Australian authorities in public health, weather, and other areas say Facebook has removed posts from their feeds following Facebook's news ban
ABCNicholas McElroy
Context & Ripple Effects
When Facebook blocked all news sharing for Australians ahead of the proposed media bargaining code, the block did not stop at publishers: it swept up posts from state bodies running public health, weather, and other essential feeds. The collateral damage was immediate — the same day as the ban, authorities reported that their own pages had gone dark on the platform.
First-order effects
Australians lost access to official health, weather, and safety updates through Facebook precisely when the platform is a default channel for such alerts — the ban's blast radius exceeded its publisher targets from day one.
Second-order effects
The over-blocking sharpened scrutiny of how the code would be enforced and pushed Facebook toward carve-outs, while the harm compounded abroad: in Fiji, where cheap data plans bundle Facebook access, the ban made news sites effectively unaffordable (zero-rated access made the ban acute) — showing one country's regulatory fight propagating through dependent markets.
Third-order effects
If governments conclude platforms cannot be relied on as critical-information infrastructure, expect legal frameworks to harden around platform obligations — a trajectory Australia's judiciary had already signaled by affirming that media companies are liable for comments on their Facebook Pages (the High Court's comment-liability ruling).
The trend: Australia's confrontation with Facebook marks the moment national governments began treating social platforms as regulated infrastructure whose unilateral switches can cut off civic services.
Whatever you think of the proposed bill, Facebook's behavior in Australia should be a clarion call to publishers, government agencies, and any organizations with a public interest purpose that it's time to divest from Facebook as a communication platform https://www.theguardian.c…
Even for a company that specialises in PR disasters, @Facebook has excelled with its Australian blackout. By turning off news sharing, it has turned attention to its own reckless opaque power, by @EmilyBell https://www.theguardian.com/ ... via @guardian #journalism
It's not just big news orgs bearing the brunt of the News ban by @Facebook. Smaller Indigenous and community media orgs are too. Vital for getting info out about COVID, telecommunications outages and emergencies to communities. https://twitter.com/...
Just a private company, controlling chokepoints of vital information and shutting them down when they're trying to intimidate a country's government. https://twitter.com/...
During a global pandemic, Australians can't access state health departments on Facebook. On a day of flood and fire warnings in Queensland and WA, Australians can't access the Bureau of Meteorology on Facebook. The Morrison Government needs to fix this today.
We are extremely concerned that NATSILS has been blocked by #FacebookAustralia, so have some of our members. This is a human rights issue, silencing the voices of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people, our representative peak bodies. This is how we connect with community. ht…
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the drafting of the Australian media code, this has been a terrifying example of Facebook's power - and one it may come to regret. https://twitter.com/...
It's not about regulating Facebook, or even just breaking it up. It's become too important as a global human communication network. It needs to be taken away from shareholders & turned into a commons-based utility. Tech should serve humans, not vice versa. https://www.theguardian…