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.
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.
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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.
We absolutely could, if they had the choice between paying taxes on all profit made out of Canadian content OR not being allowed to access the Canadian market at all they would quickly bend the knee because it would hurt them directly, the issue is that the current rule doesn’t hurt them enough, people still go on Facebook to check non news content.
But my point is you have to legislate new (potentially very unpopular) rules for them to follow if you want to do things like that. We put forth new rules that they didn’t like, and they’re following the rules.
As much as we rag on Facebook, and as harmful as they may be, they’re playing by the rules. We tell them they have to pay for their news links, they decide not to host news links. And as far as the laws are concerned, they did nothing wrong. Public opinion is another story, but that’s irrelevant in this context.
Pablo Rodriguez mentioned that during talks with then they said they could relay selected urgent news though (which they had done in Australia when they had banned their news), they’re just acting in bad faith to prove a point.
Agreed, they definitely could relay urgent messages, or even put it up as their own news without falling afoul of the new law.
I did mention in my first post that it would be an easy gesture of good faith, but I think there’s some spite there. They made their threats, the government acted anyway, and now they’re sticking to their guns.