Meta news ban fans flames of chaos

For Canadians who relied on Facebook, coping with wildfires is even more complicated this year

- ALEX BOYD

Marina Barnes was walking back from the dollar store to her condo in Abasand, an Alberta neighbourhood on the edge of Fort McMurray where city meets trees, when she saw the first plume of smoke.

The oil capital of northern Alberta knows the danger of fire well, its 90,000 residents sent running in 2016 just ahead of a megafire nicknamed The Beast. But what shocked Barnes was that she had no idea that once again, the flames were so close. "I didn't hear about it," she said, on the phone from a hotel in the town of Lac La Biche, where she and her two cats had landed after her neighbourhood was put under an evacuation order this month.

"I mean, I don't really have the radio on at home anymore, but I'm scrolling Facebook and TikTok all the time," she says. Still, the news was nowhere to be seen on her feeds. The first full fire season since Meta banned Canadian news links on its platforms is now underway, with dozens of blazes burning across Western Canada as officials warn that drought could fuel a summer of fire even more devastating than last year's record-breaking season.

Adding to the chaos, some say, is the fact that news can no longer be shared on Facebook and Instagram during dangerous and quickly moving situations.

"It doesn't make sense that you can't get Canadian content about Canada," Barnes says. "It's crazy."

The news ban stems from an ongoing dispute between the tech giant and the federal government that has put Canada at the epicentre of a global battle over the value of news. Jurisdictions around the world, including the UK. and California, continue to debate whether major digital platforms should help support the struggling news companies whose stories drive online traffic. Last spring Canada took action, creating the Online News Act, which required tech companies to compensate news organizations if they wanted to continue to use news content on their platforms.