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Turtle Island News publisher says it has lost ad revenue and is now putting resources into developing an app
The publisher of a First Nations newspaper based in Six Nations of the Grand River, Ont., says she's "extremely concerned" about the impact on Indigenous communities of Meta blocking news content in Canada.
"In many cases, they're in very isolated areas and for Facebook to pull a stunt like this, it can cause so many problems for our people to get information to them," Lynda Powless, publisher of Turtle Island News, told CBC Hamilton.
"First Nations are in precarious positions to begin with ... these are communities that just even have problems getting to the internet."
Meta — which owns Facebook and Instagram — began ending the availability of news on those sites in Canada earlier this summer in response to the passage in June of Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which takes effect by the end of this year.
Now links and content shared by Canadian news outlets on Meta's sites can't be viewed by people in Canada. Users in Canada also can't view news from organizations outside of Canada.
Google has threatened similar action.
The Online News Act will force large social media platforms to negotiate compensation for Canadian news publishers when their content is shared. The government says C-18 is about ensuring tech companies pay their "fair share" to media organizations.
Meta has countered that the only reasonable way to comply with the bill is to end news access in Canada.
CBC/Radio-Canada and other news publishers and broadcasters have
asked Canada's Competition Bureau to investigate Meta's decision to block news content, describing the social media giant's actions as "anticompetitive."
CBC/Radio-Canada's corporate position is that the Online News Act will help level the playing field and contribute to a healthy news ecosystem in Canada "at a time when 80 per cent of digital ad revenue goes to Facebook and Google," spokesperson Leon Mar has previously said.
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Meta has faced more criticism recently as wildfires have ravaged parts of the country and forced thousands of Canadians from their homes.
"Those fires affected a lot of First Nations communities that we service," Powless said, adding that they have readers across the country.
CBC Hamilton contacted Meta for comment but didn't get a response.
Powless said Turtle Island News has used Facebook for live or breaking coverage in the past but hasn't been able to do so since the news ban.
The Turtle Island News page doesn't show any content at all and Powless said it happened without warning.
"How are we supposed to let our community know what's happening in an urgent situation?" she said, adding that mainstream media outlets usually cover news Indigenous communities a day or two later than local Indigenous outlets.
She said the newsroom has tried to find ways around Meta's efforts, but now the outlet is finding itself having to "re-train" readers about where to find news.
She said the newspaper is also developing an app.
"It's taking resources from an Indigenous newspaper in a small Indigenous community," Powless said, noting it has lost ad revenue.
She hopes Meta will back down and end its news ban.
"You have people who are fighting fires, all kinds of climate change issues in First Nations communities ... we're there and we can't get the word out," Powless said, speaking about Indigenous media outlets broadly.
"That's a serious problem and the kind of problem that costs people's lives."
With files from Catharine Tunney, Christian Paas-Lang and CBC News
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