
08/14/2023
By now many of you may have heard the news about Meta and Bill C-18. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has made the decision to block all news sources in Canada on its platforms. Unfortunately, that also includes non-profit radio, aka your favorite campus radio station CiTR101.9FM (at least we hope your fave is us).
Why is this happening?
This is the result of a battle between the Canadian government and tech giants Meta & Google over the Online News Act (Bill C-18). The bill was passed back in June and required digital companies to share revenue with Canadian news organizations by paying them anytime someone reached a webstory through a link on their platforms. Meta has recently fired back by saying it will just block Canadian news off its platforms. Not-For-Profit Radio was included in the bill and according to the National Campus & Community Radio Association (NCRA), Meta has refused to meet with Campus/Community Radio associations. For more information on the situation and how it affects campus radio, please head to the NCRA’s website. (https://ncra.ca/banned/)
How does this affect CiTR?
Sadly, we have already received messages that people are unable to currently see our content. As the new changes are rolling out, we expect that soon enough, all of our Canadian followers will not be able to see our content on both Instagram and Facebook.
So what’s our plan?
Firstly, we urge everyone to follow us on Twitter () and join our Discord server (https://discord.com/invite/pfTxfnAy2G). Our Discord server allows communication between members and different departments, and we also post any announcements.
Secondly, we are hoping to post updates about CiTR & Discorder and our events on the Fanta Records Instagram page (our Record Label). Please follow for more updates and fingers crossed the page stays up. We are going to be experimenting and seeing what kind of content we can keep posting without being flagged. As we have our Victory Square Block Party event coming up (Sept. 3rd) and Shindig coming up in the fall, we will continue to post our event promo and updates on that account.
We will try and keep everyone updated on the situation as we figure things out. In the meantime, stay tuned and stay reading with CiTR & Discorder. We love you all! mWAH!