Aussies fight back,
‘bully boy action’ Move raises concerns over Big tech’s power
Sydney • Facebook faced a worldwide backlash from publishers and politicians on Thursday after blocking news feeds in Australia in a surprise escalation of a dispute with the government over a law to require it to share revenue from news.
Facebook wiped out pages from Australian state governments and charities as well as from domestic and international news organizations, three days before the launch of a nationwide COVID-19 vaccination program.
The measure was limited to Australia, but denunciations came from far afield.
“Facebook’s actions to unfriend Australia today, cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing,” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison wrote on his own Facebook page. “These 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.”
Australians are also deleting their accounts and asking their friends to share phone numbers before deleting their platforms permanently. Hashtags #deletefacebook and #boycottzuckerberg have also been trending on Twitter as users protest against the social media platform’s decision to delete their news feed.
“bushfire warnings, flood warnings and Covid-19 warnings all turned off by Facebook in Australia,” wrote a resident of Newcastle on his page.
“Facebook has turned off all Australian publishers because they object to laws being passed by a democratic government. (It) is time to send Mark Zuckerberg a message #deletefacebook.”
The dispute centres on a planned Australian law that would require Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google to reach commercial deals to pay news outlets whose links drive traffic to their platforms, or agree to a price through arbitration.
Facebook said it had blocked a wide swath of pages because the draft law did not clearly define news content. It said its commitment to combat misinformation had not changed, and it would restore pages that were taken down by mistake.
“The actions we’re taking are focused on restricting publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content,” a company spokesman said. “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.”
The head of the british parliamentary committee overseeing the media industry, Julian Knight, was among politicians abroad who thought the message was aimed far beyond Australia.
“This action — this bully boy action — that they’ve undertaken in Australia will I think ignite a desire to go further amongst legislators around the world,” Knight told reuters. “I think they’re almost using Australia as a test of strength for global democracies as to whether or not they wish to impose restrictions on the way in which they do business,” he said. “So, we’re all behind Australia in my view.”
News publishers saw Facebook’s tactics as evidence that the company, which also owns Instagram and Whatsapp, cannot be trusted as the gatekeeper for their industry.
Henry Faure Walker, chairman of britain’s News Media Association industry group, said banning news during a global pandemic was “a 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.”
The head of Germany’s bdzv news publishers’ association, dietmar Wolff, said: “It is high time that governments all over the world limit the market power of the gatekeeper platforms.”
Facebook shares traded down 1.5 per cent Thursday.
Publishers say platforms such as Google and Facebook hoard the bulk of revenue as media shifts online as print and broadcast advertising shrivels, forcing newspapers and TV and radio stations to scale down or shutter newsrooms.
Jurisdictions around the world have been enacting rules to require Google, Facebook and others to share revenue with publishers, including a 2019 directive from brussels that european union countries are meant to enact into law by June.
Google has complained that Australia’s rules go further than europe’s, because they would apply even to links and snippets of articles, which it says limits internet users’ free speech.
Still, Facebook’s action in Australia represented a tactical split with Google. They had campaigned together against such laws and both threatened to cancel services in Australia, but Google sealed pre-emptive deals with several media outlets in recent days.