pay its dues to the country it does business in wahhhh
A business chose not to do business with us as an entire country because our government legislated them out of the market. It’s absolutely fucking hilarious when the same government makes idle threats towards the same business because they aren’t providing the same service they provided before the government made it clear that they would tax every post and regulate the internet by enforcing taxes on hyperlinks.
Our government has made the sharing of information a taxable manoeuvre. No fucking wonder referenced megacorp said “I’m just not gonna.”
Umm… Maybe people shouldn’t get their collective news from Facebook.
This is the dumbest argument.
If you want to stick it to facebook, tell people to stop using it and direct them to better sites for news. This guy is so tone deaf.
Canadians got news before Facebook and they’ll manage to get it again without Facebook. They’re clever folks.
Coming out with story this makes JT sound like a fool.
Fucking hell Trudeau is so embarrassing
