The NWT government and city of Yellowknife are describing in tweets, Instagram messages etc. how to search key evacuation information on CPAC and CBC. The broadcast carriers have a duty to carry emergency information, but Meta and X are blocking links.
While internet access is reportedly limited in Yellowknife, residents are finding this a barrier to getting current and accurate information. Even links to CBC radio are blocked.
Agreed. But this is a societal dependence.
Too many clubs, churches and communities organizations, and small businesses found Facebook easier to maintain than websites, so many people became dependent on that platform.
The challenge is that governments have a duty to meet their constituents where they are, especially in emergencies. So they send out Tweets, ‘grams and posts directing people to the information on official sites.
Before the Internet, people would turn on their radios or televisions. That’s why in most jurisdictions (including the United States) broadcasters and cable carriers MUST carry emergency broadcasts, superceding regular programming. The wave of climate-related emergencies raise the question of whether internet aggregator platforms should be required to do the same.
As an aside, governments and public new sources maintain websites that are accessible. Due to a Canadian Supreme Court decision requiring government platforms to be accessible to persons with disabilities, Canadian new sites have user interfaces that are adaptive.
@StillPaisleyCat
Remote communities in northern Canada operate differently than everything along the 49th parallel.
Stop using a wide brush to describe two completely different societies.
We can agree on remote communities having different circumstances, and social networks.
That said, I doubt that this would apply any less in the Okanagan communities where there are many people living on backroads and off the grid or in most of Canada outside the major metropolitan areas.
@StillPaisleyCat
Not really. I’ve lived in Kelowna and also in remote Ontario regions. The only similarity is that there’s lots of trees.
Kelowna is a significant regional metropolitan area.
But get into the bush beyond Vernon or up to William’s Lake and you will find that people who used to rely heavily on CBC and other AM radio in a crisis are looking to their regular internet sources. If that’s where they get their information, then that’s where government’s need to make sure it’s available in an emergency.
@StillPaisleyCat
There are cell towers in those regions vs few/none in northern regions.
That’s the difference.
Cell towers work in some but not all the smaller hamlets.
This doesn’t seem to the point however. Meta and X not carrying links isn’t a barrier for those who have no Internet access whatsoever. Whether north of 60 or not, a very significant portion of the population has become reliant on Meta and X to feed them news to the point that they don’t know where to get reliable evacuation guidance in an emergency.
As an aside, resilient emergency communications to the public a reason that the CBC will be maintaining AM radio stations that broadcast curve of the Earth. The public needs to know where to find that and have AM radios to access it however.
Thing is, if there is an emergency, you are not going to force the user to follow a link. You are going to put the details they need to know right there. Something Meta and X are quite happy to allow.
There is good reason the payload the emergency alert system those cell towers carry isn’t a link to a CBC article. That would be silly and would be equally silly if done on Facebook/Instagram/X/whatever.
The framing of this as a linking issue is hilarious and nonsensical.
Nonsense. If you put the details that everyone needs to know in one message, and then update it as things change you’ll just run into issues where various apps will consider it old news and drop it off.
It also relies on people to constantly check this one post for updates rather than having the updates pushed to them.
Linking allows them to have a resource that is constantly being updated while also being able to push it, and get it into people’s feeds.