Platform Peril: Decoding the Facebook News Ban in Australia

The deep sulking displayed by Facebook and Google over the proposed media rule by Australia mandating the platforms to respect and pay content creators is symptomatic of the dire straits to which the platform-powered distribution ecosystem has taken news media.

John Pilger, eminent journalist and activist from Australia released his seminal work Hidden Agendas in 1998. It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agenda of the message and the myths around it, wrote Pilger, one of the most vociferous critics of Western capitalism. Pilger’s journalism reflected this deeper understanding of news and its values. The journalist, also known for his documentaries and insightful tomes such as Tell Me No Lies, was always suspicious of the way media houses manipulated the message and hence always wanted to work independently. 

Interestingly, Pilger’s homeland is now witnessing an interesting battle between the medium and the message, which could potentially change the way journalism functions in the 21st century. The case in point is the ongoing wrangle between the government in Australia and platform companies such as Facebook and Google over the country’s demand that the social media companies must pay for the news they distribute on their platforms. The platforms have locked horns with the Oz lawmakers and this week, marking its resentment over Australia’s newly proposed Media Bargaining Law, Facebook on Wednesday decided to take off news content from its platforms. 

The news blackout, unprecedented in the history of platform-powered news dissemination, is widely seen as an effort by the Mark Zuckerberg-owned US giant to up the ante in the global debate over platforms’ responsibility to respect content creators, especially news media. Facebook says its users in Australia will not be able to view news on their timelines. But Google, which was hand in glove with Facebook on the issue earlier, later decided to take a middle path and start paying a few publishers.

Payment pangs

Even though similar initiatives are in existence in the UK and the US, the proposed law by Australia, for its sheer clarity and formidable clauses, has the potential to create a big headache for Facebook and Google. No wonder, the platforms launched a nationwide public relations campaign to counter the move just when the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission drafted the news media bargaining code.

Why exactly is Facebook opposing the move? According to William Easton, Managing Director, Facebook Australia & New Zealand, such a law “misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content.” Easton’s point is something platform companies have been mouthing for quite some time now, especially since the debate on the need for the platforms to pay for the news they distribute has emerged about a year ago.

The popular refrain among the platform companies is that the deal is a win-win. Platforms bring more visibility to news from publishers than what they could otherwise afford with their limited circulation modules. On the other hand, the news helps the platforms populate their feed. 

But now there is consensus among media watchers, consumers and content producers that this argument is baseless. The publishers, on their part, have realised that the game has been alarmingly tilted towards the platforms. In fact, the platforms have been minting money from their news services, though they don’t give out the numbers. In 2018, controversy erupted when a report in The New York Times claimed that Google made $4,700,000,000 ($4.7 billion) from the news industry. Even though the number was later disputed by the platforms, it remains a fact that the platforms have been benefiting big time by distributing news on their feed. An analysis by the BBC suggests that every A$100 spent on digital advertising in Australian media, Google and Facebook fetch more than A$80. 

Lack of transparency 

Media observers say that one of the major reasons behind the controversy is the reluctance of the platforms towards revealing numbers. Neither Facebook nor Alphabet, which owns Google, reveal their revenues from distributing news, which is one of the most consumed forms of content on these platforms. Interestingly, Google says it sends users to news sites more than 24 billion times a month. This, it claims, will help news sites earn more revenues, especially given that the platform doesn’t charge publishers for the content they let Google carry. 

Again, that’s bunkum, say media observers. Such claims grossly belittle the powers of platform companies, say experts such as Nick Srnicek, author of the 2016 book, Platform Capitalism. Considering that between Alphabet (Google) and Facebook happens more than 80 per cent of all the external traffic to various sites (according to the NYT report), the platform has the power to make or break the news industry, which is standing at a historic crossroads today, courtesy the cataclysmic changes brought in by digital technologies. 

Indeed, the news industry needs the platforms, which have monopolised the digital distribution ecosystem. The way they have colonised the channels of digital news dissemination today is quite alarming and their influence is too big to ignore. That’s one of the reasons why Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in response to the Facebook move to take news off its platform this week, said that Facebook’s actions to “unfriend Australia… cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing”. 

Big-Tech bullying?

As Morrison summarises, the move will “only confirm the concerns that an increasing number of countries are expressing about the behaviour of BigTech companies who think they are bigger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them.” Armed with a vast user base and wide reach, tech platforms arm-twist publishers to abide by their unfriendly search engine optimisation practises. 

Further, publishers often allege that the tech platforms fiddle with their algorithms more often than not, forcing publishers to change their content strategies in sync with the new changes. Even big publishers find it so cumbersome and time-consuming to cope with the changes platforms introduce, while for small and independent publishers that’s a nightmare. There is also no transparency in the way platforms pay for ads that are displayed on news platforms. The paltry sums offered to content creators have forced many in the news indstrry to go for platform-independent models, such as newslatetrs (powered by services such as Substack) and other subscription services.   

Even though Google has inked a pact with companies such as Newscorp in Australia, there are concerns around such approaches as well. Google’s deal with the Rupert Murdoch-owned Newscorp, a $13 billion media conglomerate, involves a three-year agreement in which Google would pay the news giant to feature its new products such as The Wall Street Journal, The Times and The Australian in Google’s News Showcase product. The other news networks that would be on the feed include TV networks such as Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment. But media watchers say Google seems to have ignored small publishers, which depend heavily on the platform. 

The power war 

The new wrangle might also mean that Facebook would go back on its plans to launch Facebook News in Australia. The project which is already launched in The US and UK is also essentially a pay-for-content arrangement with publishers. But media watchers note that Facebook’s grouse with the Australian government’s demand to do pretty much the same revolves around ‘who gets to say the final word.’ The-too-big to fail company essentially do not want legislators strutting about telling it what to do, experts say. In other words, it’s a tug of war for power. This is what reflected when PM Morrison wrote ‘they (big tech companies) may be changing the world, but that doesn’t mean they run it.’


As Pilger says, “Today liberal democracy is being replaced by a system in which people are accountable to a corporate state and not the other way round as it should be.” Authoritarian platforms should not be allowed to become the catalysts in such a dangerous social process. Will the Wizardry of Oz work towards taming the tech bullies? That’s a billion-dollar question, as the cliche goes.

Read: Decoding the Facebook – Apple Privacy Controversy

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