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Maybe discoverability? If you can’t google “major event” to find news, you’ll wind up just going to big-news-site.com and searching there.

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Or just not bother at all.

I hope this short comment gets the up votes it deserves. Access to news information is a boon. Restricting it is a step backwards. If lack of access dissuades people from finding information, the people as a whole will be more likely to see an unbalanced picture and be less well informed overall.

Which, as it turns out, is exactly what the government and large business syndicates that fund it (Rogers & Bell & co in this scenario) want. An open internet is a very dangerous thing to people in power worldwide.

That seemed to be the message I was getting; spent last week in Toronto and one of the major private broadcasters was running a lot of ads saying "Nasty American platforms won't allow you to see news, so download our apps to see it instead."

Meanwhile, I was pleasantly surprised to see the CBC app festooned with links to low-bandwidth versions of content for regions under wildfire advisories. I appreciate that they understood that emergency situations call for something a bit different than "we have 23 extra pixels, can we cram another banner ad in?"

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