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.
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.