What Just Happened On Facebook?

One evening you’re scrolling through a juicy article a friend shared on Facebook and the next day, you can’t find it...

April 7, 2022

Why ban news on Facebook?

The news ban was Facebook Australia’s heavy-handed response to a new media code that the federal government proposed. This code requires large media platforms like Facebook to pay publishers for news content posted on their site.

The code also implies that these platforms could be penalised for allowing some news content from publishers that are not part of the code while stopping others. This led to not just local news sites, but all news sites internationally being blocked in Australia.

In an attempt to err on the side of caution, Facebook ended up banning essential content from some state health departments, emergency pages and weather forecast sights but these links have since been restored.

How did the proposed media code come about?

For a while now, the Australian government and big tech companies like Google and Facebook have had heated discussions around a media bargaining code.

The purpose of the code is to encourage fairness and competition by mandating that news publishers are paid for their content on these sites.

From their perspective, while news companies barely profit, social media platforms are making loads of cash from all the ad sales and content including news articles shared on these platforms.

So why won’t Facebook pay for news?

Well, that’s because it believes that the platform is more beneficial to news publishers than news publishers are to them. According to Will Easton, head of Facebook and New Zealand, news content only made up 4 percent of everything that’s on Facebook, whereas in 2020 alone, Facebook accounted for 5.1 billion clicks to news websites which they valued at $407 million.

In essence, Facebook feels its services are being undervalued and do not think it is fair to be paying companies who are benefitting from the traffic built from the social media website. The news ban is a fierce response as if to say that news publishers need the platform more than Facebook needs them.

Also, being the first law of its kind, Facebook will be setting the precedence in their response and should they choose to comply and pay for news, other countries will likely follow suit and expect similar payment.

What can we expect?

At the moment, the news ban is still in place and Facebook users will not have access to all news on the platform. This is huge because over a third of us Aussies get our news from Facebook.

Having said that it’s not like the news is completely inaccessible. It’s about changing habits and going directly to news websites, or following news publications on Instagram instead of searching for them on Facebook.

Facebook is said to be in negotiations again with major publishers including News Corp Australia and Nine Entertainment Co. Until they’ve come up with terms that are agreeable to both, we’ll just have to adjust to the changes.

Notes: