‘Facebook deliberately blocked Australian government to undermine news law’
In addition to news sites, Facebook reportedly deliberately blocked the Australian government on the social medium in 2021 to increase pressure on the new media code. This would also hinder Australian hospitals, charities and emergency services.
In this way, the social medium would have preemptively pressured the Australian government not to adopt the News Media Bargaining Code, they claim. anonymous employees to The Wall Street Journal. Internal documents provided by the sources reveal that Facebook was pleased with the results of its deliberate strategy to disrupt communications from the Australian government.
The company claims that Australian government sites were indeed temporarily blocked, but that this was due to a ‘technical error’. Facebook is said to have quickly come up with a solution and calls the sources’ claims “unconditionally and clearly incorrect”.
The technical flaw that Facebook refers to has everything to do with the algorithm used to determine what should be categorized as news. This was developed by a team of roughly a dozen members of the news department. When 60 percent of a website fell under ‘news’, it was categorized as such. This parameter also saw Australian weather forecasts and emergency services as news sites. The existing News Page Index database containing all major news websites was deliberately not used.
In other words, this new system would select far too broadly based on vague parameters; criticism that the social medium also expressed on the wording in the bill. Employees who raised the blockage of government communication via Facebook were said to have been ignored or only received very limited help.
The then head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Rod Sims, does not believe Facebook did this on purpose. “It’s either a conspiracy theory that they did this on purpose, or they made a mistake. I’m leaning towards the latter,” Sims told The Wall Street Journal.
In February 2021, Facebook banned news items and references to other ‘news sites’ in Australia by means of the algorithm. Users were no longer able to see such messages and could no longer share links to selected websites.
There is no unequivocal answer about the effect of Facebook’s aggressive, allegedly deliberate strategy. On the one hand, the display of power by the social medium could have underlined the need for the law in the eyes of the Australian government. Politicians reacted very strongly to Facebook’s policies at the time of the blockade. On the other hand, an important detail in the News Media Bargaining Code was suddenly changed after the banning of news sites.