1 of 1- RadioActive
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The Weird Thing About The Canadian Facebook News Ban
I'm a member of Facebook only because I need to be able to access pages for work purposes. I've never posted on it and otherwise, I couldn't care less about it. But I noticed something very odd going on with the so-called "Canada ban" over Bill C-18, where the feds are trying to make owner Meta pay for links, forcing the company to remove them for members in this country.
On a page I visit every day, I would see the dreaded "This item not available to Canadians, due to government regulations." But then, if I come back to the exact same page an hour later, the article appears. And it's not the first time I've seen this. It's happened dozens of times. See the ban, leave, come back, and it suddenly appears.
Has anyone else experienced this? And if so, what does this say about Meta's vow to keep Canadians from seeing news on its platform? Sounds like it's not really working to me.
- RadioAaron
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Re: The Weird Thing About The Canadian Facebook News Ban
You've mentioned before that you use a VPN. Does your 'location' float?
- RadioActive
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Re: The Weird Thing About The Canadian Facebook News Ban
It can vary, but not when I access Facebook. A long time ago, when I registered, I must have indicated I was in Canada. Thus the censorship. What's odd is that it's not consistent. I never change my VPN when I got to the sites I visit. Sometimes the stories are there. Sometimes they're not. And then they come back. If they're going to shut out Canadians, you wouldn't think there would be exceptions.
(Plus in the case that happened today, it wasn't even really news. It was some sort of fluff piece about a movie someone put up. Why that would be censored is beyond me.)
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Thread Starter- SpinningWheel
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Re: The Weird Thing About The Canadian Facebook News Ban
RadioAaron wrote:
You've mentioned before that you use a VPN. Does your 'location' float?
I doubt that matters anyway because from my experience, Facebook still bans links despite where the location is set once it's been identified as Canada based. I was able to enjoy the links set up in the USA but only for a brief time until I switched the VPN location to Canada. After that it never allowed me access again no matter where it was 'located'. RA's case is the first I've heard of it jumping back and forth, so it may be one of the zillion bugs in Facebook's shitty software.
- RadioAaron
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Re: The Weird Thing About The Canadian Facebook News Ban
You've mentioned before that you use a VPN. Does your 'location' float?
I doubt that matters anyway because from my experience, Facebook still bans links despite where the location is set once it's been identified as Canada based. I was able to enjoy the links set up in the USA but only for a brief time until I switched the VPN location to Canada. After that it never allowed me access again no matter where it was 'located'. RA's case is the first I've heard of it jumping back and forth, so it may be one of the zillion bugs in Facebook's shitty software.
Yeah, I just tried the VPN workaround to no avail. Turned off location sharing for the browser too. Guess they are just using the locations we entered when originally registering.
- RadioActive
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Re: The Weird Thing About The Canadian Facebook News Ban
Here's an example of what I was referring to off the top of this thread. The first pic is from early Tuesday morning. The second is from the exact same site, run by a friend of mine, later in the day. As you can see, one is censored by Facebook, the other pic shows the exact same post plainly visible, links and all. Very strange.
Earlier:
Later:
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