The Concept

Meta/Facebook's refuses to abide by Canada's Bill C-18 by blocking all Canadian news content rather than pay their fair share to news and other content providers.

This is obviously abuse of a quasi-monopoly.

Canadian news media have reacted by asking people to scan in a QR code to download their news apps.

This "solution" is lame, for 7 reasons:

    1. Most people can't be arsed to scan in a QR code;

    2. Have you looked at people's phones? Most already have a ton of apps;

    3. Downloading an app misses everyone using a laptop or desktop;

    4. Everyone online already has a browser;

    5. Sharing a web site or story link is as easy as sending a text or email;

    6. Sharing an app? Fuggetaboutit!

    7. Many smaller operations can't afford to develop or maintain a mobile app.

It's easier, quicker, and CHEAPER to leverage user's existing technology - their browsers.

And there's the additional cost saving of not having to develop and maintain an app.

Of course, the big sites might make a deal in the end. And then everyone is in the situation where the giants say "We've made the deal; pray our lobbyists don't change it again".

Better to take them completely out of the equation. This is my contribution to that effort - a simple way for people to discover news and information sites, look at a few sample articles, then follow the link to the actual site's home page if they're interested. And if they decide they like what they see, just bookmark it.

Q: Won't this just be a site to browse the latest news?

A: No, for 3 reasons:
  1. By only including 5 articles per site, none of which is updated on a regular basis, this site useless as a "current news or information" source. This is not a news aggregator

  2. If the users want to visit the site, each sample page includes a direct link to the site at both the top and bottom.

  3. Users have to store their links on their devices. This is not a bookmarking service.

Q: As the site's owner and editor, what sites do you ban?

A: The list of banned content includes the following:
  1. All social media sites are banned. They've hade ample time to "prove their worth" and they've failed. Proponents claim that social media can help with social isolation, etc., but instead it's become the internet rage machine of choice. Support mental health - avoid social media, get out, go walk your (or a neighbour's) dog, join (or start) a group in your neighbourhood, phone someone.

    In other words, put the screen down and stop doom-scrolling already!

  2. Entertainment, celebrity gossip sites, sports and electronic gaming sites, and similar categories, are ignored. They have their own communities;

  3. Right-wing nut jobs and libertarian whackos are banned. No hate speech, no Elon Musk's Twitter 'X'cretions, no anti-lgbt crap, no racists, no white supremists. No climate deniers, no conspiracy theorists, not Trumpers.

Q: What editorial policies do you apply to the sample articles for each site?

I do my best to provide attribution to the source, including the author(s) at the top of each sample.

All images have been stripped out - if users want to see pretty pictures, please visit the site, and if you like it, bookmark it.

Almost all formatting has also been stripped out. This is for simplicity's sake. I'm doing this for free, on my own time, and my time is limited. I obviously also don't want the extra bandwidth costs. Plus, I'm low vision - see my lowvisioncomputing.com site web site for more information, so all editing is harder.

Q: Future Plans?

More sites. Thank you ~~ Barbara Hudson

Site copyright © 2022, 2023 by Barbra Hudson.

Email: barbra@supportnewsmedia.com

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