Canada should run it's own official mastodon or lemmy instance to post canadian news/communications and whatnot. I never undestood how we still depend on American corporations like Twitter and facebook to share news. Like, even for my local govt, if I want to know if there is any road works, water issues and so on, it ends up on facebook only! This is dumb.
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Canadian governmental entities (at all levels) aren't known for their innovative thinking. Throughout the pandemic, regardless of your position on vaccines, the main fact that it was a group of volunteers in a discord channel that were responsible for the information shows the archaic state of digital communication in Canada. Frankly embarrassing by global comparison.
Wait is this for real? Source? I have not heard of this, it would be great if this is open to the public during and even after pandemic.
They go by Vaccine Hunters. I don't think they are active anymore but you can find their history here: https://vaccinehunters.ca/about
As much as I love clowning on Zuck it's unreasonable to expect foreign companies to act as your nation's means of emergency notifications.
Not really emergency notifications but news, which tbh isn't as important in this case because non-Canadian news orgs aren't affected and are covering it too. So there isn't an immediate risk I don't think.
As for the main point: The problem is that a subset of the population ONLY gets information through one platform. The only way to reach them is through that platform, and not reaching them means excess costs when you have to rescue/treat/otherwise deal with the fallout. It's also the government's job to inform people and keep them safe.
At the same time, the companies need to be regulated by the government. Can't just let them have free reign because they seized control
💀
I wouldn't trust my country to competently run anything internet related
Did he stutter?
It's unreasonable for a social media platform with almost 3 billion people to be privately owned.
Facebook isn't privately owned. It's a public company.
Publicly owned and publicly traded are different.
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Or, and hear me out here, just don't use Facebook, especially if it doesn't have the features you say you need?
The internet is gigantic, there's so, so, so so many other ways to get and share information.
Lol they didn't "ban" news, they refused to pay to make the news relevant. Canada basically banned news sharing on the internet. They can repeal the stupid law.
I don't agree with the solution the government came up with, but the problem still exists and I don't understand it well enough to come up with an alternative solution.
Making news is expensive, and good quality news (not mucked up by corporate interests) needs a way to fund that work. We don't want news to be an outlet for corporations investing in a mouthpiece. So traditionally this was done through advertising.
Now people barely ever click through to the websites so the advertising doesn't work. Meanwhile the places where people ARE seeing the news do have ads. The content is produced by one party, and the profit goes to another.
The problem exists and needs a solution, but I don't know what it might be. Australia brought in a similar law successfully and Facebook/Google came to a deal. Canada might also be able to do that?
The other long term solution IMO is to make the platforms obsolete with things like Mastodon and Lemmy. That might take some time though
Even on the fediverse the articles are sctaped and pasted. Or bot summarized.
Both significantly reduce the likelihood I click through.
And that's forgetting the significant demo that's trying to stay ad-free.
There ARE other downsides to this law, outside of the hissy fit Facebook is throwing.
For example, smaller independent news companies don't have the bargaining power to come to a fair agreement with Facebook, like the larger organizations can. A solution to that might be to have some standard rates set up, but again, don't know enough about it
The solution is for people who care about the news to start paying some small amount of money to support responsible news. Look at NPR or PBS but fuck paying corporate news outlets to bait me with outrage porn.
If people aren't clicking through to read the details, the investigative journalism no matter how good is ineffective. So if the summarization one or two sentences is enough for most people then they don't need more in-depth reporting
Well, I think the government at the core has a small point, network effects drive these sites, and the news being there draws people to them, which draws news to be there. But they frame it as one sided, and the fact is the news benefits from being on Facebook way more than Facebook benefits from people sharing news. People are on Facebook, the news is irrelevant if people can't share it with each other in their lives, but Facebook doesnt become irrelevant without it. The government stepped out of line here and are doing anything and everything in their power to avoid admitting it, even resorting to propaganda. This is a shakedown for a failing industry that the government needs to continue to exist for it to control public narrative, that's tye long and short of it.
Personally I'm of the opinion that all news is propaganda, and so I consume none of it. The fact that every news organization is parroting the government line about Facebook being a meanie and blocking the news tells me who controls the news and/or where power lies. If something's important enough for me to need to know it, someone in my life will tell me. So I'd disagree with you that this needs a solution.
I do like your other long term solution, I don't use Facebook either.
This is so ridiculous. It's sad that people need to rely on social media to find "news".
Is CBC that hard to find?
Journalism is so fucked in Canada.
Apparently only 3% of FB feed is news related
TIL, that is so small how is this even an issue.
Oh no, I'm facing the consequences of my actions
~Canada
Governments are terrible at legislating in the tech and information space. It almost always results in terrible laws that don't even come close to doing what they intended.
I don't like facebook and i certainly don't give a shit if they lose money but you can't force them to buy news articles and deliver them to non-paying users.
Yes the government can force them because theyre the government. Thats how governments work. If youve bought into the propaganda that governments have no right to regulate facebook then I guess facebook is the ultimate authority to rule the world? Perhaps we should hand the military over to zuckerberg? Zuck as unelected dictator president? Governments have authority and a duty to control corporations within their borders no matter what their ceo's have convinced you through the media outlets they have bought up. Yes, governments have ultimate power and authority on planet earth not "business".
Sure, Canada can regulate Meta/FB, but they can’t force them to offer the service in the country. If Meta wants to completely cease operations in Canada they’d be perfectly within their “rights”.
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Issue is Canada can't force them to do business there. If they continue introducing flawed legislation that is awful at doing what it's supposed to do, then Meta's just gonna get tf outta there. Canada aren't big enough to have that much of a dent on their income, so it's just not worth it.
That's the traditional model, but I don't think it applies anymore. We seem to be living in a post-nation state era. People are fully reliant on the top dozen or so companies, so those companies have tremendous power over government. Some governments are only just now realizing that fact and are trying to push back, but it's way too late.
I think it's a little easier and less complicated than that.
The government wants to give money, specifically Facebook's money, to the publishing industry. The industry lobbying the government.
The government has the ability to tax Facebook directly. That's well established. But the government has a trouble giving money to the publishing industry. That would be a subsidy. People have trouble paying subsidies to failing businesses. From the government. Usually. It's anyway it's a very difficult discussion to have in public.
So the government and the publishers got together and are trying to force Facebook to pay the publishers and not the government.
Facebook gracefully said no, they don't want to pay the publishers.
So now if the government forces them to use the publisher data, they can't logically also force them to pay a fee to use the thing they're forced to use... The government could always tax Facebook... But the goal isn't to tax it's to give money to publishers...
I think this demonstrates we are not in a post-government age, this particular lobbying attempt to keep the horse and buggy industry irrelevant isn't working as planned, it's backfiring in a funny way.
Be me, the Canadian government
Decide that making social media companies pay news organizations to host their links is a good plan that will help struggling news sites.
The social media sites stop hosting links in order to avoid the payments, hurting said struggling news organizations.
Wait they weren't supposed to do that.
Canadians are not able to find out critical information about the wildfires due to your law.
Blame social media companies for being reckless.
Crisis averted.
Australia tried it and gave in.
I'm perfectly fine with shitting on Meta/Facebook/Instagram for gestures broadly at the last 10+ years, but Canada instituted a link tax for news. They added a fee to a fundamental part of the Internet: linking to something. I can't blame Meta for refusing to play that game.
Seems pretty straightforward, if Canada wants some news to be spread via Facebook, they could create a legislative niche that when a national emergency is declared, links to news will not be taxed.
Or they could have a clearing house of certain links that don't get taxed.
Facebook's responding to market incentives, as they're supposed to do. So you apply a tax and Facebook's opting out of the tax as is allowed by the law. You can't then force them to do the voluntary thing to pay the tax.
Governments often apply the same logic to things they don't want people to do. Like smoking. The sin attached to smoking is deliberately and clearly created to keep people from smoking. This is exactly the same as the government putting a 2000% tax on cigarettes and then complaining people aren't smoking anymore.
play stupid games, win stupid prizes
Lol, yep I hate to say it but the stick bicycle meme applies here pretty hard.
This administration writes legislation like kindergarten students.
Oh no. The leopards are eating their face. Someone do something. Help.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
OTTAWA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta (META.O) lift a "reckless" ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country.
Some people fleeing wildfires in the remote northern town of Yellowknife have complained to domestic media that the ban prevented them from sharing important data about the fires.
"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.
Chris Bittle, a legislator for the ruling Liberal Party, complained on Thursday that "Meta's actions to block news are reckless and irresponsible."
In response, a Meta spokesperson said by email that the company had activated the "Safety Check" feature on Facebook that allows users to spread the word that they are safe in the wake of a natural disaster or a crisis.
Canadians can use Facebook and Instagram to access content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations, the spokesperson added.
The original article contains 314 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 44%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Canada, it's called parasitising a symbiotic relationship. Evolution tries this from time to time. Now we see if your law is fit to survive.
I have no idea which side has better arguments for doing what they do, but this is like Mega-tech/Zuck doing this:
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