20 Comments

Trudeau and Putin have more in common than many think.

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Here’s a news story on our website, but you can’t post a link to it.

How does that make sense?

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The government chose this path. This is the Canada they want. Unfortunately for them Facebook and Google don't want to pay for it. I suggest support your local news directly.

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I hate to say this but Facebook is 100% correct on this one. This is crony capitalism and backroom deals at its finest.

I don’t know how Canadians keep electing Trudeau. Is the tribalism so strong that liberal voters cannot see the dangerous direction their government is headed? Sadly, Canada is further down the Road to Serfdom than the US (intentional reference).

God, Trudeau is such an annoying weasel. A less mature me would say he has a punchable face, but I’m not going to say that here.

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Justin Trudeau has lost the popular vote in the past two elections, one of which was entirely unnecessary, and yet still rules due to the electoral seat distribution. Few Canadians actually support his absurd government.

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So my Canadian friends tell me. It's engineered to keep the two-time loser still in power.

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trudeau is a facist

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we can vote him out, but we will never be able to vote out Facebook...

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Facebook doesn’t govern you. Why would you need to vote them out, just don’t use their service if it’s a problem for you.

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Welcome to the People's Republic of Canada.

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To me it more resembles Facebook treating nations like banana republics.

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How so? They are under no obligation to operate in Canada, or anywhere. If a country imposes a regulatory framework that Facebook finds burdensome then they may leave.

Your comment suggests you find Facebook to be manipulative, but aren’t they just reacting rationally to a manipulative government?

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C18 was ill advised and poorly designed as you point out. It will destroy the small, independent organizations. With Substack some will have a chance. I joined FP the first day I heard about the paywall going up. And now seeing Tait, the head of the CBC, calling out for criminal investigations of on line posts bemoaning the lack of capability and complete partisanship in our MSM "reporters" I am kind of happy that this will hurt the big players. And I will selectively support the smaller Substack entities.

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It makes spreading the word more difficult though, right?

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No, it makes it different. The large organizations with political agendas are replaced by small organizations who now compete for our dollars. Less CBC and more FP is a great thing in my opinion.

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But what platform does the little guy have to get the word out to the masses? That was my point.

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Douglas Murray nailed it.

"You really know the world is in trouble when Canada becomes very interesting"

https://youtu.be/lwiJreENzdY

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Small media companies can negotiate any price they like. If the loss of content distribution truly hurts you, just negotiate CAD$0.01 per million stories shared, and make Meta pay you only that. That's like $0.00735 American, so it's a real steal!

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in this case, it's Facebook's overreach

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How is exiting a market “overreach”? Canada is not entitled to Facebook’s services and if Facebook finds Canada to be a hostile place to do business then walking away is rational.

You talk as if government coercion is something Facebook must endure and if they choose to walk away it represents some sort of moral failure on their part. As if it’s okay for the government to bully them, but it’s not okay for them to be displeased.

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