Facebook's news blockade could do real harm

Thursday, 18 February 2021

In RNZ's podcast The Detail: Australia is in a showdown with Google and Facebook over a new code to make them pay publishers for their stories or face multi-million dollar fines.

EDITORIAL: Calls to break up Facebook and reduce its power started coming thick and fast in 2018, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal emerged. In essence, the tech giant handed over personal data for targeted political ads, without the consent of users.

The public image of Facebook shifted dramatically. But while many users resented Facebook’s dominance and unaccountability, they continued to rely on the social platform, such is its ubiquity. To have no interaction with Facebook, Instagram, Google and YouTube is to almost not exist in the early 21st century.

Internet communication is arguably a vital human requirement, and users found that quitting or boycotting such a widely-used platform was easier said than done.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s influence is 'staggering’.

But this week Facebook has again demonstrated its power in a manner that seems petty and despotic.

* Google making content deals with Australian news outlets

* Google threats to Australia shouldn't make our government wary - expert

* Google and Facebook risk big fines under draft Australian news law

On Thursday it swiftly banned media companies and users in Australia from sharing or viewing any news content on its platform. That was not just Australian news either, but international news. Facebook created a news blockade, cutting off Australia from the world and separating users from reliable sources.

It has been said it is dangerous for democracy to take such measures. That is true, of course. It is also potentially life-threatening. Media companies have been unable to use Facebook to live-stream news conferences about Covid vaccines and bushfires. There have been reports that weather, police, state health and women’s shelter websites have also been caught up in the ban.

The news blockade was a disproportionate response to media bargaining laws passed by the Australian government. In a world first, Australia has required that Facebook and Google pay for news content, a move aimed at levelling the uneven playing field between tech companies and media.

A parasitic media ecosystem had evolved in which tech giants profited from the news-gathering and fact-checking work of journalists, while also starving traditional media of advertising. According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Google gathers 47 per cent of all online advertising in Australia.

Simultaneously, fake news and conspiracy theories flourished on Facebook and Google-owned YouTube.

Stuff, the owner of The Press and the Dominion Post, paused publishing on Facebook in 2020, due to concerns about the erosion of public trust on the platform.

The move followed a 2019 decision to stop advertising on Facebook after it allowed distribution of a livestream video of the terrorist’s attack on two Christchurch mosques.

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes was one of many who worried about the tech giant's dominance, writing of CEO Mark Zuckerberg in 2019 that “Mark’s influence is staggering, far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government”. Hughes and other early developers were disappointed that they did not think more about “how the News Feed algorithm could change our culture, influence elections and empower nationalist leaders”.

Google has come to the party, agreeing to pay Nine Entertainment NZ$32 million per year for five years. Nine runs a TV and radio network, and publishes The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. News Corp has also struck a deal with Google, for which it will receive “significant payments”. Youth site Junkee Media reached a deal worth more than NZ$1m. Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said a potential deal between Google and national broadcaster ABC would fund regional journalism.

But this outbreak of good news for media companies across the ditch, and of course for their readers and viewers in Australia and beyond, was overshadowed by Facebook’s nuclear response. Now a standoff will ensue, in which we see if Facebook really does believe it is even bigger than a government.