[imagesource: Robert Cianflone / Getty Images]

In case you hadn’t heard, Facebook has restricted access to news sites for users in Australia.

If you head to the Facebook page of an Australian news outlet, you’ll find all content has been scrubbed, with Australian news organisations no longer able to post content to their Facebook pages.

Additionally, users based in Australia are not able to link to news articles from either Australian or international news sites.

For example, let’s swing by the Facebook page of The Sydney Morning Herald to see what’s cracking:

Not a great deal.

Same story at ABC Australia:

As mentioned earlier, that ban extends to international news outlets, too.

This image was shared by @francesmao:

If you try and share a post from an Australian media outlet, you’ll be shot down.

This image via @MonteBovill:

Here’s The Guardian with more on why this is happening:

Facebook would be subject to the proposed code – and be required to pay publishers – if “news content” was posted on its website. It could be hit with penalties if, while it is subject to the code, it allowed news content from some publishers not part of the code while blocking others.

This means Facebook would not be able to just block Australian publishers who are participating in the code but would need to block all news content from Facebook. The social media behemoth is now attempting to show how that would work in practice.

Obviously, this blanket approach led to some snafus right out of the gate.

This is awkward:

Take a look at some of the other Facebook pages impacted by the ban:

Government pages, emergency services and local businesses are among pages impacted by Facebook’s news ban in Australia 🤯 pic.twitter.com/aPc2zxN1Zh

— Monte Bovill (@MonteBovill) February 17, 2021

Having a department of fire and emergency services blocked in a country that suffers from massive wildfires with alarming regularity seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

Some of the pages that were initially blocked have now been allowed to resume posting, but others remain banned.

So, what comes next?

Facebook believes it offers much more benefit to news companies than news companies offer to Facebook… [and] argues this value isn’t taken into account in how the negotiations are structured in the proposed news code.

The news media code will benefit news publishers with turnover of $150,000 a year or more… The code doesn’t just cover payments, either. It would mean that if Facebook or Google were going to change their algorithms, for example, cutting out news entirely, they’d have to give advance notice.

Facebook has hit the nuclear button to try to show media companies how little news means to Facebook – and how much it might affect traffic to news sites if they were suddenly cut off…

In the absence of actual news on the social media giant, there are fears that misinformation will run wild.

Yeah, that’s already been happening for a while now. Even when you send that uncle a genuine article, he scoffs, says ‘fake news’, and forwards another pixelated meme with unverified information because he ‘thought it was interesting’.

[source:guardian]