Australian Facebook ban: A political gamble gone terribly wrong Anna-Sophie Harling is the Managing Director for Europe at NewsGuard.,
This week, Google and Facebook took two different approaches toward Australian policy changes that would force the tech giants to pay for linked news content on their platforms.
Google announced a long-term deal with News Corp, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Facebook, meanwhile, called the Australian government’s bluff and abruptly blocked Australian users from sharing or viewing all news content.
The dramatic bust-up has made one thing painfully obvious: Facebook’s algorithms have terrible news judgement. Australians logging onto Facebook on Thursday morning found not just news pages blocked, but also the pages of local and state governments, health departments (during a global pandemic), fire departments (at the height of bush fire season), and many more pages providing public service information.
REUTERS/Erin Scott
The move comes after months of wrangling with Australian officials.
But the tech giant also faces pressure from a growing number of governments on how it handles news.
Facebook blocked Australian users from sharing and viewing news articles on their feeds on Wednesday, following months of back-and-forth with local officials.
The dramatic step follows a debate with lawmakers over how to rebalance the relationship between tech platforms and legacy media outlets.
The country s proposed news and media bargaining code would force Facebook and Google to pay news publishers to display stories in their search results and news feeds. Should the code pass in its current form, it would impose forced bargaining on tech firms, with Facebook and Google arguing that this is unworkable.
The EU looks set to follow Australia s lead and demand tech platforms pay to display news. Australia s threat resulted in Google threatening to pull search