Facebook Blocks News Sharing In Australia

Table of Contents

What has happened?

Australians woke up on Thursday to find the Facebook pages of all local and global news sites were unavailable.
Several government health, emergency and other pages were also blocked on Thursday – something the tech giant later asserted was a mistake.
Australia’s government said the ban threatened Facebook’s “credibility”.
Those outside of Australia are also unable to read or access any Australian news publications on the platform.
Facebook’s move is in response to a proposed law in Australia which would make tech giants pay for news content.
Companies like Google and Facebook have argued the law doesn’t reflect how the internet works, and unfairly “penalises” their platforms.
The Australian government has said it is proceeding with the law, which passed parliament’s lower house on Wednesday.
“Facebook needs to think very carefully about what this means for its reputation and standing,“ Communications Minister Paul Fletcher told.

In July 2020, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had, as a part of its efforts to tackle the rising powers of companies such as Google and Facebook,
Proposed that media companies could bargain terms of payment for their articles featured in news feed of online tech giants.
This effectively means that if Google and Facebook include certain news items from media companies on their platform in various services such as Facebook News Feed, Instagram, Google Search, etc.
They would have to pay the media companies a certain amount.
Since a large number of internet users now get their daily news digest from these tools instead of visiting the media companies’ website or social media handles directly,
The ACCC proposed that it was only fair that such media organisations be paid for the news.
This amount, based on the deal that they strike with individual companies, could either be on a per click basis on the link or a fixed amount per month or per year.

Australia’s competition regulator said it had drawn up the laws to “level the playing field” between the tech giants and publishers over profits.
But Facebook said the law left it “facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia”.
“With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter,“ it said in a blog post.
Australian publishers are also restricted from sharing or posting any links on their Facebook pages.
The national broadcaster, the ABC, and newspapers like The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian have millions of followers.
Facebook said that it helped Australian publishers earn about A$407m (£228m;$316m) last year through referrals, but for itself “the platform gain from news is minimal”.
The law sought “to penalise Facebook for content it didn’t take or ask for”, said the company’s local managing director William Easton.

The ban sparked an immediate backlash, with many Australians angry about their sudden loss of access to trusted and authoritative sources.
Several pointed out that Facebook was one crucial way that people received emergency news updates about the pandemic and national disaster situations.
Human Rights Watch‘ Australia director said Facebook was censoring the flow of information in the country – calling it a “dangerous turn of events“.
“Cutting off access to vital information to an entire country in the dead of the night is unconscionable,” said Elaine Pearson.

Australia’s conservative government is standing by the law – which will be debated again in parliament today.
It has broad cross-party support.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg tweeted that he had a “constructive” discussion with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday.
Facebook’s action came hours after Google agreed to pay Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for content from news sites across its media empire.

Q) Which among the following is not a statutory body?