If Facebook really pulls news from its Australian sites, we’ll have a much less compelling product
Facebook is threatening to ban news in Australia, but if it follows through, it will end up much less appealing to users, writes Rob Nicholls in this crossposting from The Conversation
Facebook has announced it will ban publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram if a proposal to force tech giants to pay for news becomes law.
The announcement follows the release of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s draft news media bargaining code, under which Google and Facebook would be forced to pay for news on their sites to help fund public interest journalism. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced in April the code would be mandatory.
On its website, Facebook Australia’s Will Easton said:
People still use Facebook?!
“Can you imagine Instagram or Facebook without the ABC or Australian news sources?” – yes absolutely I can.
As someone who analyses user behaviour on social platforms FOR A LIVING, i can tell you traffic is driven from FB to news outlets – not the other way around. People don’t go on facebook to read the news, they read the news while they are on facebook. Analysis of the data aside, we know this because Facebook/Instagram/others reached a critical mass of users BEFORE the news outlets decided to go there and get clicks.
This whole ACCC push is an absolute farce – it’s like expecting the water to evaporate if the fisherman go away….
Still waiting to hear a legitimately rational argument from the media side that’s actually driven by market principles. The argument seems to be ‘fairness’, but honestly people like Frydenburg who are calling out for ‘fairness’ would normally be on the free-market “the market will do what’s fair for the market” side of the fence. So the definition of fairness seems to have conveniently been flipped…
The franchisor/franchisee comparison in this post is seriously flawed. The franchisee is legally subservient to the franchisor, which is a completely different kind of power imbalance. The power imbalance here is that both sides benefit from one another, but one side needs the other much more.
If the government is wanting to prop up the news industry (which I’d be supportive of), then just stop with the posturing and do it the old fashioned way – impose a levy on Australian advertising spend on digital platforms, and funnel it back to new organisations by way of a grants/concessions scheme that’s tied to specific journalistic benchmarks. That’s the easiest way to take money from the digital platforms and put it where you want it, without all of the stupid grandstanding.
(On the other hand, if the gov’t is serious about propping up the Australian news industry maybe they could just stop slashing the ABC budget…)
Apologies for the typo, ‘new organisations’ in p3 should read ‘news organisations’. Moderator, happy for you to edit.
Sure, but I check Facebook several times a day to read news headlines from lots of different publishers (SMH, AFR, ABC, News Corp, CNN, NY Times, Wired, etc). If Australian news is removed from Facebook I would absolutely not visit Facebook as much. This will result in less ad revenue for Facebook, and less data collected about me by Facebook. I know loads of other people in the same boat.
How is Instagram relevant to news? You can’t even post links. ACCC just slipped that one in there last minute.
At same time, YouTube, Twitter or LinkedIn that prominent news platforms are not part of the code? This whole thing is a farce…
If this is about taxing Google and Facebook to keep News Corp alive just be transparent…
“Can you imagine Instagram or Facebook without the ABC or Australian news sources?”
Yes and no, While it’s true that Australians (and in fact everyone) consumes a lot of news on Facebook, we’re only ever one algorithm change away to be shown more content from our ‘connections’ than from brands (think about Facebook’s shift to Groups and the ever-dwindling organic reach of brand pages). Without such laws ‘forcing Facebook’s hand’
Additionally, I think the use of the ABC in the example is a poor choice of words, considering the Government has blocked the ABC and SBS from being able to claim what is ‘fair’ when it comes to their contribution in the conversation.
If this were truly about public interest journalism, then surely ‘our ABC’ would benefit from the additional income and the government could even justify further funding cuts which we know are always around the corner.
If news disappeared from Facebook, most users wouldn’t even notice it.
Now, if cat videos disappeared, that would be another matter entirely.