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Facebook has blocked Australians from viewing and sharing news on the platform in the latest dispute between digital companies, journalism and governments.
Australians woke up on Thursday to find they were unable to share or view Australian and international news content, a move confirmed by US-based Facebook. in a blog post.
It is in response to the law proposed by the Australian government that would force Facebook and the search engine Google to reach agreements with news companies to pay for Australian news.
Australian Facebook users cannot share news
For those who cannot, the law would create an arbitration panel to set the price of the news.
The law was approved by the House of Representatives on Wednesday and will now be considered by the Senate.
Both platforms have said that the law is not viable and Google even threatened to withdraw its search engine from the country, although it has also reached payment agreements with some Australian news companies under its News Showcase model.
Facebook Regional Managing Director William Easton said: “The proposed law basically misinterprets the relationship between our platform and the publishers who use it to share news content.
“It has left us faced with a stark choice: try to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With heavy hearts, we are choosing the latter.”
Australian Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said the government will not back down, adding: “This announcement by Facebook, if they were to maintain this position, would of course put the platform’s credibility in terms of the news into question.”
He told Australian Broadcasting Corp: “Indeed, Facebook is telling Australians that the information they see on our platforms is not coming from organizations that have editorial policies or fact-checking processes or journalists who are paid to do the work they do. do”.
Australia is not alone in trying to find a solution to the effect that tech giants have had on the finances of media companies, particularly smaller regional publications.
A review commissioned by the UK government and published in 2019 found Facebook and Google had a detrimental impact on the British media because they captured such a large chunk of online advertising revenue.
Last month’s figures produced by research firm eMarketer revealed that 61% of advertising in the UK media went to Facebook or Google.
Facebook announced in January that launch your Facebook News product in the UK with payments to publishers for their content. Most of the major news organizations have signed up, including Sky News.
Facebook News launched in the US last year.
Last week, Google agreed to pay a group of 121 French news publishers as part of a three-year agreement to provide compensation for news snippets used in search results.
In Spain and Germany, publishers tried, but could not charge Google for these news snippets.
German publishers lost a legal battle on the subject in 2019.
However, the two parties reached an agreement last year, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company had signed partnerships for News Showcase with nearly 200 publications in Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg Says Negotiations With Facebook Continue
However, regarding the dispute between Australia and Facebook, Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said there had been a “constructive discussion” with Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, who “raised some outstanding issues with the trading code. from the government media and agreed to continue our talks to try to find a way forward. “
Peter Lewis, head of the think tank at the Australian Institute’s Center for Responsible Technology, said Facebook would become a “weaker social network” if it refused to budge.
“Facebook’s actions mean that the company’s failures in privacy, misinformation and data protection will require a greater push for stronger government regulation.
“Without factual news to back it up, Facebook will become little more than cute cats and conspiracy theories.”
