A media blackout in Australia has shown the excessive control of digital platforms over the news we receive. Facing legislation that would have obliged it to pay for content, Facebook prevented its users from sharing news – not only from mainstream sites like the Australia Broadcasting Corporation but also from First Nations media — and even weather and public health updates. A last minute compromise averted a longer crisis but the speed and scope of the shutdown revealed how much companies like Facebook and Google control the media landscape. Twitter’s lifetime ban of former president Trump raised similar questions not long ago.
Australia’s showdown with Facebook is a sign of things to come. Guardian journalist Emily Bell, who described the blackout as an act of “arbitrary and hopefully temporary vandalism”, argues that “Australia is a test case for resisting the idea that the digital advertising duopoly of Google and Facebook should set their own rules and policies for shaping the media landscape they dominate.”
Australia’s initiative is the latest in a series of belated attempts to hold the platforms accountable for eroding the financial underpinnings of local news, siphoning vast profits from others’ content, and evading all but the most superficial forms of accountability. Facebook and Google have cleverly forestalled these efforts by using their ‘soft’ power to discourage regulation. Annually they donate more than US$100m to newsrooms and media organizations even though neither company has paid more than lip service to the public interest. In fact, both have spent lavishly to avoid any serious attempt to regulate their activities. Facebook’s indifference to the public interest may be gauged by its willingness to drop public health information during a pandemic, preferring to force the hand of would-be regulators, rather than prioritize its users’ health and safety.
The News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code that prompted Facebook’s shutdown was recommended by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) which studied the impact of Google and Facebook for years. What the group highlighted was the divergence between the companies’ essentially profit-driven advertising interests and their dominance over a public service like the news. As Emily Bell points out, few governments have faced the potential dangers of “giant centralised advertising companies that provide an increasing number of communication services for their citizens.” If anything, Facebook’s overreaction has inadvertently “made a case in Australia for more regulation rather than less.”
Google, which temporarily avoided a “link tax” – by cutting deals with Australian news providers – behaved more prudently than Facebook, but it fears oversight no less. Canada, France and the EU are poised to enact similar measures and despite energetic lobbying both Facebook and Google have exhausted the patience of state and federal legislators in the United States. What has happened in Australia is likely to be the opening move in a long campaign to rein in the digital platforms who have captured the audiences, revenues and cultural and political power of traditional news media while assuming the fewest ethical responsibilities and insisting on minimal transparency and accountability.
