People in Canada can no longer access news content on Meta's platforms
People in Canada can no longer access news content on Meta's platforms
People in Canada won't be able to view links Canadian or international publishers and broadcasters share.
Good. You're not supposed to go to Facebook to be informed.
What do you mean? The same people who get "news" from Facebook will still get "news" from Facebook. It will just no longer involve any actual media companies. Think blogger, pseudo-news and AI generated content - fake news gonna fake.
That's right, you're supposed to go down to the local coffee shop to find out what is going on.
What did I do now? Does McDonald's have news I can read?
They sure do. Did you know there will be new toys in the happy meal soon?
For those not reading the article: the law isn't prohibiting Facebook from letting users share news content. Rather, it's requiring Facebook to pay Canadian publishers before letting users share their news content. The amount to be paid is to be determined through government-meditated negotiations with the publishers. Facebook has chosen not to participate in this and therefore it will stop letting users share news articles at all.
(Why Facebook won't be letting Canadian users share articles published in other countries is not clear to me.)
(Why Facebook won’t be letting Canadian users share articles published in other countries is not clear to me.)
Two reasons come to mind
- (relative good faithed) Prevent accidentally breaking the rules, having canadian content on international outlets etc ect
- (bad faith) Actively overreact and punish users for the government decision to force them to backpaddle on the whole thing
It might have to do with using VPNs.
Oh no! Anyways....
The Zuck in shambles lol
I lobbied hard for c-18. For those who were getting their news from Facebook, you're free now. You can either put an ounce of effort into informing yourself and be ten times harder to program, or let an American megacorp continue to spoon feed you reality, but understand that the quality of your sources just went down the shitter
if you get your news from facebook... nuff said
What's the alternative? The local CTV reporter who keeps us abreast in the local news – the news that matters most in our daily lives – also published his reports on X, but beyond that?
If I go directly to CTV they want to tell me about how the fire department was called to save a cat stuck in a tree in a city hundreds of kilometres away. I couldn't care less. That isn't worth my time. It is true that hidden in there are the same local reports that are posted to Facebook, but I'll be bored to death by all the other irrelevant news before I find them. The user experience is horrendous.
To actually get at the pertinent news without needing to become a full-time researcher, Facebook was where it was at.
Try Ground News to build yourself a list of sources you like to check directly. It's a pretty good aggregator.
Lack of local reporting has been an issue since long before these new rules. CBC exists, and it's really weird to go directly to CTV for news if you're going to pick only one. That's the thing that plays silently in the dentist's office waiting room with scrolling rage bait and, as you say, cats up trees.
sooo, just archive.is links?
As long as people can still find out about the many benefits of urine and borax consumption… /s
When does bill c-18 come into effect?
https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/news/2023/07/the-online-news-act-next-steps.html
Obligations under the Online News Act will come into effect no later than 180 days after June 22, 2023, the day Bill C-18 received Royal Assent. When elements of the Act come into effect will depend on regulations from the Governor in Council (GIC), and the implementation of processes by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
But muh research..!
Personally I find this hilarious. The argument that Meta (Facebook) and Google are making "so much money" from Canadian News is in itself laughable. If anything they're helping keep Canadian News relevant by suggesting it to people. No-one forced CBC to go make an instagram account etc.
So I think the law is working great. They demanded if you're going to link to a website you have to pay them a share of the revenue you generate. So these companies have elected that it's not worth the cost and will not link to them. Seemingly the media is going full shocked pikachu over this.
IMO the Federal Goverment went too soft. They should have made a broader law under the form of a tax, where all social medias companies are required to pay a tax to operate in Canada and properly fund journalism, no matter if they display Canadian news or not.
Don't wanna pay? Then no operation in Canada at all.
I don't think you've done the critical legwork to evaluate this argument. This looks like a surface level assesment. It's been discussed in more depth in previous threads on the topic.
Can we have this on America too?
Umm.. thanks? lol
Has anyone tried googling news lately? You won't find any Canadian news. I don't really know how to search across all the sites without google.
The hardest part is finding good sources, leaning slightly on either sides of the political spectrum. Then once you have that, I check if they have an RSS feed, and add that into an RSS reader. There are RSS reader apps that are running entirely locally (but must be left running to periodically gather new entries) and there are cloud-based RSS reader that will collect them for you, and keep your reading history in sync, etc.
Once you get that, you can see all the article's titles, sorted the way you want without having an algorithm showing you what it thinks might generate clicks.
I fancy myself fairly tech savvy. I managed to figure out this Lemmy thing, lol.
For whatever reason I’ve never really understood how an RSS thing works. I guess I’ve just never been compelled to figure it out.
My main point is that the kinds of people who were/are getting all their news from Meta probably couldn’t figure out RSS either.
Seems like a good idea though. I might have to finally dig in to it.
@MacroCyclo @mp3 May I recommend https://duckduckgo.com
There's a choice of many other alternative search engines too, all with their own benefits, and all serving great search results. DDG is good if you care about privacy.
Yep, looks like duckduckgo still has news!
Try andisearch.com, I've had good results with it so far.
How will this affect Lemmy.ca?
So far C-18 only targets Google and Facebook, but I wouldn't be surprised if it expands to other large commercial social media platforms.
I doubt it would impact the Fediverse, since at the moment the platform isn't generating any revenue from the content through ads or clicks.
One of our senators mentioned that the threshold was set so that it only affects Google and Meta. Microsoft can share news stories without paying because Bing isn't as popular.
That same senator also said that more people should start using Bing™, and that it's actually a really good search engine. Not even joking. The article read like a sponsored post.
It wouldn't. At least not until Lemmy.ca grows to the point where it wields a Facebook-like power in the Canadian media landscape and makes profit out of it.
Makes me think about how the BBC started a mastodon instance. If the CBC follows their example, then federation changes the relationship with social media, as it's sort of baked in...?
So I'm a little confused. I just logged into facebook for the first time in a long while and posted a cbc article and it worked fine. So is it rolling out or what? I went on NPRs facebook page and could see articles from them too.
@saigot @mp3 Implementing the change is supposed to take a few weeks.
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/meta-ending-news-availability-permanently-1.6924370
You can always get your news from the news sites like before facebook existed.... I fail to see the problem.
What does this mean? If I lost a link to a BBC article, it'll get deleted?
They never could