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Canada Facebook News

Facebook and Instagram's News Blackout In Canada Starts Today (engadget.com) 81

Posted by BeauHD from the following-through-with-their-threats dept.
Starting today, Facebook and Instagram users in Canada will no longer be able to view or share news links or see videos and photos published by publishers and broadcasters. Engadget reports: Meta made the decision in response to Canadian legislators passing the Online News Act. The law requires certain platforms to negotiate revenue-sharing agreements with news organizations. The aim is to address the collapse in advertising revenue that news outlets have struggled with over the last two decades amid the growth of online services.

"News links and content posted by news publishers and broadcasters in Canada will no longer be viewable by people in Canada," Meta said. "We are identifying news outlets based on legislative definitions and guidance from the Online News Act." Any content shared by international news organizations won't be visible on Facebook and Instagram in Canada either.
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Facebook and Instagram's News Blackout In Canada Starts Today More

Facebook and Instagram's News Blackout In Canada Starts Today

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  • that I have laid in many boxes of pop corn to see how this pans out.

  • first nail in FB coffin (Score:4, Interesting)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @07:52PM (#63732508)

    Please keep removing features from FB.

    Side question: If you could greatly help the world by killing yourself would you do it?

    • Side question: If you could greatly help the world by killing yourself would you do it?

      Take a go at it and let us know.

    • Re:first nail in FB coffin (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ChunderDownunder ( 709234 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @07:58PM (#63732518)

      Facebook are killing themselves, regardless.

      I log in occasionally to check what family and friends are up to.

      But what's up with that Suggested Post nonsense? No, Zuck, I don't want to see stories of random idjiots doing random idjiot things. I am way too old to be influenced by "Influencers" - that stuff is annoying.

      • > I am way too old to be influenced

        That says a lot about FB right there. FB will fade with GenX or sooner.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jezwel ( 2451108 )
          I still use FB to coordinate events with our friends and to send the SO URLs, but otherwise usage has dropped to essentially nil.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by antdude ( 79039 )

        You can select to show only from follows in both apps.

      • Yeah... I've been fairly resistant to the anti-Facebook sentiment over the last several years. At one point, I had the algorithm trained pretty well to show me minimal politics. So it stayed... particularly during COVID... a handy tool for keeping up with friends I hadn't seen in person in a while. It was also a very good tool for organizing group events and activities... until people started leaving in droves after the republicans weaponized it anyway. The trick was, basically, to just keep using it l

    • Re:first nail in FB coffin (Score:5, Funny)

      by Sebby ( 238625 ) on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @08:08PM (#63732536)

      Please keep removing features from FB.

      No wonder they call themselves "Meta" - it's short for "Metastasize".

    • The toughest nail to remove is the copying of other platforms. First Reel, then tiktok, then twitter, etc... Besides the main original interface and platform, everything else is stolen from some competitor.

      • That's the entire purpose of the Internet. To share information and ideas. It doesn't have a lot of respect for "ip" and most certainly isn't coded into html.

  • According to the summary:

    Any content shared by international news organizations won't be visible on Facebook and Instagram in Canada either.

    Are they referring here to content originating from Canadian news organizations that are being shared by international organizations or all news from international sources (whatever that means)? If they're blocking all news from Canadians, I have to ask why? Doesn't the law in Canada apply only to content produced by Canadian news organizations? Why would Facebook block links to The New York Times for instance? Or am I misunderstanding what they're doing. I've seen several arti

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by znrt ( 2424692 )

      their press release is pretty clear:

      For international news outlets this means:
      News publishers and broadcasters outside of Canada will continue to be able to post news links and content, however, that content will not be viewable by people in Canada.

      and

      The only way we can reasonably comply with this legislation is to end news availability for people in Canada.

      which actually makes a lot of sense, particularly because:

      the people using our platforms don’t come to us for news.

      meaning they couldn't care less about this ill conceived state sponsored greed over content that isn't even relevant for them. let's see if this drives subscriptions to canadian news organizations up. i'm afraid it won't and they just shot themselves in the foot. popcorn, please.

      • Thank you for the information. I guess what I don't understand is why Canadians will be unable to view postings of news stories from non-Canadian sources. Surely the Canadian legislation doesn't affect non-Canadian news sources.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by znrt ( 2424692 )

          i'm not versed in legalese, but the act in question is named:

          "An Act respecting online communications platforms that make news content available to persons in Canada"
          https://www.parl.ca/DocumentVi... [www.parl.ca]

          so i would assume that it affects any news content made available in canada, regardless of origin. yep, contrived.

        • Because they might run a story about Canada or re-print wire article from a Canadian news source. Rather than risk the broadest interpretation being used to attempt to fine them they are just shutting it off. They also might want to make Canadians angrier with their gov and pressure their reps to repeal the bill.

        • They won't be able to view News on Facebook because Facebook isn't responsible for providing Canadians News. It's Facebook punishing the country for trying to fleece them for money.

          The smarter Canadians that want to be informed will in fact just go to the news sites themselves. The rest won't be seeing any news.

      • Good. They should cut off any country that tries this shit. Otherwise there will be no end to the news scammers coming to them with hands out for $$$.

      • the people using our platforms don’t come to us for news.

        meaning they couldn't care less about this ill conceived state sponsored greed over content that isn't even relevant for them. let's see if this drives subscriptions to canadian news organizations up. i'm afraid it won't and they just shot themselves in the foot. popcorn, please.

        If people don't come to FB for news then why were people posting it?

        I think this is probably a good thing in the sense that social media + news has generally been bad. All the editors want "viral" content, and an easy way to do that is to rile up the reader. And sharing news articles is part of how people start building their echo chamber.

        I think it's probably a bad thing in the sense that news really needs money to actually keep reporting, and I'm concerned that the people who would have shared dubious new

        • I don't know anyone who is "reading news" on facebook.
          It is much simpler to go to the relevant news site.

          I think every odd year once I get a post from a new site into my feed, and I click "hide".

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by znrt ( 2424692 )

          If people don't come to FB for news then why were people posting it?

          to get attention, like most of what people post on social networks. however, news aren't probably the best type of content to achieve that, fb knows that very well, and it seems most of the times it's the actual news outlets posting news on fb to attract users to their sites, e.g.: https://www.facebook.com/searc... [facebook.com]

          which is why all this lobbying was so stupid from the get go. they had a better case with "google news" as that is actually a news aggregation done by google itself. but it was greedy and shortsig

        • What they'll do now instead is take a screen cap of the headline and just post that image. It will dumb down the conversation even more with just clickbait headline images being shared. Without a link to verify there will of course be more fake headlines floating around.

        • Most news REALLY isn't reporting in any useful way. Nearly every article in most papers and on most sites comes from another source, usually Reuters or AP. And I can just go to their sites directly if I want to read those stories. Take for example the paper in Santa Cruz (please.) It's called the sentinel, but even before the Internet we called it the senile. They are incompetent in literally every way. Their articles are unabashed blowjobs for the elite, and they literally can't even get the front page col

          • One of the reasons there isn't local news anymore is there isn't any money in it.

            If Social Media was to work in a healthy way it would be for people to connect with their local communities, and local news would be a great aspect of that.

            I don't know the path to get there, but this isn't it.

      • I agree ...and I am Canadian.
        This just proves to me that the government does not understand the internet.
        Companies like Facebook and Google have been helping Canadian news companies by driving traffic to the news sites. They don't even charge news orgs for the service!
        But then someone comes along and says, "hey, Google and Facebook have lots of money. We want some of that. You should keep referring people to us AND pay us for the privilege!"
        Government is SHOCKED when G/F say "No thanks, news isn't our core

  • And nothing of value was lost... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You are missing absolutely zero. If FB doesn't have news, the CBC is far better quality than anything south of the border. There are also international places like the Beeb which cover news effectively.

    Consider yourself blessed, Canada.

  • The bill is stupid but if it gives Canadians another reason to stop using fuckerbook I'll grin and bear it.

    • At the cost of being able to search for news on search engines though. It will be much harder to seek out historical context and differing biases on the same story. Good bye independent news. This should be considered a Charter violation against a free press: "(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;" Seems like they've put a punitive tax in place resulting in a prohibition against freedom of expression, a free press and ot

  • There's news on Instagram? First I've heard of it.

  • They did it here in Australia. Improved my news feed enormously. I was stunned with the number of people(sheep) who didn't realise you could type news into the URL bar on any browser... For an unknown reason, FB caved later - Should have left it turned off.
  • I don't need Facebook to tell me how to find ctvnews.ca or globalnews.ca (the post-Harper CBC is dead to me now). They act like they are the internet, just like Google does, but they clearly are not. What's the saying? Pride goes before a fall?

  • Well done, Meta! You've finally pushed me to respond to Facebook ads. Every time I see a Canadian company advertising on Facebook, I will politely tell them that if I see any more FB ads from them, I will boycott the company.

    The Canadian government has already pulled ads from Meta. Now the rest of us have to step up.

  • And... (Score:1)

    by Chas ( 5144 )

    Nothing of any real value was lost.

  • I'm in norcal and I've lost the news button for some time now.
  • If I used a VPN to say I was coming from Canada, would that make my Feed actually look SANE for once?

  • Finally, some good news for Canadians!

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