Why did Facebook Ban Australian News? Facebook Ban Explained

Facebook has been waging a war with the country of Australia for a while now. The company has had a history of conflicts with federal governments of different countries. The latest conflict is with the Australian government and stems from the fact that Australia has asked Facebook to pay a specific amount for publishing any new content on their social media platform. The answer to this was that Facebook banned Australian news. Many people are still confused as to why did Facebook ban Australian news.

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Why did Facebook ban Australian news?

The Australian news ban doesn’t come as a shock as both the company and the country have been going at it for some time now. Under the new proposed Code, Facebook is expected to pay a specific amount when it posts any news content in Australia. Facebook has banned all news sites and posting of news in Australia as it believes that the news companies have more to gain than Facebook in this sort of arrangement.

Facebook also stated that the news content accounts for less than 4% of the content that people observe in their feeds. Whereas Facebook itself has provided up to 5.1 Billion clicks to Australian news accounts. 

Facebook ban explained

Many Australians are wondering why is there no news on Facebook and want the Facebook Ban explained. Facebook has allowed content from some users but blocked most of the news pages. Facebook hasn’t just banned Australian news publishers, but all types of news publishers’ posts have been banned in Australia. In practicality, no news content will be published in Australia and none of the users will be able to link news content to their posts from Australian publishers or any other international news sites.

Facebook has mentioned that the law doesn’t provide clear guidance as to what is news content, so they have taken a broader definition in order to respect the law as it was drafted. This has resulted in the ban of some non-news pages to such as some state health departments, the West Australian fire and emergency services page, the WA opposition leader’s page, and more. Some of these accounts have been restored though. And this is why is there no news on Facebook in Australia.

How are the people in Australia affected?

All sorts of Facebook news have been banned. No user will be able to post Facebook news going forward in Australia. Users will no be able to view any posts or links from Australian news publishers and international news sites. Users won't be able to post links to any news sites either. They will witness a pop-up window when trying this kind of activity, which explains to them why they cannot perform this action in Facebook Australia anymore.

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