Facebook and Instagram to restrict news access in Canada

alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgmod to Technology@beehaw.org – 42 points –
Facebook and Instagram to restrict news access in Canada
bbc.com
17

I don't understand why people are saying this will reduce misinformation. The fringe sites peddling things like genocide denial aren't news organizations to begin with, so users will still be able to share their content freely. It'll become harder for other people to counter the misinformation by linking to legitimate news sources.

Exactly. Misinformation is not generated from those tech companies itself. It is coming from the news created by the mass media giant and the underlying users. This only serves as a proxy war between the traditional media and big tech corporate.

This is great news. Not allowing Facebook to pretend it's some sort of valid place to find information will be a net positive for Canada. Not being able to find news through google easily will be annoying, but I'll just go directly to several news sites instead.

As a Canadian I am happy with this news. I am not on Facebook but I know many who are and the amount of misinformation they spread is crazy. In most cases their source of misinformation is Facebook. So I am glad this is happening.

i'm sure Canadians are really peeved about this one, it'd really suck if Facebook weren't allowed to continue promoting far-right misinformation, genocide denial, anti-vaccine bullshit and other goodies into everyone's feed

Happy to see Meta booted from the industry, but I'm a bit concerned about Google no longer indexing news articles here...

Google is more interested in serving page after page of ads and boilerplate and ai generated articles. I don't think them not indexing things is as relevant as it used to be

Ever since I’ve switched to DuckDuckGo, my searching experience has been way better. Google’s new mobile experience is absolute garbage.

IIRC DuckDuckGo wasn't a fan of the Australian media bargaining bill either. I suspect they will also deindex news sites in Canada should amendments not be made.

I haven't seen the Canadian one and this is honestly the first I've heard of it, but the idea that a referrer has to pay a news website for directing traffic to them is ludicrous to me.

If this marks the return of people actually picking up a newspaper (or the digital equivalent), that'd be fantastic. Not holding my breath, but one can hope.

This is why Meta is batting its eyes at the Fediverse.

"You really want those new millions of viewers (with a toxic dose of murderous disinformation with it), doncha, hun?" 🥰😘

Artifact was smart. They dedicated a whole tab for Canadian news

So is Meta just not going to display/embed news in Canada anymore or is this a temporary measure until they roll out their plan to pay publishers?

This is, at least according to meta, a permanent change on their part. I'm fully in support of it, and in fact think this is a better outcome for Canadians than them paying the publishers.