AoIR 2021

Facebook’s Australian News Ban: Threat, Impact, and Aftermath

Axel Bruns and Dan Angus

• 12-16 Oct. 2021 – long version of a paper presented at the Association of Internet Researchers conference, online
• presented as part of a panel on “Australia’s Big Gamble: The News Media Bargaining Code and The Responses from Google and Facebook”

Video of the Presentation

Presentation Slides

Paper Abstract

Introduction: Threats Made and Threats Fulfilled

In late August 2020, As the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the Australian federal government outlined their plans for a News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC) that would force Facebook and other major online platforms to negotiate with Australian media organisations on payments for hosting their content, Facebook spoke out publicly against the proposed legislation – and its threat could not have been clearer. In a Facebook Newsroom post authored by the company’s Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand, Will Easton, the company stated that

Assuming this draft code becomes law, we will reluctantly stop allowing publishers and people in Australia from sharing local and international news on Facebook and Instagram. (Easton, 31 Aug. 2020)

Importantly, as Australian commentators noted at the time (Meade, 2020), the company first briefed international media such as the New York Times (Wakabayashi & Isaac, 2020) rather than Australian journalists about this move; this was understood by media analysts as indicating that “Facebook’s main concern was that the mandatory code set an ‘international precedent’” (Meade, 2020) and that Facebook was therefore prepared to set its own precedent with a firm response to the Australian legislation in order to deter governments and regulators elsewhere from implementing their own variations on the News Media Bargaining Code.

Australian media and government representatives remained sceptical about Facebook’s willingness to follow through on this threat, however; a Nine Entertainment spokesperson described Facebook’s response as “strange” (Meade, 2020), and Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that “Australia makes laws that advance our national interest and we won’t be responding to coercion or heavy-handed tactics” (Blackiston, 2020). Industry responses, including that by ACCC Chair Rod Sims, also frequently cited the 2020 Digital News Report, which demonstrated the importance of Facebook as a news discovery mechanism for Australians: “39% of Australians use Facebook for general news, and 49% use Facebook for news about COVID-19”, Sims pointed out (in Blackiston, 2020).

Yet this arguably mistakes the importance of news on Facebook to Australians and the importance of news on Facebook to Facebook itself: while many Australians may indeed use Facebook to find out about the news, this does not mean that such news discovery constitutes a major part of everything else that Australians do on Facebook; Easton may well be correct when he claims in Facebook’s own statement that

the ACCC presumes that Facebook benefits most in its relationship with publishers, when in fact the reverse is true. News represents a fraction of what people see in their News Feed and is not a significant source of revenue for us. (Easton, 2020)

Following through on its threat to remove news from the Australian Facebook altogether was always a live option for Facebook, therefore, however inconceivable or technically difficult it may have seemed to Australian policy-makers. And on 18 February 2021, as the Australian government moved forward with its NMBC legislation, the company did just that: all existing content disappeared from the Facebook pages of Australian news outlets (fig. 1), and Australian users seeking to access any Facebook posts from Australian or international news sources, as well as international users seeking to access Australian news posts on Facebook, encountered Facebook error messages (fig. 2). Finally, any attempts by ordinary Facebook users anywhere in the world to share Australian news links themselves were also blocked (fig. 3).

Fig. 1: The Facebook page of leading Australian public media outlet ABC News during the news ban, showing the temporary disappearance of all previously posted news from the page (ABC News, 2021)

Fig. 2: Error message encountered by Australian Facebook users attempting to access any posts containing news content on Facebook, and by international users attempting to access Australian news content on Facebook

Fig. 3: Error message preventing Australian and international Facebook users from sharing links to Australian news sites (Jones, 2021)

Implementation and Impact of the Facebook News Ban

Drawing on data from Facebook’s own social media data service, CrowdTangle, this paper provides detailed evidence on the implementation and impact of Facebook’s ‘Australian news ban’, as the week-long removal of domestic and international news content from the Australian segment of the global Facebook network has become known. During as well as after the ban – which began in the early hours of 18 February 2021, and ended on 26 February, several days after Facebook announced that it had reached an agreement with the Australian government that would adjust the provisions of the NMBC in its favour (Easton, 2021) – we gathered data on posting of and interactions with links to Australian news content on public pages, public groups, and public verified profiles on Facebook. To do so we drew on a list of the 39 leading Australian news domains (which, given the exceptionally concentrated Australian media market, covers the vast majority of the market), and queried CrowdTangle for any posts containing links to these domains, from Australia and beyond.

Fig. 4 shows a preliminary visualisation of these data for links to Australian news sites posted on Australian Facebook pages only; this uses CrowdTangle’s classification of pages by country, which is based on the geographic location of the majority of the page administrators. It documents a substantial decline in the posting of links to Australian news sites from the early hours of 18 February, though curiously this decline remains incomplete for the following days: during daytime hours, Australian Facebook pages continue to post some 20-50 posts containing Australian news links per hour, and posting only ceases completely by midday on 23 February (after Facebook had already announced that it would lift its news ban; Easton, 2021). We speculate that this continued posting in the days immediately following the implementation of the ban may have resulted from experimentation with URL shorteners or posting from non-Australian administrator accounts – pathways which Facebook had not yet locked down entirely.

Fig. 4: Posts on Australian Facebook pages sharing links to Australian news media (blue), and total interactions with those posts (orange), per hour, 16 Feb. to 2 Mar. 2021

Even if some such posting continued to occur during the first days of the ban, however, these posts were all but invisible to Australian and international Facebook users, as fig. 4 also demonstrates: total interactions with those posts dropped to virtually zero from 09:00 on 18 February, and only recovered in the morning of 26 February, as the ban was officially lifted. At least in the first days after the lifting of the news ban, the total volume of interactions remained at a fraction of its pre-ban levels; it must be noted in this context, however, that interaction levels on the weekend days of 27 and 28 February should be expected to be lower than on weekdays. Finally, this lack of news visibility on Facebook also resulted in a precipitous drop in click-through rates to the news sites themselves, as research by ABC News documents (Purtill, 2021).

Importantly, however, this impact was not limited to genuine Australian news providers: in its initial implementation of the news ban, Facebook also blocked the content of a broad range of other actors that it had classified as providing news-like content. This included, for instance, the pages of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, of State Emergency Services, of small businesses and community organisations, and – most problematically during the COVID-19 pandemic – of federal and state health agencies providing critical information about local lockdowns, preventative measures, and vaccination planning. Remarkably, even Facebook’s own official Facebook page was blocked (Taylor, 2021). Some such blocks were reversed fairly quickly, before the eventual conclusion of the news ban.

Further Outlook

Our further analysis of these developments for the full paper will examine these developments in greater detail, and explore in particular whether Australian Facebook users shifted their attention to other news sources (potentially including fringe outlets of questionable quality), and whether the week-long ban appears to have had any lasting impact on Australians’ news engagement practices on the platform. We will also reflect on the resolution of the conflict between Facebook and the Australian government, assessing whether the outcome favours the interests of one side more than the other’s.

References

ABC News. (2021). Facebook Just Restricted Access to News in Australia: Here's What That Means for You. ABC News, 18 Feb. 2021. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-18/facebook-news-ban-what-just-happened-post-zuckerberg/13166710

Blackiston, H. (2020). ‘Ill-Timed and Misconceived’: The Industry Responds to Facebook’s Threat to Ban News in Australia. Mumbrella, 1 Sep. 2020. https://mumbrella.com.au/ill-timed-and-misconceived-the-industry-responds-to-facebooks-threat-to-ban-news-in-australia-641475

Easton, W. (2020). An Update about Changes to Facebook’s Services in Australia. Facebook Newsroom, 31 Aug. 2020. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/changes-to-facebooks-services-in-australia/

———. (2021). Changes to Sharing and Viewing News on Facebook in Australia. Facebook Newsroom, 22 Feb. 2021. https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-viewing-news-on-facebook-in-australia/

Jones, T. (2021). How Australia’s Facebook News Ban Will Impact You. Gizmodo, 18 Feb. 2021. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/02/how-australias-facebook-news-ban-will-impact-you/

Meade, A. (2020). Facebook Threatens to Block Australians from Sharing News in Battle over Landmark Media Law. The Guardian, 1 Sep. 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/sep/01/facebook-instagram-threatens-block-australians-sharing-news-landmark-accc-media-law

Purtill, J. (2021). These Graphs Tell the Story of the Facebook News Ban — and What Happened After. ABC News, 3 Mar. 2021. https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-03-03/facebook-news-ban-australian-publisher-page-views-rebound/13206616

Taylor, J. (2021). Facebook's Botched Australia News Ban Hits Health Departments, Charities and Its Own Pages. The Guardian, 18 Feb. 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/18/facebook-blocks-health-departments-charities-and-its-own-pages-in-botched-australia-news-ban

Wakabayashi, D., & Isaac, M. (2020). Facebook Could Block Sharing of News Stories in Australia. The New York Times, 31 Aug. 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/technology/facebook-block-news-stories-australia.html