We all woke up on the morning of February 18, 2021, to a new social media landscape — Facebook banned Australian users access to all Australian and international news across its platform.
The rollout of a blanket wide ban had far-reaching consequences. Facebook removed all content across news media Facebook pages and removed the ability to share links to news articles. Thousands of government, health, community services, not-for-profit and community organising pages got caught up in the very broad categorisation of the definition of ‘news’ and had their page content and ability to share web links from their own websites on their Facebook pages banned.
Essential services pages — from frontline domestic violence services to government health pages in a global pandemic — were also impacted.
Once it was realised how wide-impacting the rollout of this ban was on non-profit pages and communities, Australia’s progressive sector response was to do what we do best - we got organised. OrganiseUs worked with some of the nation’s best organisers to develop an impact matrix to capture the impacted pages. We reached out directly to Facebook and secured a commitment to reinstate all page’s content and web sharing functions.
Facebook’s decision to fire a warning shot at the Australian Government by taking the broadest definition of the word ‘news’ and silencing so many vital services and pages during a global pandemic is both reckless and dangerous.
OrganiseUs facilitated a sector-wide webinar alongside GetUp! and the Economic Media Centre to give updates on Facebook’s response, how we would coordinate the impact on non-profit pages, advice on how to tell the news without sharing the news, and the impact on our media landscape.
What’s the beef between Big Tech and Big Government?
This all comes down to the Media Bargaining Code. A mandatory code of conduct before the Australian Parliament developed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to basically legislate that digital platforms — specifically Google and Facebook — pay Australian news media businesses for publishing news media content on their platforms.
In a nutshell: Rupert Murdoch wants Mark Zuckerberg to pay NewsCorp anytime a news link is posted on Facebook that drives readers to his news.
What does this news ban mean for digital organising in Australia?
We must get better at telling our own story, on our own issues, in our own voices, our own way.
News ban or no news ban, the days of copying and pasting news links to our Facebook pages has long been on an engagement decline.
Facebook’s news ban is a dramatic overture that we hope will pass. The premise of the Media Bargaining Code in its current form is flawed — it is difficult to argue that it is one private social media company's job to pay another private media company for content that media company freely chooses to post on the social media company’s platform.
But the state of journalism and how we ensure a well-researched, diverse and thriving independent media landscape needs serious consideration and meaningful legislation. Now more than ever we need a serious discussion about the impact of both Big Tech and Traditional Media monopolies in Australia (and globally).
In its current form, the Media Bargaining Code does not address the fundamental loopholes in our taxation of big tech companies; it doesn’t discuss diversification of traditional media ownership; and it ignores Rupert Murdoch's longterm monopoly and annihilation of Australia’s media landscape — including NewsCorp’s purchase in 2016 and then closure of 112 regional and community papers in Australia in the past year alone, under the cloak of COVID-19.
How do we engage with news when we can’t share news?
This is a big, fruitful conversation that the entire non-profit sector will be leading as this Facebook news ban plays out.
Is Facebook’s Australia news ban a longterm solution for ensuring we have access to well-researched news against the rise of fake news? No.
But through an engagement and narrative lens, OrganiseUs will be looking to share case studies of creative ways organisers are shaping the narrative across a range of issues using a range of different digital media platforms.
What we do know is that we need to get trained and get organised. Check out our range of training including the OrganiseUs Digital Intensive in May 2021.
Sign up to our email list to be kept up to date on the Facebook news ban and more.