Canada wildfire evacuees can't get news media on Facebook and Instagram. Some find workarounds

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Some from official government accounts. Mostly from friends and family, including an offer of help from her First Nation band. But not from news media sites.

That's because Canadian news outlets — including the only one she trusts — have been blocked on Facebook and Instagram as a result of a dispute with the national government. «People were posting how close the fires were. And we knew the highway kept opening and closing, so we said, 'OK, we'll just go,'» said the 65-year-old who is a longtime resident of the capital city of Canada's Northwest Territories.

Her preferred media site, Yellowknife-based Cabin Radio, has been doing its best to get around the ban with help from the station's audience members who have been taking news from the Cabin Radio website — filled with the latest details — then snapping a screenshot and sharing that image on Facebook and Instagram so that their friends, family and others are more likely to see the information. «Our audience did an incredible job of undermining that ban on our behalf,» said Ollie Williams, editor of Cabin Radio, speaking by phone after relocating west of Yellowknife to Fort Simpson. «They found workarounds and they got our coverage out to each other, regardless of Meta trying to keep that from happening.» For their part, reporters have been gathering news and talking to first responders from their cars while themselves having to evacuate.

Williams has been using a device for satellite internet service. And the station's general manager is sharing news with his team while volunteering as a bus driver carrying evacuees to the airport. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced earlier this month it would keep its promise to block news content in