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
I doubt it’s on their radar.
The feds can’t even make a web form work properly, them running a Mastodon instance would be an epic train wreck.
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.
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
