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What Does This Mean for Your Small Business?
Is it happening again?
This week on Threads or Instagram, users noticed an error message when trying to post a link to a news site.
Is Meta doing a dry run for a future news ban? Or was it an innocent bug?
Stay tuned!
Social Media is great, but as many have discovered when Facebook declared "Digital War" on Australia, the business did not own information on its social media channels.
Back in February 2021, Facebook made a brazen attempt to crush the Australian Federal government's proposed regulations for them to pay for the use of local news content.
Australia is now on the front line of this Digital War.
The Australian Government proposed a legal code that would allow Australian news publishers to charge tech companies to use their content in search results and news feeds.
Facebook responded by blocking users in Australia from viewing or sharing news content on its platform.
Facebook is worried that as soon as they start paying for fresh news content in Australia, other countries will want in too.
Facebook has also come to an agreement with News Corp, so the big players will likely be OK. But small businesses, small publishers are likely to be hit hard.
On Wednesday night, with the flip of an algorithm switch basically, all of Australia's news industry pages went dark on the social network.
This impacted publishers large and small.
The public has been horrified that the ban impacted many pages, not just news sites.
Facebook blocked not only news organizations but also Australian government websites including the weather service (the Bureau of Meteorology) and a state health agency that included pandemic resources.
The ban has had ripple effects across a whole range of pages.
As it currently stands, Australia's main realtor pages are also blocked. (What does selling your house have to do with news, you might ask? Well the two big real estate websites are owned by, you guessed it, News Corp and Fairfax.)
But the list of impacted pages does not end there!
As you can see in the image, this children's association in the UK is also blocked to Australians.
Julian Knight, a British Conservative, said Facebook's actions would raise questions over whether the UK government should toughen its upcoming online harms legislation. He told The Times: "These bully-boy tactics are absolutely crass and irresponsible, particularly at a time of global pandemic when people need trusted news sources. (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/british-mps-round-on-bullyboy-facebook-after-it-blocks-news-in-australia-gv8d002r )
"It's Australia first, who will be next?" he said.
Australia is not alone.
While the ructions impact news published right now, it is a stark reminder as to what is important. Growing and nurturing your database of contacts is vital.
What does it mean for marketers and small businesses?
And if Facebook can thumbs-down an entire country's move to support parity between tech giants and small news publishers, what is to stop them from blocking similar efforts in other sectors or countries in the future?
Today it looks like Facebook's initial cull has been pegged back a bit with pages like the Bureau of Meteorology active again.
Our Battlefield pages and groups seem safe for now!
It does not appear to be impacting Facebook groups and Instagram (yet!)
What you need to do:
I'm sure there will be more ructions in the days and weeks to come.
Battlefield businesses may benefit from developing solutions that offer detox from dependence on the gated communities of social media.
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