Facebook blocked all Australian news content on its service over proposed legislation requiring it and Alphabet Inc’s Google to pay fees to Australian publishers for news links.
Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, in charge of crafting similar legislation to be unveiled in coming months, condemned Facebook’s action and said it would not deter Ottawa.
Last year, the Australian government presented Google and Facebook with an ultimatum: if the companies wanted to continue to allow users to link to news articles, they would be required to compensate news organizations. The Australian plan called for the creation of a mandated code that would create a process to determine the price to be paid for the links. Facebook’s response made it clear that if that was the choice – links with mandated payments or no links – it would choose the latter and block Australian news sharing from its service. While some described this as a threat (including Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault) or a bluff, it turns out the company was serious.
For years, Facebook has been in a defensive crouch amid a slew of privacy scandals, antitrust lawsuits and charges that it was letting hate speech and extremism destroy democracy. Early Thursday, though, it abruptly pivoted to take the offensive in Australia, where it lowered the boom on publishers and the government with a sudden decision to block news on its platform across the entire country.
That power play — a response to an Australian law that would compel Facebook to pay publishers for using their news stories — might easily backfire, given how concerned many governments have grown about the company’s unchecked influence over society, democracy and political discourse. But it’s still a startling reminder of just how much power CEO Mark Zuckerberg can wield at the touch of a figurative button.
Topple the oligarchs.
Facebook Inc. will begin labeling some user posts that mention climate change in the same way it has annotated posts discussing elections and Covid-19, a sign the social network is taking climate-related misinformation more seriously.
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada vowed on Thursday to make Facebook Inc pay for news content, seeking allies in the media battle with tech giants and pledging not to back down if the social media platform shuts off the country’s news as it did in Australia.
Facebook blocked all Australian news content on its service over proposed legislation requiring it and Alphabet Inc’s Google to pay fees to Australian publishers for news links.
If you weren’t worried about the hoodies who run Silicon Valley, you should be now.
A showdown is underway between America’s tech giants and Australia just because it’s trying to get them to pay for copyrighted content they have stolen for decades from traditional media companies.
On Thursday, millions of Australians woke up to find a drastically different version of Facebook – one devoid of any news.
Overnight, Facebook banned Australian users from sharing or viewing news content on the platform – in response to a proposed law that would make tech giants pay for such content.
Facebook has, in just a matter of years, established itself as the place where many get their news. And the platform’s outsized influence on how some newsrooms make editorial and hiring decisions has led to it being described as “the absent editor in the room”.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has labelled Facebook’s decision to ban Australian users from viewing news content as “arrogant” and warned that he is in regular contact with world leaders, who are all contending with how to better regulate Big Tech.
“Facebook’s actions to unfriend Australia today, cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing,” he said in a statement posted on Facebook.
Google has been cutting deals with publishers such as News Corp, and now also is in talks with Canadian publishers but I suspect Facebook isn’t acting independently of their brethren in the Oligopoly.
This seems a suicidal position for FB to take. Or is it?
#DeleteFacebook! Campaign to ditch the social media giant surges on Twitter as US politician says blocking all news from Australians ‘wasn’t compatible with democracy’
Facebook has followed through on its threat to ban Australians from seeing or posting news content on its site in response to the federal government’s news media code.
The tech giant’s Australian and New Zealand managing director Will Easton said that it would prevent links posted from Australian publishers, while all Australian users would not be able to share or see content from any news outlets both Australian or internationally as a result of the ban.
Its hypocritical attempts to clamp down on ‘misinformation’ are ultimately self-defeating
What do you do when your sources of information get corrupted? That is one of today’s great questions, as UnHerd discovered this week. On Wednesday, Facebook censored an article on these pages which was critical of the World Health Organisation, labelling it as “misinformation”. It was not UnHerd’s first run-in with the online censors, but it is perhaps the most baffling.
It looks like something plucked straight out of another age, a foreign culture where freedom of expression is always subject to a censor’s whims. Not only is it labelled ‘False Information’ but the accompanying image is greyed out, a design no doubt honed by the ‘user response experts’ at Facebook to dissuade users from clicking on it.
But this is the UK in 2021 and the post is an UnHerd article from yesterday that has now been labelled as misinformation by Facebook.
Suing technology firms when they mess up is already hard, especially when it’s over privacy violations. Now, Facebook, Google, and the trade groups representing all the big tech firms are asking the Supreme Court to make it even harder for class actions to pursue cases against them.
Facebook, Google, and all the others submitted a filing (PDF) to the Supreme Court this week essentially arguing that if you cannot prove the specific extent to which their screwup injured you, you should not have any grounds to be part of a lawsuit against them.
Facebook is planning on reducing the amount of political content Canadian users will be subjected to on its platform in response to recent unrest in the US and pressure from international governments to regulate social media.
Gee, I wonder who and what will be regulated?
The coordinated Big Tech deplatforming of Parler is looking more and more suspect. Last month, I reviewed every arrest report the DOJ had made available at that time, and the overwhelming number of social media posts cited in these reports were those posted on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. There was barely any mention of Parler.
Of the 223 government documents discussing charges against individuals who were involved in the Capitol riot, 73 mentioned Facebook. Parler, meanwhile, was only mentioned eight times.
I thought they said Trump incited it.
