A Chinese-owned app called WeChat, made for instant messaging, social media, and mobile payments, has been banned from Canada effective immediately as of Monday, October 30, 2023. The application was said to be removed from all government-issued devices and has been blocked for future downloads by anyone. While they did do a sweep through the app to see if there had been any breaches, nothing came up. Yet, they decided to ban the app from Canada. Along with this, the Kaspersky app has also been banned effective immediately. This app is a Russian-owned cyber-security and anti-virus app. Both apps are said to be a threat.
The government of Canada has previously made a News Law, that “aims to ensure that dominant platforms compensate news businesses when their content is made available on their services. The Act creates a bargaining framework to ensure that platforms compensate news businesses fairly. It encourages platforms to reach voluntary commercial agreements with a range of news businesses.” This law has banned Meta- which is a company behind Facebook and Instagram, has already blocked news articles on social media in Canada. Social media is a free form of uncensored news. Unlike regular news which can be monitored and altered by the government. Canadians being censored to what they are viewing gives them a false reality of what is truly going on in the world. A spokesperson for Meta said “The Online News Act is based on the incorrect premise that social media companies benefit unfairly from news content shared on our platforms, but the reverse is true, News outlets voluntarily share content on social media to expand their audiences and help their bottom line. Unfortunately, the only way we can reasonably comply with this legislation is to end news availability for people in Canada in the coming weeks.” This is all leading to a much bigger issue which would be private media ownership.
