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.
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.
Agreed. But this is a societal dependence.
Too many clubs, churches and communities organizations, and small businesses found Facebook easier to maintain than websites, so many people became dependent on that platform.
The challenge is that governments have a duty to meet their constituents where they are, especially in emergencies. So they send out Tweets, ‘grams and posts directing people to the information on official sites.
Before the Internet, people would turn on their radios or televisions. That’s why in most jurisdictions (including the United States) broadcasters and cable carriers MUST carry emergency broadcasts, superceding regular programming. The wave of climate-related emergencies raise the question of whether internet aggregator platforms should be required to do the same.
As an aside, governments and public new sources maintain websites that are accessible. Due to a Canadian Supreme Court decision requiring government platforms to be accessible to persons with disabilities, Canadian new sites have user interfaces that are adaptive.
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 whole point in an emergency is to get the official guidance out to where people look first for information, not retrain them to go to official sites.
What you are suggesting is that Facebook and Twitter be legally required to push official emergency information from governments to the top. That would parallel what the broadcasters and cable carriers typically have to do. It makes sense, but given that they don’t seem to want to be obligated to carry government information except as paid advertising, this would require a new emergency system for internet platforms.
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?
CBC provides service in the north in numerous Indigenous languages, including through its Facebook pages which many in those communities rely on.
As a public broadcaster it has a duty to meet the needs of Canadians for essential information where they look not just in English and French on standard internet sites, or even their low bandwidth emergency ones.
@FireRetardant @library_napper
Because not everyone has a cell, leaves their phone on while they’re sleeping, has good reliable service, etc etc.
You mean something like a National Public Alerting System?
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.
We made the rules, and now they’re playing by them. You can force them to pay for news links, but you can’t force them to display news links and make them pay for them.
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?
Whose work is bringing who profit?
The cruel reality is that the Canadian media need Facebook more than Facebook needs Canadian media.
Journalists and media company produce content, journalists are paid by media company that profit from their work and pay taxes on that profit.
Facebook is used to share content from media companies and make profit from it, they don’t compensate media companies or pay taxes in Canada.
Media companies receive a small bump in traffic compared to the total number of views, they get a small bump in profit from ads revenues on their website and they pay taxes on it.
In the end the majority of revenues generated from views on Facebook doesn’t profit the content creators/owners in any way nor does it profit the country in which the owners are established.
So you need me to make it even simpler than that? You’re arguing that medias should settle for the scraps when Facebook is feasting by exploiting their work.
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.
“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?
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.
