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Facebook was “over-enforcing wrong” by removing links to hundreds of non-media organizations in Australia, Nick Clegg admitted, in a blog post advocating the company’s ban on short news stories from social media there.
The former UK deputy prime minister, now Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and communications, said the tech company had been “forced to [the] position ”of blocking content designated as news after the Australian government refused to back down on plans to require it to negotiate payment for content with news publishers.
But in his first significant public intervention on the controversy, Clegg acknowledged that public service content, including health department and emergency services sites, family violence support information, and community news centers are not they should have been affected by the ban. While some pages were quickly restored, others were expected to take up to a week to even review, before the ban was lifted on Tuesday.
“It was not a decision taken lightly,” he wrote in a post titled The True Story of What Happened to the News on Facebook in Australia. “But when it came, we had to act quickly because it was legally necessary to do so before the new law went into effect, so we were wrong on the side of over-enforcement. By doing so, some of the content was inadvertently blocked. Much of this, thankfully, was quickly reversed. “
Facebook reversed the ban on Tuesday after the government agreed to make minor changes to its news media code, giving the company more time to negotiate payments and giving you a possible exemption from the law if you voluntarily made a contribution. big enough to the Australian media.
While critics have viewed Facebook’s action as an undemocratic step designed to warn other jurisdictions of similar actions designed to protect journalism, others have argued that the Australian proposals were unworkable and overly influenced by Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corp. .
While Clegg did not refer to News Corp by name, he wrote: “It is ironic that some of the biggest publishers who have long advocated for free markets and voluntary business ventures now appear to be in favor of sponsored pricing. For the state”.
He added: “Of course, the Internet has been disruptive to the news industry. But he argued that under the proposals, “Facebook would have been forced to pay potentially unlimited amounts of money to multinational media conglomerates … without even a guarantee that it will be used to pay for journalism.”
Clegg’s stance presents an uneasy association for members of his former UK party, the Liberal Democrats, who have spoken out firmly against the plans and sought to distance themselves from their former leader.
Jamie Stone, the party’s culture and media spokesperson, said: “What, in effect, is a measure to muzzle the voice of a democratically elected government? [by an] international corporation is completely wrong.
“Ultimately, it is up to Nick Clegg to be responsible for what he does and believes.”
Clegg acknowledged in his post that “there are legitimate concerns to address about the size and power of technology companies, just as there are serious issues about the disruption that the Internet has caused in the news industry.”
But he claimed that the idea that Facebook was stealing or taking original journalism for its own benefit was not true, and stated that “many users say they would like to see even less news and political content.”
He said making Facebook pay for news content was “like forcing automakers to fund radio stations because people could listen to them in the car, and letting the stations set the price.”
He also drew attention to what he claimed was proof of his recognition that “quality journalism is at the heart of how open societies work” in his agreements to pay for content with media outlets such as The Guardian, Financial Times and Daily Mail in the UK and local publishers.
