Australia’s media has been met with quite the shit storm this morning, after Facebook made the bold move of banning all Australian users from viewing any news on its platform.
As of this morning, no Australians can access local – or international – news on their feeds. Of course, the repercussion for media outlets are huge, including us.
Nine million Australians use Facebook and, before today, the majority of those users viewed the daily news on their (ironically named) newsfeed.
The strict announcement comes as part of a proposed new Media Bargaining law, which would force social media companies to pay money for the news they feature.
So, now that we’ve been given the boot and need to bid adieu to the old fossil we previously knew as Facebook, you can still reach us on the following platforms:
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Regardless of the fact that Facebook owns Instagram, things are still playing out as normal on Insta (for now). We post all of our news to our Insta stories, so you can follow each or all of our accounts by clicking the handles:
Another handy way that you can keep up to date on the latest music and pop culture haps is by following us on Twitter. You can find each of our handles here:
Website
Of course, you can always save yourself a few clicks and go straight to the news source itself, our homepage. Wild, right?
Today has been a lot. A LOT.
Now that you’re across how and where you can still access our news, without further ado we bring you the outrage of, well, the entire country.
Facebook’s move seems to have blindsided Australia’s treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
“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,” Mr Frydenberg tweeted.
The monumental move has been met with a lot of criticism. The former CEO of Facebook Australia, Stephen Scheeler, said to Sunrise’s David Koch that Australians ‘should be alarmed’.
“I’m not inside Facebook anymore, Kochie”, he told the host. “But I would guess that the problem is they can’t come to the right commercial terms they want here in Australia with the big publishers.”
“They [Facebook] therefore tried to scare the horses here by saying ”here’s what we’re going to do if the government doesn’t back down.'”
He continued: “Imagine if a Chinese company for example had done this… We would be up in arms.”
“I think this isn’t a small thing. All Australians should be quite alarmed by this and it shows why tech has so much power and why we need to regulate them. This is another example of why we can’t stand still.”
The reaction from the general population is similarly upset.
Imagine deleting fire warning pages, Children’s hospital pages and health pages during a global pandemic
Facebook just kinda started hiring from those crawling out of #Satan’s asshole. Australian Children’s CHARITY pages and women’s shelter pages ARE GONE. #DeleteFacebook pic.twitter.com/cqMDKm7kBP
— Ellipsis (@Ellipse04194438) February 18, 2021
Facebook just censored the whole country of Australia pic.twitter.com/KDdMPHqItS
— Carl Zha (@CarlZha) February 18, 2021
Facebook stopping Australian uses from sharing Australian and International News. Sounds very censored to me.
— Peggy Sanders (@peggymel2001) February 17, 2021