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.
How about not relying on Facebook for such things?
A lot of First Nations people check Facebook because their band will be advising them on evac orders and providing updates that literally nobody else in the world will be doing (not news, not BC, not Can Gov, not NGOs… well, potentially BC Fire Service).
There is the problem…
Huh, what’s the problem? What the shitfuck are you talking about?
There’s nothing stopping their band from communicating with them, the block is only on links to news sites.
I know, man. I was responding to the comments about why do people use Facebook? And the answer is that First Nations governments use it to communicate with their membership.
And for pointing out this simple fact I got downvotes for no fucking conceivable reason
Probably because you went off topic and got misunderstood by others. The comment you were replying to was saying people shouldn’t be using Facebook for news, in the context of the article about the tax on links to news sites. It’s not very clear what your reply about first nation bands have to do with that.
Have you tried rubbing a lamp?
Facebook has been abusing people’s mental illnesses for decades. It will take more than a statement on lemmy to fix that.
The fires are happening today.
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.
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)
I don’t use Facebook, but many affected by the wildfires do.
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.
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.
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
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.
JFC
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.”
That’s a great sentiment for the more tech-inclined folk, but for the masses, smug tech superiority doesn’t mean much. People are going to use what they use; it’s better to embrace what they’re using than to shout into a vaccuum that millions of people need to stop enjoying what they like, and start enjoying what you enjoy.
I can’t tell if this is satire or not… Are you seriously implying that going to any search engine (aka the url bar to most folks) and typing in 2-3 key words regarding what you want to know about is for “tech-inclined” folks? Please tell me you forgot the /s
Bruh just make people Download a app to warn about catastrophic events in general?
And the BC government has such an app, plus an email broadcast service, plus a phone alert service. It’s easy enough to sign up for that I’ve seen people in their 80s using it. And once you’ve signed up, you’ll be notified of any emergencies in your area.