“Lives are at stake. Time is running out. The turn of the big boss of CBC / Radio-Canada to ask Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to stop blocking news on its platforms in Canadian regions threatened by wildfires, so that citizens remain adequately informed in this “crisis situation”.
“Please make the humanitarian choice and immediately lift the blocking of Canadian news content for communities threatened by wildfires,” wrote the president and CEO of the Crown corporation, Catherine Tait, in a letter to Meta’s president of international affairs, Nick Clegg.
In response to the federal government’s new online news law, Meta began in early August to permanently block access to news on its social networks in Canada. The company wants to avoid having to pay money to Canadian media because of the sharing of their content on its platforms.
However, many citizens have become accustomed to getting information through media accounts on social networks for years, especially indigenous peoples. Ms. Tait fears that this measure by Meta prevents members of communities most affected by the wildfires from “monitoring the rapidly changing situation and learning about evacuation orders”.
“Access to reliable and up-to-date information can literally be a matter of life and death,” she insists in her letter.
The broadcaster’s big boss also reminds the web manager that this release “would have no impact on the application of the law on online news in the short term and would not result in any payment under negotiated agreements”, since the Trudeau government’s law will not come into effect until mid-December.
Still informed on Facebook?
Contacted by Le Devoir on Wednesday, Meta contented himself with repeating the same message that he has been providing to the media for several days, that Canadians can always be well informed on his platforms and follow the developments of the forest fires.
“We intend to continue to ensure that Canadians can use our technologies to communicate with loved ones and access information. Moreover, more than 65,000 people declared themselves safe [grâce à l’outil Safety Check] and approximately 750,000 people visited the Yellowknife and Kelowna Crisis Response Facebook pages,” a company spokesperson said in an email.
The company has no plans to back down on news blocking, noting that it has been warning for months that “the broad scope of the Online News Act would impact sharing of news content on our platforms”.
The Trudeau government castigates Meta
This call from the public broadcaster echoes the discourse of the Liberal government, which has been castigating Meta for several days, accusing it of putting “its profits” as a priority “rather than the well-being and information of Canadians”. “Quality local journalism matters, and it matters more than ever when people are worried about their homes, worried about communities, worried about the worst summer for extreme weather events we’ve seen in a very long time. , a very long time, ”he said Monday during a press briefing in Prince Edward Island.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pascale St-Onge, had already shared the same concerns and the same criticisms towards the Web giant in the previous days.
In British Columbia, more than 27,000 people have had to evacuate their homes due to wildfires. In the Northwest Territories, more than 30,000 people have also received an evacuation order.
To see in video
2023-08-23 17:40:07
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