Facebook blocks local news as Canada battles record bushfires

Some 1036 mostly out-of-control wildfires are incinerating old-growth forests, native animals, homes and businesses across Canada as the Great White North battles its worst inferno, but Canadians aren’t hearing a scrap of news about it on Facebook or Instagram.

On August 1, Meta banned all Canadian news from its two largest social media platforms in retaliation for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s progressive Liberal government’s Online News Act — the new law forces big digital players to pay news publishers for their content.

It’s the same retaliation we saw in Australia in 2021 when the Morrison government’s news media bargaining code spurred Meta to launch what would end up being an eight-day news blackout, says Curtin University Professor Tama Leaver.

Major news outlets such as the ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald and news.com.au disappeared off newsfeeds, but the clumsy blackout also blocked the Facebook pages of emergency services when Western Australia was in “the grip of bushfires and grappling with the pandemic”, Leaver, an expert in online communication and media, tells Crikey.

The blackout lifted after Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg emerged from eleventh-hour negotiations, both claiming victory about a watered-down code. But Leaver, who is also the president of the Association of Internet Researchers, points out Canada’s news ban has gone on three times as long — and counting.

“While emergency services websites and, indeed, news websites in Canada are still there, the path to them will be less direct for many people who’ve relied on family and friends curating news for them, effectively, via the Instagram or Facebook feeds,” he warns.

“There is a real chance that the lack of news on Meta’s platforms could endanger lives in an emergency in Canada.”

Like the ABC during the Black Summer crisis, Canada’s Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has been a lifeline for citizens during the fires (including more than 630 First Nations communities) with more than 15.3 million hectares destroyed so far. It’s more than double Canada’s previous record of 7.1 million hectares blackened in 1995, and the equivalent of about three-quarters of Victoria going up in flames.

The broadcaster has become particularly important as fire-engulfed communities in the hardest-hit west report “a lack of communication” from authorities, in one case leaving them feeling “abandoned” as they entered day five battling a blaze.

It could be an ominous sign of things to come in Australia. Earlier this month the ABC shut down nearly all its accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter, amid the torrid leadership of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. It means its social media reach in emergencies just got that much narrower, Leaver says, at the inopportune moment that Australia stares down its worst bushfire season in years and more probable climate calamities on the horizon.

What’s worse, concessions in our news media bargaining code left the government with a trigger — before a social media platform is subjected to the code, the treasurer must first consider whether it has reached commercial agreements with news media businesses. Should the treasurer do so anyway, Facebook and Instagram could just ban all Australian news again, leaving the government hamstrung by Meta.

But Trudeau’s government is playing hardball in a way that the Australian government did not. Meta issued a terse statement to CBC last week reinforcing it would not budge (although it had active a safety check function so people could mark themselves safe).

On Monday morning, the typically demure Trudeau was furious that Meta was digging its heels in an unprecedented emergency situation “where up-to-date local information is more important than ever”.

“It is so inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits ahead of ensuring that local news organisations 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,” he said.

As the government and Meta look set to continue their standoff, it’s Canadians battling deadly blazes who could end up paying the ultimate price, Leaver says: “As it was in Australia, it’s the average user stuck in the middle who is getting a raw deal.”