It’s no secret that Facebook hates the news industry.
We in journalism have long known it. But it’s reached new levels of despicable.
For years, Facebook has raked in millions upon millions due to news providers putting content on its platform that helped attract audience. Not to mention the millions upon millions generated by stealing away our advertisers. We haven’t gotten a single cent in return.
Canada, a nation with politicians wise enough to know that journalism matters, recently put its foot down and passed a law requiring Facebook and Google to start paying news publishers for content.
In return, Zuckerberg decided to throw a narcissistic tantrum as “the company started permanently removing Canadian news from Facebook and Instagram this month,” according to Politico.
The real life consequences of this began immediately. As the general public has become accustomed to turning to Facebook to find news, the Montreal Gazette ran a story with the headline “Government calls on Meta to reverse ‘reckless’ news-blocking as wildfires force evacuations.” From the story:
“I’m asking them to go back on their decision and allow people to have access to news and information in general,” Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez said during a press conference about the wildfires. Canadians and Canadian news outlets can’t currently post or share any news content on Facebook or Instagram.
There aren’t enough words for how revolting Facebook’s behavior is. This, mind you, as Facebook is a leading platform for the spread of misinformation.
Why does this matter to Eudora?
We at The Eudora Times have been talking for months already about how we, too, have seen how Facebook has turned on the news industry.
This summer, we saw a significant decline in the number of people seeing our content in their Facebook feed compared to last fall. This defeats the point of having local news if people don’t actually see it.
Earlier this week, I finished a draft of my upcoming book, Reviving Rural News. One of the arguments is that local news has got to adapt to an e-newsletter environment to communicate directly with our readers. We need to proactively cut out Facebook as it’s coming after us.
That’s where you come in.
Despite our repeated efforts to tell people to sign up for our e-newsletter, the response has been slower than we hoped. It is absolutely imperative that members of this community fill out the pop-up on our website that asks you to sign up for our e-newsletter. (And then check your spam for the confirmation message.)
We send out our e-newsletter every Sunday morning right now and hope to get to a point of sending it out twice a week. It’s the only way (besides checking our website every day) that you can guarantee you will see local stories. Because social media sure ain’t it.
Local news has too much been taken for granted in the United States. It’s why 2,000 newspapers have closed in the past few decades. Canada knows this is an emergency situation and that news is absolutely critical for the functioning of society.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in the Politico story that “Canadians will not be bullied by billionaires in the U.S.”
And we won’t, either. And we need you to do your part in that as well.
Support local news. Sign up for our e-newsletter when you get the pop-up on our website. And donate to us here.
Teri Finneman is the publisher of The Eudora Times.
