On Thursday Morning, Social media giant Facebook announced that it was finally pulling news content from its platform in Australia. The company took this extreme decision due to the upcoming legislation News Media Bargaining Code. This legislation will force the companies like Facebook and Google to pay publishers for news content Australians see in their Facebook feed.
Now After Facebook has pulled news content, people and publications in Australia can no longer post news stories. Australians can’t also see news content posted by international publishers. They are seeing no posts on pages that publish news content.
While blocking news content in Australia, Facebook also accidentally blocked various government pages.
Facebook claims that Australia’s News publications generated clicks worth AU$407 million from Facebook last year and news made up around 4% of engagement on Facebook. Publishers are already getting benefit from the platform but gains from the news for Facebook is minimal. So, instead of paying up for news content, Facebook decided to pull it from the platform.
On the other hand, Google initially threatened to pull search out of Australia but later decided to pay and partnered with some publishers.
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This issue isn’t going to end anytime soon. After Australia, A member of the European parliament also shown interest in bringing something in upcoming EU legislation. A Canadian minister also said his government should follow the step.
This decision will surely destroy small publishers who are dependent on social media for traffic. Even if Google and Facebook decide to pay for news content, they will select some big publications. Small publications will end up losing clicks from Google News and Facebook.
