For reference, the article I’m referring to:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/twitter-policy-change-hampers-drivebc-1.6894793
“Social media’s reliability in emergencies questioned after Twitter limit blocks DriveBC posts” (Jul 12).
Whether a provincial traffic account posting emergency info counts as news links for these large companies or not, it’s a pretty ugly look for them to have been blocking emergency information, and it doesn’t look any better now 6 months later.
The whole thing is pretty typical (Canadian) government “not enough, and too late” -style regulation regardless, but these social media sites could think twice about playing the villain so readily in response.
This is the best take I’ve seen yet, with the benefit that it’s literally already been done.
It’d be interesting to see what would happen if they tried to mandate this now, but I’m sure it’s already too late.