Analysis: Social media giant’s ban on news in Australia just goes to illustrate its contempt for democratic discourse
If ever there was an example of how Facebook’s founding motto - “move fast and break things” - continues to define its ethos, conduct, and flagrant assertion of corporate might, it is its decision to block all access to local, national, and international news providers on its site and apps in Australia.
After ten long months of lobbying and negotiations surrounding proposed legislation which seeks to comp el big tech firms to pay news providers for their content, Mark Zuckerberg’s company has chosen the nuclear option. The fact that it has done so before the landmark law came into force demonstrates just how far facebook is prepared to go to protect its profits at the expense of democratic discourse.
Make no mistake, this was a reckless show of power which belies Facebook’s contempt for public interest journalism and the communities it purports to serve. There was no notice ahead of the company’ s decision. it simply shut down a news ecosystem on which millions of people have become reliant.
Facebook had been threatening such a move for months beforehand, and many wondered what a news shutdown would look like in practice. We now know the answer: shambolic.
Whether through the fault of its machine learning, or an overly prescriptive interpretation of what constitutes ‘news’, dozens of other organisations were ensnared in Facebook’s net, including dozens of pages run by key government agencies, charities, and unions.
At a time when the country is preparing to roll out it sc ovid -19 vaccination programme, state health departments were unable to post updates. such in discriminate censorship has providedammunition to those who argue that social media is a corrosive influence on public life, and demonstrated once again the dangers of placing too much agency in the internal algorithms of its primary actors.
The severity of Facebook’s preemptive strike underlines how Australia’s so-called news media bargaining code poses the greatest challenge yet to Big Tech’s substantial share of the digital advertising pie.the question of whether Facebook’s blackout causes these people to turn off, or turn to traditional news sources, or even those peddling harmful disinformation, will take time to answer.