SYDNEY (AUSTRALIA) – Australians had their news feeds empty on their Facebook Inc pages on Thursday after the latter blocked all media content, in a dramatic turn of events, as part of a dispute with the government over paying for content.
The move received flak from news producers, politicians and human rights advocates, as it was evident that official health pages, emergency safety warnings and welfare networks had all disappeared from the site along with news.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison wrote on his own Facebook page, “Facebook’s actions to unfriend Australia today, cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing,”
“These actions will only confirm the concerns that an increasing number of countries are expressing about the behaviour of Big Tech companies who think they are bigger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them.”
Facebook’s dramatic move reflected a different course taken by the same from Alphabet Inc-owned Google after they teamed up for years to campaign against the laws. While both parties had threatened to cancel services in Australia, Google has instead secured preemptive deals with several outlets in the past few days, the latest being Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
It announced that it will receive “significant payments” from Google in return for giving content for the search engine’s News Showcase account.
Under the Australian law, it would require Facebook and Google to reach commercial deals with news outlets, from whose links traffic is drawn towards their platforms, or be subject to forced arbitration so as to agree a price.
Facebook said in its statement that the law, which is expected to be passed by parliament within days, “fundamentally misunderstands” the relationship between itself and publishers. It said that it was brought to such a point that they were presented with a stark choice of either complying or banning news content.
Facebook has said news accounts to just 4% of what people view on its website, however, for Australians Facebook’s role in delivering has been growing. A 2020 University of Canberra study brought out that 21% of Australians see social media as their primary news source, up 3% from the previous year, while 39% of the population take to Facebook to get news. The same study said 29% of Australian news video content is made use of from Facebook.
Australians were left with clean pages operated by news outlets and took down posts by individual users sharing Australian news, a move which came as part of the changes from Facebook. It has to be noted that this has come three days before the country sets out on a nationwide vaccination program to slow the spread of COVID-19.
Lisa Davies, editor of daily The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, owned by Nine Entertainment Co Ltd, tweeted: “Facebook has exponentially increased the opportunity for misinformation, dangerous radicalism and conspiracy theories to abound on its platform.”
The Facebook pages of Nine and News Corp, which together dominate the country’s metro newspaper market, and the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Corp, acting as a platform for receiving central information source during natural disasters, were blank.
Several major state government accounts, including those providing advice on the coronavirus pandemic and bushfire threats at the height of the summer season, and umpteen number of charity and non-governmental organisation accounts were also affected.
“Demand for food relief has never been higher than during this pandemic, and one of our primary comms tools to help connect people with #foodrelief info & advice is now unavailable,” tweeted Brianna Casey, chief executive of hunger relief charity Foodbank.
“Hours matter when you have nothing to eat. SORT THIS OUT!”
An advertisement on News Corp’s main Australian news site said, “You don’t need Facebook to get your news”, alongside a link to the company’s smartphone app.
Many government-backed Facebook pages were brought back, however, several charity pages and all media sites continued to be in the dark, including those of international outlets like the New York Times, the BBC, News Corp’s Wall Street Journal, among many others.
A later Facebook statement said the ban should not affect government pages but “as the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition”.
Facebook’s own page was down for several hours in Australia before being restored.
“This is an alarming and dangerous turn of events,” said Human Rights Watch in a statement. “Cutting off access to vital information to an entire country in the dead of the night is unconscionable.”