ZuckHub, the site that thumbs its nose at blocking Meta news | Standoff between web giants and Ottawa

Maxime Larrivee-Roy, the creator of the satirical page L’Actualité en memes, was fed up with the status quo surrounding the blocking of news on Meta platforms. He decided to take action by creating ZuckHub.ca, a site that allows you to continue sharing articles on Facebook and Instagram.

How it works is simple: you go to ZuckHub.ca, insert the URL of a news article, and the site generates two links: a long version and a short version. We can thus copy them and share them on the different Meta sites, without them being blocked.

As before, the publication displays the photo of the article, with the difference that the official logo of the media is affixed in the lower right corner. Among the compatible media, we currently include There Press, THE DutyNoovo, TVA News, News and Radio-Canada/CBC.

The interface is clean. I included a minimum of animation. I wanted it to be as simple as possibleexplains Maxime Larrivee-Roy.

Its objective: that people continue to share news and that the media can benefit from this visibility. And so far, it’s mission accomplished. In less than 24 hours since launch, the site has hosted some 330 articles which were redirected to news sites for 10,500 views of these links.

I had the idea, and I just said to myself: no one has done it yet, but I can do it, and I have the time.

Maxime Larrivee-Roy only needed a host to move forward. This is where Crypto.Québec, a digital literacy organization whose motto is Freelyintervened.

This is right in the heart of Crypto.Québec’s missionindicates its co-founder, Luc Lefebvre, whose organization supports the initiative by offering site hosting and the domain name.

An attitude bully

Maxime Larrivee-Roy, who describes himself as a developer, activist and artist a little rebelliousfeels particularly concerned about the blocking of news in Canada.

I worked for several years in the media, including See. I watched it die as we struggled to survive because Facebook and Google were taking all the traffic and eating into our ad revenue.he says.

Meta has already stolen the media, and now they’re coming to hinder them with blocking.

For Luc Lefebvre, Meta’s attitude goes beyond the limits. According to him, the company acts as a bully who attacks citizens by dereferencing the media, a practice which should be framed.

There are plenty of groups who hold back from taking action, because they fear having their pages delisted on these platforms., he denounces. But this is not the case for the duo.

Meta counterattack in sight?

The two long-time friends expect a counterattack from Meta, which could manifest itself, of course, by the dereferencing of the social network pages of Crypto.Québec and L’Actualité en memes.

Open in full screen mode

The more money and energy Facebook puts into this, the more satisfied I am. The goal is to have them at their own gameexplains Luc Lefebvre.

If they run after us, I’m game of running.

If ZuckHub.ca is blocked by Meta, the site will migrate to another domain. And they have several name ideas in mind: ZuckLePlouc.ca, or even ZuckLaCensure.ca.

Eventually, Maxime Larrivee-Roy would like to make the code freely accessible on the Github platform, in order to encourage other people to embark on similar initiatives. The more sites like ZuckHub.ca there are, the easier it will be to bypass blocksmentions the developer.

I have always campaigned for causes in my own way. I did it in 2012 with Manifencours, a real-time interactive map to follow protests [pendant le printemps érable]and I’ve been doing it for several years with L’Actualité en memeshe says.

I act with what I am capable of doing. By using my skills like this, if it can help the cause, so much the better.concludes Maxime Larrivee-Roy.