News has been banned from Facebook in Australia as the social media giant steps up its fight against the federal government’s proposed news media code. What does it all mean? Will we see news on Facebook again any time soon? Or will we be left with family photos and cat memes?
Who are the casualties?
All Australian news organisations are no longer able to post content to their Facebook pages and people based in Australia are not be able to link to news articles from either Australian or international news sites.
On Thursday morning, however, the block also affected a number of non-news site pages, including some state health departments, the West Australian fire and emergency services page, the WA opposition leader’s page, several charities including support for victims of family violence pages, and union pages.
Some of these were restored by midday on Thursday.
What has happened?
Facebook would be subject to the proposed code – and be required to pay publishers –if “news content” was posted on its website. It could be hit with penalties if, while it is subject to the code, it allowed news content from some publishers not part of the code while blocking others.
This means Facebook would not be able to just block Australian publishers who are participating in the code but would need to block all news content from Facebook. The social media behemoth is now attempting to show how that would work in practice.
That’s why it’s not just Australian publishers but all international news sites that are blocked in Australia.
But in enforcing the ban, Facebook has said it inadvertently over-blocked pages in trying to meet the definition of news.
“As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.
Why is Facebook doing this?
Facebook believes it offers much more benefit to news companies than news companies offer to Facebook. The company’s head in Australia and New Zealand, Will Easton, said in a blog post announcing the block that news content accounts for less than 4% of content people see in their news feeds, while Facebook accounted for 5.1bn clicks to Australian news websites in 2020.
Facebook argues this value isn’t taken into account in how the negotiations are structured in the proposed news code.
Facebook has hit the nuclear button to try to show media companies how little news means to Facebook – and how much it might affect traffic to news sites if they were suddenly cut off.
How does it affect you?
If you are based in Australia, you will not be able to see or post any links to news sites from either Australia or overseas.
You will be greeted with a pop-up window explaining why you can’t post the link.
Some of the government pages you might rely on may also be blocked, if Facebook hasn’t managed to unblock them yet.
If you are based outside of Australia, you will not be able to post links to Australian news sites.
How does this play out?
Australia’s treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, indicated he had constructive discussions about the code with the Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, on Thursday morning, but indicated the government wasn’t budging on moving ahead with the code. (Although it could be open to potential changes.)
“[Zuckerberg] did explain to me that they had concerns with aspects of the code, and it goes to the interpretation of some of its elements,” Frydenberg said.
“He will come back to me with some more considered views. We’ll listen to him and discuss that with the prime minister and with our colleagues. And we’ll make decisions then. But we are committed to the code.”
The legislation passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening and will be debated by the Senate shortly. The government may seek to make amendments depending on the outcome of negotiations with Facebook – which could see news return to the platform.
But for now, Facebook hasn’t shown any willingness to back down, save for unblocking government-run pages.
What does it mean for combatting misinformation?
It’s no secret that misinformation and disinformation is easily spread on Facebook. Nine Entertainment warned the absence of news from Facebook would worsen the situation.
A cursory check of some of the biggest rightwing misinformation websites on Thursday showed they could not post on Facebook. But much of the misinformation being spread on Facebook is memes or text that would not be caught by the ban.
People who want to correct such misinformation posted by relatives or friends would not be able to reply with a link to a news article.
Facebook has said its fact-checking partnership with newsagencies AAP and AFP will continue, and it will still provide an information hub on Covid-19.
Isn’t the whole media code just the government trying to help News Corp and Murdoch?
The news media code will benefit news publishers with turnover of $150,000 a year or more. News Corp Australia will benefit substantially from the code but, looking at deals signed with Google for News Showcase in the past few weeks, other publishers will stand to gain too, including Nine, ABC, SBS, Junkee, Seven, Guardian Australia and others. Guardian Australia is in talks with Google over its Showcase product.
The code doesn’t just cover payments, either. It would mean that if Facebook or Google were going to change their algorithms, for example, cutting out news entirely, they’d have to give advance notice.