As of midnight (Australia), Facebook has blocked many sources of news for their users. Several sites report “no posts” and thus no news feed. Although the actual newspapers have their areas still available and will continue to be, many people get all of their news from Facebook and so are uninformed.
The Facebook pages that are also blocked concerningly include state Police, health sites and even the Bureau of Meteorology. The spread seems overly broad at this stage, with commercial and charity pages blocked from new postings, perhaps any area the says “News.”
The Australian government is enacting legislation that would require digital companies, including Facebook and Google, to pay for news content. Although most of these news stories can be obtained from their home sites, the blocking of any media and news reporting by anyone is very worrying. It could be that this is Facebook’s way of saying that if you want us to pay for your journalism, then we are not going to play and going away.
Suppose news, incredibly reliable, researched, and accurate information, is to be developed. In that case, anyone who uses it should pay for it somehow, as I and many do with a subscription to several physical and online newspapers. I will be following this story, although not by Facebook posts.
Dennis Fitzgerald – Melbourne, Australia
