Facebook is a private company… it can do what it wants!
Anyone who questioned the desirability of the US President being banned by social media companies was told they can do what they want. Does the same principle apply to Facebook in Australia?
It turns out Facebook’s threat to block the sharing of news on its Australian site wasn’t a bluff. “In response to Australia’s proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content,” wrote William Easton, MD of Facebook Australia & New Zealand yesterday.
When Facebook kicked Donald Trump, who was still the US President at the time, off its platform Trump’s enemies opportunistically defended the right of Facebook to do whatever it wants on the grounds that it’s a ‘private’ company. They tended to add that meaningless qualifier to emphasise the company’s autonomy and to silence those who suggested that excluding the world’s most powerful politician from the public square might not be an unconditionally great idea.
It would be interesting to know their position on this move. Surely Facebook is not obliged to provide any service whatsoever, including allowing the sharing of news, so there’s no problem, right? It’s hard to see how you can endorse the Trump move while condemning this one, but plenty of people will try to argue the principles concerned are different. We disagree.
Both shows of strength by Facebook do serve to shine the spotlight on the near monopolistic power such internet platforms wield, however. It looks like Facebook also took down some Australian government pages, including those of emergency services, in its fit of pique. While those are already being restored, they serve as a brutal reminder that Facebook is God in its own domain and nobody is safe from its wrath.
On the other hand the Australian government, itself a monopoly of sorts, has attempted to impose conditions on Facebook that the company finds unacceptable. They are effectively in the middle of a negotiation and Facebook doesn’t like the way things are going, so it has decided to raise the stakes. There’s every possibility that, having had Facebook’s willingness to walk away so brutally demonstrated, the Australian government will return to the negotiating table with a more conciliatory attitude.
This morning, I had a constructive discussion with Mark Zuckerberg from #Facebook.
He raised a few remaining issues with the Government’s news media bargaining code and we agreed to continue our conversation to try to find a pathway forward.
— Josh Frydenberg (@JoshFrydenberg) February 17, 2021
It’s also encouraging to see the tech giants failing to speak with a common voice on this matter. Google has elected to meet the Australian government’s demands and pay news organisations for ‘publishing’ their content. But Facebook insists the two companies have very different relationships with news publishers.
“We understand many will ask why the platforms may respond differently,” wrote Easton. “The answer is because our platforms have fundamentally different relationships with news. Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content. On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue.
“In fact, and as we have made clear to the Australian government for many months, the value exchange between Facebook and publishers runs in favour of the publishers — which is the reverse of what the legislation would require the arbitrator to assume. Last year Facebook generated approximately 5.1 billion free referrals to Australian publishers worth an estimated AU$407 million.
“For Facebook, the business gain from news is minimal. News makes up less than 4% of the content people see in their News Feed. Journalism is important to a democratic society, which is why we build dedicated, free tools to support news organisations around the world in innovating their content for online audiences.”
These are all valid points, but they also sidestep the underlying issue driving this push for legislation. The fact is that Google and Facebook account for the majority of all global digital advertising spend, much of which would otherwise go straight to the news media. This, in turn, has led to a dramatic deterioration in the quality of journalism as fewer writers are compelled to write more stories, often pandering to an echo chamber, in their desparation to chase raw traffic.
That’s a major problem but state intervention isn’t the answer. Many media have switched to the subscription model, while individual writers use sites like Substack to develop a direct commercial relationship with a smaller audience. Facebook and Google are the new media giants but, just like any other media, consumers are not obliged to use them.
That’s why this isn’t a simple monopoly issue. Facebook isn’t being accused of abusing its dominant position, it’s merely being asked to give money to publishers when it hosts their content. It doesn’t want to, so it’s not going to host that content anymore. Ironically one of the most self-contradictory takes on the matter has been supplied by the former head of Facebook Australia, Stephen Scheeler, who manages to lament Facebook’s lack of accountability while at the same time calling on people to boycott the service. Walking away sounds like a great way to hold Facebook accountable, doesn’t it?
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Facebook is racist, discriminatory, tiranic company. They (specially MZ) believe they have all the power, while the actual power is the userbase.
I’m doing my part and getting of it. It’s not fun anymore, too crowded with advertising I don’t want nor do I care about.
I stopped publishing pictures long ago in FB because of their terms of service, and now I am leaving because of their actual service.
I think that it’s time to switch and most of the people should leave FB.
Private companies can do anything against you. In 2012 Facebook became to be a public company
You need to dig deeper to understand the real situation, this article is superficial and rushed to a conclusion. Sad to see the Australian government fall into the hands of a media mogul which is the ultimate beneficiary of the new law, not the Australian people. It is time to understand the facts. Research a little more.
Will do mate, any other top tips?
I’ve understood the basic rational of the advertising market imbalance for a while, in that Google and Facebook are essentially billboards competing directly with news media advertising. No-one wants to buy ads from newspapers and instead buys ads from Google and Facebook. Some of these ads show prior to a click on a news site, and this is the part that has the competition imbalance and might require some intervention.
But this breaks down when neither Google or Facebook need news links or content for most of their advertising profit, and the small amount they do make is akin to 1 year’s market growth at 4% total ad revenue. You can’t force Google or Facebook to host links or news, and Google has done the math to determine how much ad revenue would be lost on Search vs. not hosting news site links, and then made deals to ensure they still make some small profit on that content specifically. Facebook was happier with the hit to their bottom line. It’s also a false equivalency to suggest that advertisers, in the absence of Google or Facebook, would be paying news sites more for their advertising space. There are many websites out there, and news sites just aren’t worth the money to advertisers, otherwise they’d account for more traffic, and they wouldn’t be as content with the ~$100M in signed deals with Google.
Big tech behaves like Big Brother and as if they were also immune of any national law. They build a culture where people feel more like Facebook/Google etc. citizens than ones of their homeland. This can not only lead to eliminating nations but also democracy. Fb censors are not controlled nor elected by people, they are selected and dictated by MZ’s inner circle. Turns out the only way to prevent such a colonisation is finding and supporting alternatives for communication. If only governments go fighting these new empires, their own people will become their internal enemies. The toughest part of this is, we are already to adiicted to their services.
I’ve been flabbergasted by FB’s behaviour of late. An innocent post of a cartoon bunny being hugged by a wolf was taken down as being ‘against our terms of service’ when it was totally an innocent post, and I got blocked from posting for a whole month. The usual link to appeal was missing and the alternate route to communicate with them via their help desk kept automatically going to ‘try again later’. Several anime-related groups were also taken down also allegedly for breaking terms of service, but again they did not do anything wrong. I think an investigation into Facebook’s practices needs to be carried out, as I am seeing a big abuse of power here. And for the record, the ‘FB is a private company’ excuse is, to be blunt, horseshit. It communicates in public, so it is a public company. We must prevent what is fast becoming an Orwellian culture of muzzling those you dislike.