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Meta's news ban is preventing Canadians from sharing vital information about the wildfires ripping through western Canada (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Meta's news ban is preventing Canadians from sharing vital information about the wildfires ripping through western Canada::Canadians are calling on Meta to lift its news ban so they can share news about the wildfires in the Northwest Territories and British Columbia.

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[–] -3 points 3 years ago (4 children)

It's very hard to find the resources. The government sites are not SEO optimized, the URLs change, sometimes there's better info on local news websites. People are trying to share these vital resources with one another on social networks that already exist, and are finding that they cannot. In a time of crisis, you can't quickly set up another network on a different platform. Many people don't even know about better platforms.

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  • [–] 27 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    What are the good resources? Because I just searched "Canada wildfire info" and got the Canadian Wild land Fire Information System" seems like a good place to start? Stop using Facebook for this shit (or anything else)

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  • [–] -3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I don't use Facebook, but many affected by the wildfires do.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Facebook is not a legitimate news source. It never has been. This is not a failing of Facebook. It is a failing of the people who decided to rely on Facebook for news.

    "News" from Facebook tells them shit like horse de-wormer will save them from smoke inhalation or bleaching their asshole will prevent the spread of forest fires. Facebook is a conservative manipulation machine. It is not a news source.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    No, but it acted as a way for people to share links to legitimate news in times of crisis if that was where they normally communicated, and now they can't. Similarly, people got used to accessing Twitter to find realtime information on local events, and now that's also largely cut off.

    I'm not defending the companies. I'm not defending people's dependence on them. I'm pointing out that the need exists in this moment, and that this isn't the moment to be shaming people who are actively fleeing a wildfire for decrying the fact that governments' and corporations' choices are impacting their ability to share information in a crisis.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    government sites can still be linked to through facebook. that's not the issue.

    facebook isn't linking to news sites. if you want news from news sites, go to the news sites. the "vital resources" aren't on CTV

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I'm not responding to any more comments on this, but it's evident that a lot of you have never lived through a wildfire. All of the resources you need get centralized on local news sites (like Castanet for Kelowna) in a way that makes it easy to figure out what's happening. Many of the updates that local officials broadcast daily never get transcribed or posted anywhere except for local news sites such as that.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago*

    That's 100% intentional by the way. Surprise surprise the Canadian government/provincial governments have every incentive and desire to downplay and cover up the severity of the wildfires that were in part caused by their negligence and utter failure of an ecological policy. Just ask the people in Yellowknife who had the narrative changed from "there is absolutely nothing wrong, you're all perfectly safe, no need to leave or panic, seriously stay in your homes" to "just kidding you're actually a day away from burning to death."

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