Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday criticized Meta for blocking domestic news from its platforms, saying the Facebook-parent was prioritizing profit over safety as devastating wildfires force tens of thousands to evacuate their homes.
Trudeau’s comments represent the latest government attack on Meta, which this month started blocking news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms for all users in Canada in response to a new law requiring internet giants to pay for news articles.
It is a trend on all governments to push public services to third parties and, as consequence, social media platforms. How many we see that have their own websites but news and updates only available on twitter or facebook? It’s insane, imho.
It’s because 2 billion people a day login to instagram but no one is visiting Calgary.ca and the people asked for everything important to them to be in one place so instagram it is. Meta should have to pay to use someone else’s work, this isn’t a radical idea, what’s radical is that meta has just decided it’s going to be a supreme leech for free while making billions and there’s nothing anyone can do about them being assholes
It’s not just that 2 billion people access the third party vs the main page, is that you can’t go cheaper than free using the third party and to me that’s the problem. Governments selling themselves cheap to big data is the issue. Screw it if Calgary.ca doesn’t get 2 billion accesses a day, that’s not why it exists! In that I think you missed my point.
Nobody reads the sites. For every org only using Twitter there are two using a custom cms that costs half a mil each year and getting two visits a year.