The Australian news ban from Facebook could be the wrong thing for the right reasons

Facebook’s sudden move on Wednesday to ward off Australians from the news (and the rest of the world of Australian news) was just as surprising as draconians. This has prevented Australians from sharing any news links, Australian news publications to present their content on the platform, and the rest of us from sharing links to Australian news sites. It could also be a preview of how the platform will respond to the almost certain future efforts to regulate its business – not just in Australia, but around the world.

Now that we’ve had a few days to see how it’s played, it seems like the general consensus of media experts is that no one here is a winner, but Facebook has at least one point. Many experts also dislike the proposed Australian law that inspired the move by Facebook. So while Facebook was against the law, the way the objection was registered was too sudden, clumsy and potentially harmful.

By also demonstrating the significant role the platform plays in keeping users informed, Facebook is taking a big gamble. On the one hand, it could encourage the Australian government to come up with a law that Facebook prefers, so that it will reverse the news block – the outcome of Facebook almost certainly prefers that there is no new law. But the situation may just as well prove how much market power Facebook has. This in turn could make the reason for regulations to control Facebook’s power so much stronger.

The mandatory code of conduct for news media and digital platforms – currently moving through the Australian Parliament and likely to last before the February 25 session – will require Facebook and Google to negotiate payment agreements with news organizations if they allow users to share news content on their respective platforms. If they do not, an arbitrator will work out a payment agreement for them. Google and Facebook initially threatened to pull their services out of the country if the law were to succeed, but because the section seemed increasingly likely, their responses were very different. Google started making publications. Facebook, ‘with a heavy heart’, has cut the country to its knees by banning news outlets completely.

Australians were suddenly unable to share news links on their timelines, and publications found that their pages were largely removed from content. There was also a global impact: Australians could not share international news links as international news publications were blocked just like the indigenous ones in the country.

However, the ban did not just affect the news. While Facebook told Recode that it intends to take a “broad definition to respect the law as set out”, it appears that the company was zealous in the ban. Facebook has blocked many pages and links that were not news, including charities, bike trails, Facebook itself and government agencies, including health websites, as the country prepares to begin the Covid-19 vaccination. Facebook’s block was hurried and indifferent, or it was malicious – or it was a combination of both. In any case, it was not a good look.

“Facebook has managed to divert attention from flawed legislation and to its own reckless, opaque power,” Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, wrote to Columbia University’s Journalism School. “Even for a business that specializes in disasters, it was quite an achievement.”

Techdirt founder and media analyst Mike Masnick, on the other hand, thought Facebook was completely within his rights to do what he does. He even argued that the news ban is in the best interests of a ‘free and open internet’, as Australian law would force Google and Facebook to pay a ‘link tax’ which he said was ‘inherently problematic’.

“A bunch of lazy newspaper executives who couldn’t adapt and came up with better internet business models not only want the traffic, but also want to be paid for it,” Masnick wrote. ‘It’s like saying that NBC should not just do an ad for Techdirt, but that he should pay me for it. If it seems completely nonsensical, it’s because it’s so. The link tax makes no sense. ”

Many of those criticizing the new Australian law show that Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp dominates the Australian media, is likely to make the most out of it. After all, the law requires Google and Facebook to pay Murdoch, who has used his significant influence on the Australian government to apply legislation like this for years. Case in point: News Corp has already entered into an agreement with Google for more than a number of years (Facebook’s ban was announced and implemented a few hours after the Google News Corp agreement was announced). Australia’s other media giants, Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment, have also worked out major deals with Google. But it remains to be seen how the law – or its threat – will benefit smaller publishers who do not have the same means or power to negotiate with one of the largest companies in the world.

Among those who have a problem with the law itself, many agree with the motivation behind it: Google and Facebook have benefited from the news industry. The platforms get traffic from users who read and share the news, but more importantly, it dominates the digital advertising industry. Because most news sales are heavily dependent on digital advertising for revenue, they almost have to match the terms and prices of Facebook and Google. The technology giants are thus getting a good cut from these ads, while news publications have effectively lost their business model.

That dominance – and the decline of the media – is why the law was the recommendation of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which has been investigating Google and Facebook for years. Commissioner Rod Sims said he believes the two have too much market power, and that legislation is needed for media companies to have a fair deal for a cut in the profits the platforms make from their content.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison strongly encouraged Facebook to reconsider us and ‘make us friends again’, saying the bloc ‘is not a good move’ and that it could potentially have consequences for the company beyond Australia’s borders. have. Canada, France and the European Union are believed to be considering similar laws, and the United States is taking antitrust action against Facebook, Google and other Big Tech companies, both at the state and federal levels.

“There is a lot of global interest in what Australia is doing,” Morrison told the Associated Press. “That’s why, as we did with Google, I invite Facebook to engage constructively, because they know that what Australia is going to do here is likely to be followed by many other Western jurisdictions.”

Morrison added: “It’s not good to befriend Australia because Australia is very friendly.”

But some of Australia’s 13 million Facebook users did not feel very friendly in the aftermath of the block. A number of them told Recode that they saw the move by Facebook as an abuse of power, and feared that they would now miss important news or emergencies, or that the news vacuum caused by the block would be filled with more misinformation . But one Recode reader had a different view: he hoped people would search the news on their own, rather than just read the headlines shared by friends.

“I would be much more comfortable if all Aussies got their news directly from the source,” he said. “I think it will be best for quality journalism and the strength of our democracy.”

Some Australians seem to be trying to do just that: the Australian Broadcast Company’s app was the most downloaded app in Australia’s App Store in the days after the ban.

We’ll see how things go. And if you live in Australia, you should go directly to your favorite news site for updates.

Rebecca Heilweil contributed reporting to this story.

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