2y ago

Do media aggregators have a duty to provide links to public news sources in emergencies?

www.cbc.ca /news/business/nwt-wildfire-evacuation-meta-blocking-news-1.6939286

The NWT government and city of Yellowknife are describing in tweets, Instagram messages etc. how to search key evacuation information on CPAC and CBC. The broadcast carriers have a duty to carry emergency information, but Meta and X are blocking links.

While internet access is reportedly limited in Yellowknife, residents are finding this a barrier to getting current and accurate information. Even links to CBC radio are blocked.

Technology @lemmy.world

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2y ago

Canada wildfire evacuees say Facebook's news ban 'dangerous' in emergency situation

www.cbc.ca /news/business/nwt-wildfire-evacuation-meta-blocking-news-1.6939286

Technology @lemmy.world

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2y ago

N.W.T. wildfire evacuees say Facebook's news ban 'dangerous' in emergency situation | CBC News

www.cbc.ca /news/business/nwt-wildfire-evacuation-meta-blocking-news-1.6939286

114 comments

Can the Canadian government please just have an official platform for sharing this kind of information? Why are evacuation notices going on Facebook???
- They do have these platforms, but many people have become dependent on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to link to information.
  So the territorial government is literally posting on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter telling people how to search for CPAC Canada and CBC Radio so they can find the sites.
  Compare that to the duty of all broadcasters in a public emergency to carry the key evacuation information on radio and television and tell people where to get more detailed emergency instructions.
  
  @StillPaisleyCat @ImplyingImplications
  It's not a dependence in an addictive way. It's in a community way, where all news is shared on community pages for the benefit of the community because they rely on each other for survival every day.
  
  So the territorial government is literally posting on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter telling people how to search for CPAC Canada and CBC Radio so they can find the sites.
  And the problem is that they haven't figured out how to hack into RSS feeds the same way?
  Maybe getting the word out via Facebook, Instagram, and X is good enough? Outside of Podcasts, RSS is considered dead anyway. There are diminishing returns to consider.
- The point is that these alerts need to he on sites that people actually check.
  I dont wake up every morning and scroll through the government's PSA website. I do wake up and scroll my Lemmy news communities.
  
  I get texts all the time for amber alerts that I can rarely assist with, why can't an emergency message be sent over the same system?
  
  IF the goal is to get as many people to see it as possible just hijack the DNS and point everyone to a government website with relevant information.
- You mean something like a National Public Alerting System?
- ~~Strikeout is a double Tilde~~
  Like this: ~~
  
  No, it wasn't acceptable when it was Twitter.
- Can the Canadian ~~government please just have an official platform for sharing this kind of information? Why are evacuation notices going on Facebook???~~ citizens stop getting their news from social media while they're in a life and death situation???
  FTFY
- The real issue is whether these apps should carry emergency alerts and information
  Should they? Absolutely. Should they be forced to? I don't think so.
  But, it seems like an easy gesture of goodwill to do it, if there's a system in place for it.
  
  It's more than time that we show these private platforms that they can't act however they want if they want to do business in our country without paying a cent of taxes on the profit they make here. Yes they should be forced to pay by our rules or face the prospect of being outright banned in Canada.
- So they shouldn't compensate the people whose work brings them profit? Know what we call that in the physical world?
  Stealing.
  If the government is willing to make an exception for emergency news, that Meta proved they're able to do it in Australia and even told the Canadian government it's something they could do, then who's in the wrong here?
  
  So Lemmy instance admins should be paying for all the links on their sites too?
  
  @Kecessa @cheerycoffee
  Whose work is bringing who profit?
  The cruel reality is that the Canadian media need Facebook more than Facebook needs Canadian media.
Honestly Canada should join the Fediverse en mass, depending on shitty proprietary and predatory social media is a weak point for our democracy.
- Canada should join the Fediverse en mass
  We've had NNTP since the 1980s. What does the Fediverse offer Canadians that they didn't already have offered to them with NNTP? There is probably a good reason why they don't accept these distributed social networks en-mass.
  
  we’ve had NNTP since the 80s
  and I could find maybe one or two students on my uni campus that know what this is
  and also, it’s not the 80s anymore
  
  It's just the kind of tech that got lost to history in a rush to make things simpler and more easily digestible for the average user.
"More than ever, this kind of dangerous situation shows how having more access to trustworthy and reliable information and news is vital for so many of our communities to be informed about the current emergency."
Facebook isn't trustworthy. Tech bros can't be trusted.
It's not like the internet has been removed. Social media isn't the internet. News sites are still accessible. As is the whole internet. People need to get their head out of their asses already. This problem is farcical. Life threatening situation, 'oh no my facebook is broken what will I do?!?11'. How did we even get to this point. The internet circa 90s and early 2000s is laughing their asses off at all this. PEBKAC.
Did they offer to let them carry the links for free? Or are they using an emergency to demand a payday?
- Love how FB gets to charge for bots to scrape their content, while they scrape everyone elses content for free.
- Once again, THE LEGISLATION HAS NOT YET COME INTO FORCE.
  Yelling is rude, but the repeated questions that seem to ignore that Meta’s blocking of links is preemptive is beginning to have the feel of sealioning.
  Meta is not at risk of any tax if they unblock links during this emergency.
CBC is grasping at straws trying to put the blame on Facebook for the very bill they pushed through, that had very predictable consequences. Canadians news publishers have no one to blame for this but themselves.
The article basically reads as though they're upset for not being paid by Meta during emergencies and sad they can't profit as much off people glued to watching emergencies (it's absolutely not because they're truly concerned for the actual ppl facing the emergency). It's quite tasteless for them to pull the misinformation card when news publishers aren't always known to spread accurate or helpful information -- they're mostly there for the fear mongering. And Meta's response on that front is the correct one: they're not blocking government sites and government sites should be considered the sources of truth and information during emergencies.
That said, unrelated to news link sharing, there's a larger discussion to be had around emergency broadcasts over the internet: should the government create legislation to have an emergency notification tool in place that can be triggered on Canadian websites and websites catering to Canadians (social media included)? Many institutions, including universities, have their own systems for doing exactly this so why can't the government?
- Facebook's response was petulant and childish. This is not Canada's fault any more than it was the fault of other countries who enacted the same regs.
  Oh. You didn't know there were others?
  
  There's only one country with even a remotely similar legislation, that being Australia. Facebook got the amendments it wanted before the Australian Code received royal assent.
  If you're going to cry foul about how Facebook is following the legislation Canada is putting in place, you'll need to try harder than that.
A fundamental question of the 21st century is, as internet media company replace legacy media companies, do they have the same responsibilities? Legacy media companies have the advantage they get to use a very limited piece of Canadian real-estate, that is the airwaves, and so the Government is in a good position to say "well if we're letting you use our airwaves, we need you to do something for us" and this includes CanCon, emergency broadcast, etc.
But now those "airwaves" are becoming increasingly abandoned and everything is digital and going over wires, wifi, and cellular to the international internet. But the above thing about "broadcast" was always a hack. It was a workaround for the fact that basically we need the loudest voices in Canada to also help Canada out.
And now we've lost that justification, but we still have the need.
Imho, the justification was always BS. If you have a massive media-org with a giant-ass megaphone in Canada, you've got responsibilities. I don't care if you're a website or a news channel or a dead tree paper.
- @Pxtl @StillPaisleyCat
  Re; "we need the loudest voices in Canada to also help Canada out", speak for yourself. I'm tired of the loudest voices drowning out the reasonable ones. It's these same loud voices that have polarized society and tanked trust in the media as a whole.
  C-18 is all about helping Canada's big media companies solidify their positions and inhibit innovative startups. Meta and Google helped level the playing field so they must be published.
- Meta doesn't own a megaphone, though. It is but a lowly sharecropper who works the land of Microsoft, Google, and Apple. They let Meta use their megaphones sometimes, but only when it is on good behaviour.
  It seems what you are really looking for is anyone with a voice to relay any important messages they hear.
Should they? Not if we punish them with fees for linking. I mean, imagine you're trying to warn your neighbours about an approaching fire and a police officer pulls up to tell you that you'll have to pay $50 for each neighbour you warn. I wouldn't blame you if you stopped, I'd blame whatever law stopped you. Similarly here, I don't blame Meta for not linking but I blame the government that will penalize Meta the moment any link points to a news outlet, emergency or not.
- The tax and the legislation is at least a half a year from coming into force, the regulatory framework to operationalize it hasn’t even been published for public consultation.
  Meta has started blocking preemptively. This is a power play protest about avoiding being subject to other countries’ law. That’s it.
  
  While I'm sure there are some messaging aspects to doing it early, it's worth pointing out that by January, unless the government repeals the law, Meta will be penalized for allowing links during emergencies. This specific law comes into operation regardless of whether the government has published any framework or not.
  This is a power play protest about avoiding being subject to other countries’ law.
  Meta is complying with this law. The idea behind the law was that Meta was stealing ad revenue from news organizations by linking to them, and that if they wanted to continue linking to them they needed to compensate news organizations. Meta has thus stopped 'stealing' the ad revenue. That's complying with the law. It did exactly what it was expected to do, in the same way that when you tax cigarettes you expect some people to cut back on smoking. Even better, Meta stopped 'stealing' before the law even came into force!
  Seriously it's like there's nothing they can do to satisfy their critics - they get accused of stealing news so they stop it, and then they get accused of harming news sites by not stealing.
  Which is it? Is Meta beneficial to news organizations or harmful to them? If harmful then there's no problem with Meta blocking news links. If beneficial, then maybe this is a dumb law that's akin to the government putting a tax on exercising.
- This is a bad take. I'm blaming Facebook for deciding they'd rather not have news than share the money they make off it with the people who need to be paid to make it.
  
  While paying 0$ in taxes on the profit they make off of Canadians, don't forget to add that part!
  
  @ram @festus
  What is your evidence that Facebook is making money off of linking to news? They say it's not earning them much money, which is why cutting Canadian media off is not losing them anything.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Evacuees from the devastating blazes threatening Yellowknife say the ongoing fight between Meta, the owner of Facebook, and Canada's federal government over who should pay for news has made it harder to spread life-saving information about the wildfires in the Northwest Territories.
Poitras says it's bad enough having to handle the logistics of getting out in a hurry and worrying about what might happen to her home town while she's gone, but the situation has been made worse by the ongoing fight between Big Tech and the Canadian government over who should pay for news.
The debate over Bill C-18, known as the Online News Act, may be an academic one in many parts of Canada, but not in the North, where people are dealing with an unfolding natural disaster while suddenly being unable to use one of the most popular communication platforms to share information about wildfire locations and evacuation plans.
A live news conference covered by Cabin Radio and CBC on Wednesday evening announced the evacuation of Yellowknife, but it wasn't shareable on Facebook, prompting users like Poitras and others to try to get around the block by posting screengrabs of information instead of direct links.
"People in Canada are able to use Facebook and Instagram to connect to their communities and access reputable information, including content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organisations," said Meta spokesperson David Troya-Alvarez.
She says the world is watching the Canadian dispute closely, as numerous other jurisdictions have similar laws planned, and Meta has clearly "decided to use Canada as a bit of a test population to try this out and see how far they can force the government to go before perhaps keeping or coming to the bargaining table.
The original article contains 1,512 words, the summary contains 275 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- Good bot
So what's the situation on Lemmy? Who will pay for this article's link to CBC?
- Lemmy is neither large enough nor monetizing our views so it’s outside the scope of the legislation and the new regulations that will need to be written, formally consulted through the Canada Gazette process and then approved by Cabinet. Basically, what Lemmy’s doing is still fair use by a carrier.
  As I understand it, the Canadian legislation is different than the Australian one in that the Australian version would just have had a minister name which companies would be subject to the tax.
  Canada, having been in trade disputes with the US over ministerial designation processes that can be argued to lack transparency, went a different route that would make the tax come into effect for large platforms, monetizing content without paying the sources/creators.
  
  Is monetization required for a site to qualify as a digital news intermediary though? It seems like there just needs to be an imbalance:
  https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-18/royal-assent
  Application 6 This Act applies in respect of a digital news intermediary if, having regard to the following factors, there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between its operator and news businesses:
  (a) the size of the intermediary or the operator;
  (b) whether the market for the intermediary gives the operator a strategic advantage over news businesses; and
  c) whether the intermediary occupies a prominent market position.
  What happens when a Lemmy instance gets too big?
- If an instance is running ads on article summaries then it would be the owner of that instance
@StillPaisleyCat They don't have any duty, unless you want to compel speech.
Consider that governments have access to emergency systems already; consider the amber alert and the emergency broadcast system.
Why expect non-contracted private companies to do this?
- Currently, private broadcasters and cable carriers have an obligation under their governing legislation to carry information in designated public emergencies. In return for their monetization of their platforms, they have a legal obligation to carry news and information without charge in such situations.
  In the US, there is a similar emergency broadcast system.
  As well, during the pandemic emergency, most private news sources took down their paywalls so that the public had the opportunity to get a diversity of news sources.
  Contrast this with Meta, which is refusing to unblock links during the emergency, saying that people can just go directly to government websites. This runs directly counter to good emergency communications practice which is to get information to the places people usually look for it.
  Meta is not being asked to do more than other carriers in a public emergency, but is refusing to back down, even though it is currently not subject to any tax penalties for monetizing the content provided by Canadian news sources.
  Meta has built up an ecosystem where local news clients are dependent on its platform. Around Yellowknife, this includes Indigenous language news provided by CBC the public broadcaster and private internet broadcaster Cabin Radio. Both are using other distribution but many users are habituated to accessing these via Facebook.
Don't let people post links to Canadian news unless you've paid the publisher.
No, not like that!
- Like what?
  Meta and X are acting preemptively before the government has even finalized how the system would work.
  The law hasn’t even come into force. The regulations haven’t even been Gazetted and put through the public consultation period.
  Meta and X feel that they shouldn’t be subject to the law of any other country. That’s what’s at the foundation of this.
  
  Demonstrating what your response will be before the law goes into force seems like a good idea to me - the cost to Facebook is minimal and if people are going to change their minds, the earlier they do the easier it'll be to return to the status quo.
  There's nothing above-the-law about this. The law sets the terms which Facebook must comply with if it wants to do business in Canada, but the law can't make Facebook keep doing business in Canada.
  
  Why is former Twitter even doing that? I thought only G and FB were affected, as it was based on company size. Supposedly Twitter is (still) not profitable, even.
  
  Meta and X are acting preemptively before the government has even finalized how the system would work.
  Stands to reason. If Canadians were creating laws around homicide for the first time, but the exact details weren't yet known, are you going to go around killing people while you still can, or are you going to respect the intent to the best of your ability knowing that Canadians do not want to be killed?
  Logically, the latter, of course. Even if you don't quite get it right with respect to the final details, trying to respect the wishes is clearly better than ignoring them.
  Meta and X feel that they shouldn’t be subject to the law of any other country.
  And they are no doubt right. There are cases where they have ignored Canadian court decisions around individuals without any consequences. And if that were the only thing of relevance, they could simply ignore this whole ordeal.
  Trouble is that, when it comes to the mass user base, they need to appease the people of those countries, else they will leave. Facebook doesn't have a compelling business if they can only win over product and customers from one country. Its value is dependent on serving the entire world.
  It is not like the people of Canada went to all the trouble of bringing this legislation to the table because they wanted to play a prank on Musk. They are serious about it. If Facebook showed that it didn't care the users would get pissed off and walk away.
  You can screw around with individuals without noticing, but in this case Canadians as a whole called for action. Losing all Canadian users would be a significant loss to their business. Facebook had to do something. Going on killing for months until the details come out, even if technically allowable, is not a good look.
- Oh no, the consequences of our actions!

114 comments