Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Slammed Meta For Blocking News On Canada’s Worst Wildfires
“It is so inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits ahead of ensuring that local news organizations can get up-to-date information to Canadians.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called out Meta for blocking news about the nation’s worst wildfires on its platforms during a press conference on Monday Aug. 21.
Canada is currently grappling with its most severe wildfire season ever, with over 1,000 separate fires raging across the country, forcing tens of thousands of families to flee their homes.
Officials estimate that more than 14 million hectares of land, about the size of Greece, had been engulfed in flames, according to The Guardian.
However, news about the wildfires is not appearing on Meta’s platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, after the company ended news access for all Canadian users on August 1.
The move came after Canada’s parliament passed a law in June, known as the Online News Act, that demanded tech giants such as Google and Meta share profits with Canadian news publishers for posting content on their platforms.
In response, Meta called the law “fundamentally flawed”, saying that it “ignores the realities of how our platforms work” and ended news access for Canadian users.
“People have questions about whether they’ve lost their homes, about whether they need to evacuate, about how things are going. And that’s where local news is so important and the work that people are doing to share messages and keep people informed with a safe up to date information is unbelievably essential to keeping Canadians safe,” Trudeau said.
“It is so inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits ahead of ensuring that local news organizations can get up-to-date information to Canadians and reach them where Canadians spend a lot of their time — online, on social media, on Facebook,” Trudeau said.
“Right now, in an emergency situation, where up-to-date local information is more important than ever, Facebook’s putting corporate profits ahead of people’s safety, ahead of supporting quality local journalism,” he said. “This is not the time for that.”
Meta told the BBC in a statement that it was forced to “end access to news content in order to comply with the legislation.”
It added that it has implemented a “Safety Check” feature on Facebook for residents to mark themselves safe and access “reputable information, including from official government agencies.”
Following a slight decrease in temperatures and some rainfall, most travel restrictions in the province of British Columbia were lifted on Tuesday, Aug. 22.
