The government of Canada has spoken, and big tech has answered. Meta, Alphabet, and Twitter will all be censoring news off the internet for Canadian users.
Here is a direct quote of the notice I received from Meta today:
"In response to the Online News Act, content from global news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will not be available to people accessing Facebook and Instagram in Canada.
People in Canada will no longer view or share news on Facebook and Instagram, including news content posted by news outlets. In addition, people in Canada will no longer see links or content from any news outlet Pages or Accounts."
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How are they implementing that? By blocking TLDs from news outlets only or with so called AI algorithms to make sure not even a screenshot of a tweet by a news outlet passes through to a feed? And what about users who are used to access their content via a VPN, will they be banned altogether?
So far it looks like some sort of fine or fee to the tech company.
They aren’t outright banning online news, they are banning the searching and sharing of it. For instance, cbc.ca is our state sponsored media, and everyone knows how to get there, but fab.industries is a little private guy, and not as many people really know about it here or how to get there. I would consider both “news outlets”. Both are still able to publish to their own sites, and I am still able to go to both sites. The problem is now that when Fab publishes a great article, I can not share it via media, and others can not find it via search engines, so if they aren’t already familiar with Fab, they will not find him. This will limit online news consumption to only the select news outlets that are advertised, which also happen to be the approved propaganda outlets. No more reading both sides of the story for anyone.
You raise an interesting point about screenshots. So far, I only have the notice of the impending change, but when the change takes effect, I will be trying that for sure.
The VPN business will be good here. There are a couple VPN providers that have browser plugins, and I predict that will pay off for them.
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My experience shows that, once online censorship commences, restrictions on VPNs follow swiftly and steadily.
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yeah, a single “Heart” button is not sufficient.
Sometimes you need to say: “I hear you”, and not particularly “liking” what is being said.
And sometimes you need: “I don’t agree with this”
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The best part is that I keep hearing ads on the local radio station for the government backed media, telling us to install their apps, because the American tech companies are blocking them from us. Our government, who pays their wages, literally passed a law that is causing all this, but they are pointing their fingers at the American tech companies. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like those companies either, but it’s hard to point a finger at them when it is factually a law that they are obeying.