{"id":16350,"date":"2022-05-08T14:05:39","date_gmt":"2022-05-08T14:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose"},"modified":"2022-05-08T14:31:57","modified_gmt":"2022-05-08T14:31:57","slug":"facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose","title":{"rendered":"Facebook\u2019s Australia news ban over blocked on purpose"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – South-Sudan. <\/strong><\/span>Facebook deliberately used an over-zealous blocking system that took down the pages of Australian emergency services last year as a negotiating tactic, whistleblowers claim.<\/p>\n

The social network moved to block all news outlets in Australia over a row about paying news providers. But fire services and state health services were also blocked, during fire season and Australia\u2019s vaccine rollout.<\/p>\n

Facebook says blocking other pages had been an honest mistake. Former employees, backed by the Whistleblower Aid charity, say the company intentionally \u201cover-blocked\u201d Australian pages at a critical time to gain leverage over the Australian government.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was clear this was not us complying with the law, but a hit on civic institutions and emergency services in Australia,\u201d one employee who worked on the project said, in submissions to Australian and US authorities and reported first by The Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n

The high-profile row kicked off in February last year, when lawmakers were in the middle of voting on a landmark bill that would have forced social networks to pay news organisations for the content they used on their platforms.<\/p>\n

The day after the first vote, Facebook took down all news pages in Australia \u2013 and many that had nothing to do with news. Within days, the government struck a deal with the tech giant and the ban was lifted.<\/p>\n

Documents provided by whistleblowers to the Wall Street Journal suggest that Facebook was making an effort to exclude government pages, and pages had their ban reversed within days.<\/p>\n

However, they also reportedly show the company did not use its long-standing database of news organisations, but instead built a new \u201ccrude\u201d algorithm that would label any page that shared 60% news content as a news provider.<\/p>\n

Internal planning documents also allegedly showed that the takedown was pre-planned to be ready before an appeals process for errors \u2013 something that whistleblowers said was not a normal process.<\/p>\n

Employees raised concerns on internal messages, the documents show \u2013 worrying about \u201cthe damage this is doing to Facebook\u2019s reputation\u201d and urging a \u201cproactive\u201d fix.<\/p>\n

In response to another post on employee concerns, a product manager wrote: \u201cguidance from the policy and legal team has been to be over-inclusive and refine as we get more information.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Australian officials agreed to change the law to effectively exempt Facebook from being forced to negotiate with individual publishers, the company\u2019s top officials congratulated staff, the WSJ reported.<\/p>\n

Founder Mark Zuckerberg said it was \u201cthe best possible outcome in Australia\u201d, while senior executive Sheryl Sandberg praised the \u201cprecision of execution\u201d. Facebook parent company Meta denies the substance of the whistleblowers\u2019 claims.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe documents in question clearly show that we intended to exempt Australian government pages from restrictions in an effort to minimize the impact of this misguided and harmful legislation,\u201d a statement read.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were unable to do so as intended due to a technical error, we apologized and worked to correct it. Any suggestion to the contrary is categorically and obviously false.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whistleblower Aid\u2019s chief executive, Libby Liu, said that Facebook has \u201cenormous power\u201d over information. In this case, they used that power in a way that threatened public safety during fire season and in the midst of a global pandemic,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A partnership between Whistleblower Aid and The Wall Street Journal was also behind the revelations of Frances Haugen, a whistleblower who provided internal Facebook documents on a wide array of issues last year which saw Facebook \u2013 and Ms Haugen \u2013 quizzed by regulators and politicians worldwide.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About South-Sudan<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – South-Sudan. Facebook deliberately used an over-zealous blocking system that took down the pages of Australian emergency services last year as a negotiating tactic, whistleblowers claim. The social network moved to block all news outlets in Australia over a row about paying news providers. But fire services and state health services were also blocked, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":16349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[234,695,265,694,233],"class_list":["post-16350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-mozambique","tag-africa-press-south-sudan","tag-mozambique","tag-south-sudan"],"yoast_head":"\nFacebook\u2019s Australia news ban over blocked on purpose - South Sudan<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Facebook deliberately used an over-zealous blocking system that took down the pages of Australian emergency services las ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Facebook\u2019s Australia news ban over blocked on purpose\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Facebook deliberately used an over-zealous blocking system that took down the pages of Australian emergency services las ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"South Sudan\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-05-08T14:05:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-05-08T14:31:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/sites\/32\/2022\/05\/postQueueImg_7-6277d44546d35.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"540\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Facebook\u2019s Australia news ban over blocked on purpose\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-05-08T14:05:39+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-05-08T14:31:57+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose\"},\"wordCount\":602,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/sites\/32\/2022\/05\/postQueueImg_7-6277d44546d35.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Mozambique\",\"Africa Press-South-Sudan\",\"Mozambique\",\"South-Sudan\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"miscellaneous\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-sudan\/all-news\/facebooks-australia-news-ban-over-blocked-on-purpose\",\"name\":\"Facebook\u2019s Australia news ban over blocked on purpose - 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