Facebook Bans News Sharing in Australia over ‘Snippet Licensing’ Demands

Facebook has restricted access to news coverage on its platform in Australia. Facebook users in Australia are now barred from posting local as well as international news links. Sharing of news from Australian sources is also restricted globally. The move came in response to ‘snippet licensing’ or ‘link tax’ demands expected to be imposed by the Australian government. A similar law in the EU is also set to become effective starting in June this year.

On Thursday, Australian journalists reported on restrictions put in place by Facebook on the sharing of news links. Users attempting to post such links will receive the following message:

Previous posts made by news organizations on Facebook Pages have been largely made unavailable to view by others.

The 9 million Australian Facebook users have been unable to view either local Australian or international news content. Users outside Australia (or those in Australia using a VPN) are able to see news from international sources. However, Australian news is unavailable for all Facebook users.

The company instantly became a target of criticism from Australian politicians as well as the journalistic class. Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce likened Mark Zuckerberg to Kim Jong Un, claiming that Facebook’s actions resemble the North Korean style of information censorship. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison viewed Facebook’s actions as “arrogant” and “disappointing”. News outlets such as Daily Mail and Nine have condemned Facebook for not standing for free speech and censoring (their) legitimate coverage, allowing the spread of misinformation by implication.

Facebook’s policy was enacted in the anticipation of a vote on a new regulatory measure which would mandate that search engines and social media companies pay a ‘link tax’ - reimburse news companies for the views their linked content gathers on their platforms.

In a February 17th post, Managing Director of Facebook Australia & New Zealand William Easton clarified why the company decided to take such a far-reaching measure:

“In response to Australia’s proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook will restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content. 

The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it to share news content. It has left us facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia. With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter.”

…

“Over the last three years we’ve worked with the Australian Government to find a solution that recognizes the realities of how our services work. We’ve long worked toward rules that would encourage innovation and collaboration between digital platforms and news organisations. Unfortunately this legislation does not do that. Instead it seeks to penalise Facebook for content it didn’t take or ask for.“

Facebook’s decision has been compared with Google, which instead took to negotiating deals with media companies such as News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, for payments to be made in exchange for those news organizations to be featured on Google News. Easton explained contrasting the moves of the two companies is not entirely accurate, as the models of their services differ.

“We understand many will ask why the platforms may respond differently. The answer is because our platforms have fundamentally different relationships with news. Google Search is inextricably intertwined with news and publishers do not voluntarily provide their content. On the other hand, publishers willingly choose to post news on Facebook, as it allows them to sell more subscriptions, grow their audiences and increase advertising revenue.” 

Easton said that while Australian news publishers have benefitted from using Facebook for widening their reach to the extent of AU$407 million just in the last year, for the platform “the business gain from news is minimal”, as, albeit “important to a democratic society”, it only “makes up less than 4% of the content” being viewed on Facebook. In Facebook’s view, the present legal arrangement is already skewed in favour of news companies - and the anticipated change does the opposite of what it should by intensifying this imbalance.

Tama Leaver, a professor at Australia’s Curtin University agreed with Facebook’s comments on the situation:

“Facebook does bring a lot of eyeballs to Australian news content, so it has a legitimate claim that actually, it’s doing more work for Australian news producers than it should be paying for,”

Among other angles, Facebook’s sweeping policy was criticized for its overreach beyond just news providers. Those affected were, among others, also governments sites offering pandemic support, emergency services, or meteorological updates.

Addressing these criticisms in the response to a request for comment by CNBC, Facebook stated:

“As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted. However, we will reverse any Pages that are inadvertently impacted,”

CNBC reported that in a matter of hours, many of the pages affected by error had been restored.

Australia’s proposed legislation mirrors that of the EU, which created a major controversy in March 2019, as a proposal for the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market was nearing its vote in the European Parliament. Its most controversial provisions were Articles 11 and 13 (which became Articles 15 and 17 in the final version), under which an ‘upload filter’ and a ‘link tax’, respectively, are to be established. The Directive passed the European Parliament despite opposition from NGOs, tech companies, academics, and even the UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, who suggested that the Directive “could result in restrictions that are not compatible with the right to freedom of expression and the right to science and culture”.

The ‘link tax’ (or, more accurately labelled “snippet licensing obligation”) Article of the Directive was passed with exceptions for “legitimate private and non-commercial use” of links to and snippets of news articles. However, those have been viewed as “ineffective”. German researcher and politician Julia Reda said that the Article “means that platforms will need to stop us from sharing links (with snippets) that they have not negotiated a license for.”

The other article, dubbed an ‘upload filter’ will make online platforms “directly liable for copyright infringements by users.” According to Reda, this could extend to “every platform with an upload form and every app with a ‘post’ button” and presents “an existential threat to all internet platforms that allow posts or uploads.” EU member states are left to determine the size threshold above which a platform will be exposed to these liabilities.

Coming up to its exit from the EU in January 2020, the UK government announced that it had “no plans” to implement the EU’s Copyright Directive. Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation Chris Skidmore stated at the time that “any future changes to the UK copyright framework will be considered as part of the usual domestic policy process.”

Attempts to institute ‘snippet licensing’ tend to lead to outright discontinuation of many online services rather than to companies building their business models anew in response to such policies. This has been a long-recognized fact in the industry, as evidenced by the shutdown of Google News in Spain in 2014 in response to a ‘link tax’ imposed upon news aggregators which “mandates payments even if publishers don’t want them because they get traffic via Google News [and similar services].” In contrast to the outcry following Facebook’s restrictions on news sharing in Australia, in the case of Google News in Spain several years ago, the “Culture Ministry characterized Google’s move as a legitimate business decision.” 

A similar law had been introduced a year prior in Germany, which, while resulting in lower traffic on news sites, did not result in large shutdowns only because ‘small text excerpts’, key to the Google News-like business model, were excluded. The law was still criticized for its “vagueness” which left “room for interpretation that could easily and deeply change the scope of the law.” Despite the history of these experiments, similar proposals are becoming more widespread with all its negative effects, as the recent Australian example shows.