In the paper’s Editor’s Notes on the right-hand side of this page, I always take the time to direct you to our social media for additional content, particularly photos, from community events. However, because we are a news outlet, our content is currently blocked to users in Canada on Facebook and Instagram. This is because of how Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) is responding to Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which requires tech companies like social media sites to pay news outlets for showing their content.

Unfortunately, Big Tech’s reaction to this law ends up hurting smaller media like us, as we use social media platforms to increase our visibility, as well as promote local events and other time-sensitive content. We spent years organically growing our online audience and don’t want to see our hard work be wasted.

Therefore, our workaround for now is to publish even more extra content on our website: bmcnews.org. This will include photo galleries from local events that we normally would have published on our socials.

We will keep publishing on Facebook and Instagram to a limited degree in the hope that the situation will change. Following us still helps build our numbers for when our content can be freely shown to our Canadian visitors again. We’re @bmcnews on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bmcnews" target="_blank">Facebook</a> and bmcviews on Instagram. As well, we’re @bmcnews on X (formerly Twitter, and which is not currently blocking news to Canadian users).

You can also subscribe to our free e-newsletter at our website (bmcnews.org) which features current stories from our print edition as well as exclusive website features.