Facebook \u2018unfriends\u2019 Australia
\nNews Agency
\nLONDON
\nFacebook faced an angry backlash on Thursday after blocking news feeds in Australia in a surprise escalation of a dispute with the government which could be a test for the future of online publishing worldwide.
\nThe move was denounced by media groups, politicians and human rights groups in Australia and beyond, as it became clear that official health pages and emergency warnings had been scrubbed along with news sites, just three days before the launch of a nationwide Covid-19 vaccination programme.
\n\u201cFacebook\u2019s actions to unfriend Australia today, cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing,\u201d Prime Minister Scott Morrison wrote on his own Facebook page.
\n\u201cThese 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.\u201d
\nThe dispute centres on a planned Australian law, which would require Facebook and Google to reach commercial deals to pay news outlets whose links drive traffic to their platforms, or agree a price through arbitration.
\nAlthough Australia is a small market, the law is being closely watched around the world by regulators, and could be a test case for a bigger global push to force internet giants to share more of their revenue with content providers.
\nNews publishers outside Australia leapt on Facebook\u2019s tactics as evidence that the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, cannot be trusted as the gatekeeper for their industry.
\nBanning news during a global pandemic was \u201ca classic example of a monopoly power being the schoolyard bully, trying to protect its dominant position with scant regard for the citizens and customers it supposedly serves\u201d, said Henry Faure Walker, chairman of Britain\u2019s News Media Association industry group.
\nFacebook said it had blocked a wide swathe of pages because the draft law did not provide clearly define news content. It said its commitment to combat misinformation had not changed, and it would restore pages that had been taken down by mistake.
\nDifferent strategies
\nPublishers say platforms such as Google and Facebook have hoarded the vast bulk of revenue as media shift online, even as print and broadcast advertising shrivels, forcing newspapers, magazines and TV and radio stations to shut newsrooms.
\nThe move in Australia represents a split between Facebook and Google, which had joined together for years to campaign against such laws. Both had threatened to cancel services in Australia, but Google instead sealed preemptive deals with several media outlets in recent days.
\nRupert Murdoch\u2019s News Corp was the latest to announce a deal in which it will receive \u201csignificant payments\u201d from Google in return for providing content for the search engine\u2019s News Showcase account.
\nThe Facebook pages of state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corp went blank, along with those of Australia\u2019s two big metro newspaper chains, Nine Entertainment Co Ltd and News Corp International outlets such as the New York Times, the BBC and Reuters also became invisible.
\nAlso affected were scores of charity accounts, and major state government accounts, including those providing advice on the coronavirus pandemic and bushfire threats at the height of the summer season, though some of these were later restored. Even Facebook\u2019s own page was briefly taken down.
\nFacebook shares traded down 1.1 per cent in premarket dealings on Thursday.
\nCharities join condemnation
\nFacebook said in its statement that the law, expected to be passed by parliament within days, \u201cfundamentally misunderstands\u201d the relationship between itself and publishers and it faced a stark choice of complying or banning news.
\nThe tech giant has said news makes up just 4pc of what people view on its website. But for Australians, Facebook\u2019s role in news delivery is growing. A 2020 University of Canberra study found 21pc of Australians use social media as their primary news source and 39pc of the population uses Facebook to receive news.<\/p>\n
Lisa Davies, editor of The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, owned by Nine, tweeted: \u201cFacebook has exponentially increased the opportunity for misinformation, dangerous radicalism and conspiracy theories to abound on its platform.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facebook \u2018unfriends\u2019 Australia News Agency LONDON Facebook faced an angry backlash on Thursday after blocking news feeds in Australia in a surprise escalation of a dispute with the government which could be a test for the future of online publishing worldwide. The move was denounced by media groups, politicians and human rights groups in Australia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"\n