Analysis: Facebook's ban on news in Australia belies its contempt for democratic discourse

If ever there was an example of how Facebook’s founding motto - “move fast and break things” - continues to define its ethos, conduct, and flagrant assertion of corporate might, it is its decision to block all access to local, national, and international news providers on its site and apps in Australia.

Facebook has been branded "arrogant" and "unconscionable" for banning Australian users from sharing news on its platform. Picture: Alastair Pike/AFP/Getty

After ten long months of lobbying and negotiations surrounding proposed legislation which seeks to compel Big Tech firms to pay news providers for their content, Mark Zuckerberg’s company has chosen the nuclear option. The fact that it has done so before the landmark law came into force demonstrates just how far Facebook is prepared to go to protect its profits at the expense of democratic discourse.

Make no mistake, this was a reckless show of power which belies Facebook’s contempt for public interest journalism and the communities it purports to serve. There was no notice ahead of the company’s decision. It simply shut down a news ecosystem on which millions of people have become reliant.

Facebook had been threatening such a move for months beforehand, and having long dangled the threat before the Australian government, many wondered what a news shutdown would look like in practice. We now know the answer: shambolic.

Whether through the fault of its machine learning, or an overly prescriptive interpretation of what constitutes ‘news’, dozens of other organisations were ensnared in Facebook’s net, including dozens of pages run by key government agencies, charities, and unions.

At a time when the country is preparing to roll out its Covid-19 vaccination programme, state health departments were unable to post updates. The collateral damage even extended to the page of Western Australian leader, Zak Kirkup, just weeks out from a state election.

Such indiscriminate censorship of information and debate has provided ammunition to those who argue that social media is a corrosive influence on public life, and demonstrated once again the dangers of placing too much agency in the internal algorithms of its primary actors.

The severity of Facebook’s preemptive strike underlines how Australia’s so-called news media bargaining code poses the greatest challenge yet to Big Tech’s substantial share of the digital advertising pie. If enshrined, it would enable news companies to negotiate as a bloc with tech firms for the content used in their news feeds and search results.

But more than that, it threatens to disrupt the very forces which engineered a radical recalibration of the way in which we consume news. According to research by the University of Canberra, around 39 per cent of Australians use Facebook to get their news. The situation is not so different here in the UK, where Ofcom research shows it is the most used news source among 35 per cent of adults. That figure spikes significantly to 49 per cent among those aged 16 to 24.

The question of whether Facebook’s blackout causes these people to turn off, or turn to traditional news sources, or even those peddling harmful disinformation, will take time to answer. But it plays into a wider existential debate taking place across newsrooms from Perth, Australia to Perth, Scotland.

Facebook wields significant clout over journalism’s dissemination and, increasingly, its function. Here in the UK, it has invested millions of pounds in a community reporting initiative as part of a partnership with news organisations, including JPI Media, publishers of The Scotsman. This has provided a pathway into the profession for young, talented staff, and bolstered coverage of underrepresented communities.

But its primary influence is manifested in other ways. It has fundamentally altered the way people obtain news, and the way journalists create it. As the main conduit through which readers access stories online, there has been a push to produce so-called ‘evergreen’ content which is not time specific. Yet all it takes is a tweak of Facebook’s ranking algorithm to disrupt the model, as well as the stubborn myth which characterises the relationship between the company and news providers as one of mutual benefit.

This Faustian bargain and many other arguments surrounding the stand off between Facebook and a sovereign democracy warrant greater attention, not least the negligence of news providers to develop alternative platforms to circulate their content, or why it has befallen Australia - a country with an ignominious record of media plurality thanks to the influence of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp - to stand up to Facebook in a fight being waged the world over.

For the moment, the impact of the news blackout is so ruinous, and the problems it presents so urgent, that such concerns occupy the periphery of the debate. Quite how the dramatic escalation of hostilities will end is unclear, though it should be noted that Facebook’s fierce opposition to the legislation is by no means representative of a consensus in its sector. Having initially threatened to withdraw its search engine from the country, Google has since backed down, striking a slew of agreements which will pay news providers for their original content.

The reasons for Facebook’s reluctance to follow suit are complicated, but essentially, they are focused around the commercial implications for its products and algorithms, and its argument that insufficient weight has been paid to value it facilitates for publishers in the form of billions of clicks a year.

In the meantime, millions of Australians must turn to sparsely populated news feeds, full of the kind of user-generated content through which Facebook built its digital ecology in the mid noughties. It has enjoyed extraordinary exponential growth ever since, while attempting to downplay its influence and insist that it is merely a neutral platform.

That persistent lie has been laid to rest by Facebook’s demonstration of immense power. The question of what should be done to counter such a malign force is more pressing than ever. It is incumbent upon governments and publishers around the world to find an answer.

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