Facebook Mulls Blocking News Stories in Australia Over Pay Demand
Refusing to pay for content that users post on its site in Australia, Facebook said it could bar the practice as media companies demanded to be compensated for the content.
Facebook said it couldn't accept the measure, arguing it could wind up paying arbitrary and theoretically prohibitive sums for information that makes up only a small fraction of its service, the Associated Press reported.
The company's Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand, Will Easton, wrote in a blog post that Facebook would be faced with a choice between “either removing news entirely or accepting a system that lets publishers charge us for as much content as they want at a price with no clear limits.”
He added that, “No business can operate that way,” as the company threatened to block Australian publishers and individuals from sharing news stories on its platform by blacking them out.
Campbell Brown, a former NBC and CNN anchor who is Facebook's Vice President of Global News Partnerships, said the cutoff threat “has nothing to do with our ongoing global commitment to journalism.”
Australian Communications Minister Paul Fletcher declined to say whether he thought Facebook would make good on its threat as the government is working on the final draft of a proposed law.
“It's far from unprecedented for big tech companies to make heavy-handed threats,” Fletcher said.
“We will continue with our thorough and careful process, our public policy process, based upon the facts, based upon giving all stakeholders the chance to put their views,” he added.
The cutoff would extend to Instagram if the law is passed although Australian media companies, led by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. have aggressively pushed for payment from Facebook and Google.
"We tried to make this work," Brown told NBC News. "We proposed our version of something workable. ... Unfortunately, there are so many things in this proposed legislation that just make it untenable."
News groups have been upset at Facebook and Google's takeover of the digital ad industry that has led newspapers to close and changed the face of journalism forever.
The two companies account for more than half of the annual digital ad spending in the U.S. and more than 70 percent in Australia.
Google issued an open letter that said the proposed Australian law was a potential threat to individual privacy that could degrade the quality of its search and YouTube video services, but did not threaten a cutoff.
“Mark Zuckerberg is happy to let Facebook be a tool to spread misinformation and fake news, but is apparently fine with Facebook dropping real news altogether,” John Stanton, co-founder of the Save Journalism Project, said in a statement. “Regulators need to reign in the tech giants’ total domination of the online marketplace before it’s too late.”
Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the proposed laws would "create a more sustainable media landscape and see payment for original content.”
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission Chairman Rod Sims, who devised the pay-for-content model, said he hoped “parties will engage in constructive discussions” over the law.