British Columbia’s premier has made a direct appeal to tech giant Meta over its blackout on Canadian news, amid a provincial state of emergency due to raging wildfires.
Earlier this month, Meta began blocking news for Canadian Facebook and Instagram users in response to the federal Online News Act. The legislation would force companies like Meta and Google to pay Canadian news outlets for their content.
British Columbia declared a state of emergency on Friday as out-of-control wildfires threatened numerous communities.
As of Monday, there were about 380 wildfires burning in the province and an estimated 27,000 people under evacuation orders.
At a briefing Monday, Premier David Eby said it was “unacceptable” for the tech giant to cut off access to news on its platforms at a time when British Columbians need timely, potentially life-saving information.
“I find it astonishing that we are at this stage of the crisis and the owners of Facebook and Instagram have not come forward and said, ‘Look, we’re trying to make a point with the federal government, but it’s more important that people are safe, it’s more important that they have access to basic information through our networks, and then we can deal with our concerns with the federal government and their new laws later,'” Eby said, before making a personal plea to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“I call on Facebook again. Mr. Zuckerberg, open up access to Canadian media so that British Columbians can share critical local information so they can be safe.”
Eby said local media provides an essential role in collecting complex, detailed, and often highly local information from provincial briefings and updates and in breaking it down in a local context.
When people living in fire-affected areas get that information from their local newspapers, radio stations and online news outlets, he added, the primary way they share it with their communities is through social media platforms.
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Earlier this year, B.C. announced it would cease advertising through Meta in protest of the company’s blackout. Eby said Monday that the province had made an exception to that advertising ban for disaster-related communications, and said Meta should take a similar approach.
“This is not a time for making that political point — it is a time for Facebook and Instagram to use the network they have built, frankly on the backs of local media, to communicate with British Columbians about what they need to hear, what information they need about what’s happening in their local communities,” Eby said.
“It feels a bit like they are holding British Columbians for ransom to make a point with Ottawa, and I just cannot express how unacceptable that is when we see local companies bending over backward to support local companies.”
At a press conference in Charlottetown earlier Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made similar comments, saying it was “inconceivable” that a company would put corporate interests and profits over people’s safety during an emergency.
In an emailed statement, Meta did not directly respond to the premier’s call for an end to the blackout.
“We have been clear since February that the broad scope of the Online News Act would impact the sharing of news content on our platforms,” a spokesperson said.
“We remain focused on ensuring people in Canada can use our technologies to connect with loved ones and access information, which is how more than 45,000 people have marked themselves safe and around 300,000 people have visited the Yellowknife and Kelowna Crisis Response pages on Facebook.”
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The company added that the public can still get online news directly from media outlets’ websites or through mobile apps, and that its policy only affects news articles on the platform, not other forms of information.
Meta has previously told Global News that Canadians “can continue to use our technologies to connect with their communities and access reputable information, including content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations.”
The company has also previously said that news media voluntarily share content on Facebook and Instagram, which expands both their audiences and their revenue. It said people using its platforms do not come there primarily for news.
Both Meta and Google have stated they will restrict news to Canadian audiences in response to the new law, which will take effect by the end of the year.
Bill C-18 comes on the heels of similar legislation that Australia implemented in 2021. That law set off a standoff between the Australian government and the tech giants that eventually ended with Meta and Google agreeing to deals with Australian news media.
Some people living in the Northwest Territories, which is facing its own wildfire emergency, have said the news blackout is allowing misinformation to spread on social media, without the opportunity to rebut it with information from legitimate sources.
The Canadian Association of Journalists has also called on Meta to reverse its news ban in the context of wildfire evacuations, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called the blackout “dangerous to our democracy, to our economy.”
— with files from Global’s Paula Tran and Jeff Semple, The Canadian Press and Reuters
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