Facebook's Australian tantrum

If a tree falls in the forest but it's not posted on Facebook, did it actually fall? For many people, social media is their primary source of information about the outside world. Which is why it's so troubling that on Thursday, Australians woke up to find that Facebook had blocked content from most news sources, along with a host of other sites that provide critical information.

The move comes in response to a bill that is currently before the Australian Parliament, which seeks to compel Google and Facebook to negotiate revenue-sharing agreements with content creators. For months, the world has been watching the Australian experiment play out as the two tech giants continue to siphon revenue from publishers around the world, which has caused a crisis in journalism and led to many newsrooms closing their doors.

Although some have argued that Facebook's drastic move to censor information that Aussies rely on proves that the proposed regime is a failure, it actually shows the exact opposite: that some of the tech giants have become so big, they feel emboldened to use their monopolies to subvert the will of a democracy; and that sensible regulations can force them to change their behaviour.

Indeed, while Facebook was making waves by taking the nuclear option to evade compensating local news outlets for the content it profits off, Google was signing multimillion-dollar deals with some of the country's largest media companies, including Seven West Media, Nine Entertainment and News Corp.

The agreements will reportedly see the media conglomerates paid over AU$30 million ($29.5 million) a year each, in exchange for Google getting the rights to feature their newspapers' stories in its new Google News Showcase service. Showcase — which has so far launched in the United Kingdom, Argentina and Australia — features curated news content that the tech giant licenses from official partners.

Incentivizing media and Big Tech companies to come to mutually beneficial contentand revenue-sharing agreements such as these is exactly what Australia's new regulatory framework was designed to do. That it did so even before the bill was passed is a credit to its effectiveness.

Facebook, however, broke its former united front with Google and took the opposite tack, essentially throwing a giant temper tantrum in a bid to gain headlines that no one Down Under will see on its social network.

Not only did Facebook block links to, and scrub the feeds of, Australian media, it also censored international news outlets, government health departments that provide information about COVID-19, the government weather service, which informs citizens about brush fires and other natural disasters, along with a host of non-profit organizations.

The company says the reason so many organizations were blocked was because “the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content.” It also resulted from Facebook choosing to use a machine-learning algorithm to identify news instead of creating a blacklist of domestic news sites, which caused a bunch of other institutions to get caught up in the mix.

Yet considering that the government has been talking about the new law since April, there's no reason Facebook couldn't have taken the time to implement a system that specifically targets domestic news sources. It certainly looks as though the company was just trying to cause as much chaos as possible.

There's little doubt that the decision will do a disservice to the Australian people, as removing legitimate news sources from its network will only fuel the spread of conspiracy theories, fake news and other types of misinformation, which Facebook was guilty of disseminating even before it started blocking trustworthy sources of information.

There is, however, a silver lining in all this: perhaps now, people will begin to realize that going to Facebook and other social networks has never been a good way of staying informed, and instead turn directly to news websites to find out what's happening in their communities, and around the world.

It also shows that Facebook is scared of having to play fairly with the companies off of whose content it profits — and this presents Canada with an opportunity. Earlier this month, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault promised the government would bring forward a bill to ensure publishers are “adequately compensated for their work” sometime this year, saying that, “We must address the market imbalance between news media organizations and those who benefit from their work.”

And indeed we must, though it would be nice if Ottawa took action sooner rather than later, because the Australian experiment would have a far better chance of succeeding if it were backed by an international coalition of countries that had similar regulations.

Such laws are already being discussed in the United States, European Union and the United Kingdom. France also took a leadership role last year by being the first country to implement a new EU copyright directive that gives newspapers more legal recourse over the reuse of their content and forces social media companies to do a better job of policing copyright violations.

Facebook may think it can bully Australia, a country of under 26 million people, but if enough other countries take similar action, it will change the calculation entirely. Ottawa must play a role by coming up with a made-in-Canada solution that will allow us to form a united front with our allies and stand up for the type of journalism that keeps our communities informed and our governments accountable.