Stopped at 60: Australia’s older generation restricted under Facebook’s news ban
The biggest media voice for older Australians has been silenced by Facebook, ignored by Google and the Morrison Government, writes Rebecca Wilson, CEO of Starts at 60.
Another day, another big sign that older Australians aren’t given much thought by the powers-that-be.
Starts at 60 is Australia’s largest and most respected digital media brand dedicated to older Australians.
- We provide news and information to a demographic that’s under-served by mainstream media companies and often isolated from the national conversation.
- We serve an audience of more than a million monthly active users and have approximately 250,000 active email subscribers.
- We are one of the most engaged media brands on Facebook, because an over-60 audience has the time and inclination to have news-based conversations on social media.
- We source and publish information from Australia’s leading experts in finance and health on issues specifically relevant to over-60s.
- And we provide a publishing platform to hundreds of older Australians who write about issues important to their peers.
Yet Starts at 60, one of the most important online media channels for Australian over-60s, is a casualty of the Federal Government’s media code negotiations with Facebook and Google – and neither the tech giants nor the government appears to be aware, or care, that this in turn impacts the hundreds of thousands of over-60s who use Starts at 60 as one of their few or only sources of information and conversation.
