Canadian Officials Condemn Facebook for News Ban as Wildfires Burn

As Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories in Canada embarked on a mass evacuation of 20,000 residents last week, the city turned to Facebook to help share the latest information about the wildfires that were quickly approaching.

But instead of simply sharing a link to a story about the wildfires from CPAC, the Cable Public Affairs Channel, the city instructed residents to look up the information on a search engine.

“Google: CPAC Canada or www . cpac . ca (just remove the spaces),” the city posted.

In the midst of a natural disaster, Yellowknife had to navigate around Facebook’s decision to block news articles on its platform in Canada. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, began rolling out the ban on Aug. 1 in response to a new Canadian law that requires tech companies to pay news outlets for using their content.

Canadian lawmakers passed the Online News Act in June, requiring social media platforms like Meta and search engines like Google to negotiate with news publishers to license their content. The law is slated to go into effect in December. But Meta has…