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If Meta bans news in Australia, what will happen? Canada's experience
is telling
(HTM) Source
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At a parliamentary hearing late last week, Meta once again suggested
it could ban links to news on Facebook and Instagram in Australia.
This would repeat the ban it enacted for more than a week in February
2021. That ban was in response to the introduction of the News Media
Bargaining Code, an Australian law designed to force digital platforms
to pass on some of their advertising earnings to news publishers.
A similar law - based on this code - was passed in Canada last year.
As a result, in Canada news has been blocked from Meta platforms since
August 2023.
This has produced strongly negative results for Canadian news outlets.
Not only has the Canadian law failed to produce revenue flows from
Meta to news producers, it severely reduced the incoming user traffic
to their websites from Meta's social media platforms.
## What happened after the news ban in Canada?
The ongoing news ban in Canada has had several key effects. First, the
removal of direct links to news articles meant a collapse in user
visits to news sites. Those who once occasionally clicked on a news
link in their feed can no longer do so.
This has especially affected regional and local news sites, for whom
Facebook is often a key source of audience traffic. At a time when
regional and rural areas of both Canada and Australia are already in
danger of turning into "news deserts", this is particularly
concerning.
News outlets and audiences have worked around the bans to some extent.
They've found circumvention techniques, such as posting article
content without links, or article screenshots.
But such tricks can never fully replace the audience attention that
has been lost. They also don't help news outlets generate revenue for
their content (as website traffic does through ads).
Instead, the main replacement for news coverage on Facebook has been
political discussion that doesn't directly reference or link to the
news it draws on. This disconnection also opens the door for the
circulation of well-meaning misinformation or deliberate
disinformation.
Ultimately, the users of Meta's platforms who suffer the most are
those who are least interested in the news and who believe "news will
find them".
Highly invested news consumers will always find the news somewhere
else. Those who see news only when people in their networks share
articles will miss out, and may not even notice what they're missing.
## News is already hard to find on social media
Social media users are on these platforms for many other purposes than
to follow the news. Most Australians don't actually care much for news
in the first place.
According to this year's Digital News Report Australia, 68% of
Australians actively avoid the news, and 41% suffer from news fatigue.
After years of wall-to-wall reporting about pandemic, ecological,
domestic violence, financial and military crises, this is hardly
surprising.
Australia's News Media Bargaining Code was conceived with a flawed
assumption that social media play a central role as a conduit to news
content, and that Facebook wouldn't follow through on its threats to
ban news.
But Facebook's parent company Meta did exactly that, and shows no
signs of changing that approach. Indeed, even where it doesn't
actively _ban_ news content altogether, it is now substantially
reducing news visibility in the feeds of its users.
This is because news has long tended to be more trouble for Meta than
it's worth. Not only is news a minute subset of all Facebook content,
but it also generates an out-sized amount of unhappiness and
controversy that requires costly moderation.
Meta also knows that reducing the visibility of news on its platforms
doesn't substantially impact on user experience. By its own
calculations, only some 3% of the posts Facebook users see in their
feeds contain links of any kind.
This can't be independently verified without greater data access for
independent researchers than the company currently provides, but
certainly aligns with the everyday experience of ordinary Facebook
users. Even of these 3% of posts, only a fraction link to news
sources, let alone _Australian_ news sources.
Our own analysis during the brief Australian news ban in February 2021
showed only a very minor impact on the posting and engagement patterns
on Australian Facebook pages. Many users may not even have noticed
news was suddenly missing from their feeds.
## What can Australia do now?
In 2021, the news ban was temporarily resolved by Meta agreeing to
voluntarily make some payments to a select few Australian news
organisations.
In exchange, the then Morrison government elected to not "designate"
Meta under the bargaining code, meaning the provisions didn't apply to
Meta's platforms. These agreements are now coming to an end and Meta
has already stated it has no interest in renewing them.
This gives the Albanese government the choice between applying the
code to Meta after all, or allowing the agreements to expire without
consequence. The latter would effectively kill off the News Media
Bargaining Code as a meaningful piece of legislation.
Formally "designating" Meta to make it pay news publishers is likely
to backfire. Meta is building an obvious argument here: if its
platforms carry only a limited amount of Australian news content, why
should it be forced to share revenue with Australian news publishers?
Both in the court of public opinion and in any legal proceedings it
may pursue, such an argument is likely to prove highly persuasive.
## A smarter solution to support local news
Australian news media need financial support, but the bargaining code
was always severely flawed legislation. It should be abandoned at the
earliest opportunity.
There is a better way for the Albanese government to tackle the real
issue at stake: media revenue.
Right now, most Australian news media outlets are struggling to
survive. Since news media moved online, audiences now expect news for
free and most readers are not willing to pay. That leaves many
publications without a sustainable business model and in need of
public subsidy.
But we don't usually provide subsidies by forcing profitable companies
to negotiate directly with unprofitable ones, like the News Media
Bargaining Code does. An alternative model is needed.
One option could be to use the corporate tax generated from digital
platforms to support public-interest journalism by Australian media
organisations. This would mean taxing the platforms' revenues
appropriately and fairly in the name of Australian citizens and in the
national interest.
However, this would also require a stronger quality framework for what
constitutes public-interest journalism. The latest round of journalism
lay-offs in Australia shows we are rapidly running out of alternatives
if we want to sustain quality, diverse Australian news content into
the future.
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