The entire city of #Yellowknife is being evacuated. This is unprecedented and terrifying.
And thousands of citizens aren’t aware because Meta continues to block news in the country.
This is what happens when citizens are convinced to use an American multinational corporation as their community’s primary communications channel — a corporation that couldn’t give two shits about anything except its “fiduciary duty” to shareholders.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nwt-wildfire-emergency-update-august-16-1.6938756
@tod Isn't this really Canada fault for the stupid link tax?
@grumpygamer Canada isn’t blocking news. That decision was Meta’s and Meta’s alone. You’re welcome to argue the “but they had no choice” model, but they absolutely have a choice. They chose to block news from Canadians.
@tod @grumpygamer Yes, they *chose* that because Canada *chose* to make it prohibitively expensive to continue to welcome the news on their platform.
When we place a tax on gasoline, we expect to see a lower volume of sales on gasoline, and we don't blame the consumers for buying less. Why wouldn't the same be true of news or anything else?
@grumpygamer (Yeah, my post was in agreement with that argument, in case it wasn't clear)
@LouisIngenthron @tod Because link taxes break the internet. I hate big cooperations and facebook more than anyone, but link taxes will become a way to further oppress information if they become the norm.