- Facebook recently signed a deal with Australia to restore news agency pages to its website.
- But the social media conglomerate illegally shut down thousands of sites in the process, including some unrelated to Australia.
- This is just another case of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook abusing their power and we shouldn’t look the other way.
Facebook has finally reached a deal with Australia. Following a shutdown by the Australian government over fair compensation for providing media content to the site, Facebook unblocked Australian news sites.
However, many other sites were blocked in the process. Some had nothing to do with the news. Some had nothing to do with Australia. And its content has been erased and made indivisible. It’s just the newest gaffe for a company that seems to specialize in them.
Facebook reaches a deal with Australia
It all started when Australia decided that They got a raw deal from companies like Facebook and Google. Media provides content to these platforms and essentially makes them a place that people want to visit. But they’re not getting paid by these billion dollar companies.
Australia decided they disagreed by proposing a new law that would force these companies to pay.
And Facebook defied the law with everything it had. Campbell Brown, vice president of global news partnerships at Facebook, said that the law “Ignore Reality” the relationship Facebook has with publishers. He claimed that publishers were using Facebook to share their content instead of stealing Facebook. And that’s partly true.
But it’s also true that Facebook uses the content for its own benefit – to get people excited about its website.
While Australia signed a deal with Google, Facebook escalated the battle by banning all news outlets on its platform.
Check out this video describing the overstep:
That ban ended Tuesday after Australia amended its new law. This means Facebook will not be penalized as long as it makes an agreement with Australian media companies to pay for their news.
But in its battle for the billions, Facebook has struck the livelihoods of thousands of other innocent viewers.
Thousands of innocent people are affected
In an attempt to ban all news media in Australia, Facebook blocked pages unrelated to the news. Pages unrelated to Australia were also blocked.
Our sister site was Hacked.com blocked on the platform for no apparent reason. It is a cybersecurity website based in Norway. And yet all posts from 2021 have been deleted.
When Hacked reached out to Facebook, there was this generic answer:
It didn’t even have the decency to apologize. The side convenient published an article that was critical of Facebook just before it was silenced.
If the banning of random websites was the worst, maybe we could be overlooking this flaw. But Facebook did far more than that.
It also banned fire and rescue services, health officials, food banks, and domestic violence charities. Needless to say, some of these organizations are vital during a pandemic.
Check out this tweet from Brianna Casey, Cheif Executive of FoodBank Australia:
Queensland Health officials criticized Facebook for calling their page blocked They tried to get vaccine updates out.
Brendan Crabb, director and CEO of the Medical Research Group at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, said CNN Business:
We are in the middle of a global pandemic in a century. Has there ever been a time when the general population is more reliant on high quality, highly reliable, and up-to-date health information?
Good question, Brendan.
How often will we allow these mistakes to occur?
So let’s summarize. To keep money off some news sites, a nearly $ 1 trillion company went to a site that cut communications for emergency services, health organizations, and generally innocent viewers.
This is the company that recently shut down thousands of businesses QAnon reports leading to acts of violence. Why? Because Facebook previously worked for QAnon and spread the conspiracy theory around the world.
And why did QAnon come along in the first place? because Facebook helped Donald Trump get elected in 2016 through illegal disclosure of our data.
In view of the speed with which we will reject a normal person for imperfect actionIt’s amazing that we are allowing sites like Facebook to stay here.
Maybe it’s because Facebook excites us by stealing attention-grabbing headlines from news sources they don’t want to pay for.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com.
