Australia's PM slams Facebook's 'arrogant' move to 'unfriend' the nation, after government pages were inadvertently silenced as part of a purge of news content
Getty Images / Sam Mooey / Stringer
- Australia's Prime Minister Scott Morrison called Facebook "arrogant" for "unfriending" the country.
- The comments came after government pages were inadvertently silenced in Facebook's ban on Australian news content.
- Facebook's ban was in response to Australia's proposed law, the News Media Bargaining Code.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has blasted Facebook as "arrogant" over its decision to "unfriend Australia" as part of the social-media giant's ban on news content in the country.
The comments come after several state health departments' accounts were silenced in Facebook's blanket ban on Australians seeing and posting news on its site.
"Facebook's actions to unfriend Australia today, cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing," Morrison said in a post on Facebook.
"These actions will only confirm the concerns that an increasing number of countries are expressing about the behaviour of BigTech companies who think they are bigger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them," he said, adding: "They may be changing the world, but that doesn't mean they run it."
He said that Australia "will not be intimated" by the tech giant.
Facebook's ban came in response to a proposed law in Australia, the News Media Bargaining Code.
REUTERS/Erin Scott/File Photo
This law would force giants like Facebook and Google to pay Australian news outlets for news content on their platforms.
Facebook has long opposed those measures and threatened to pull news from the local market as far back as August last year.
Health departments' pages weren't the only ones impacted
The silencing of a number of accounts - including the pages of South Australia, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory - came days before Australia's COVID-19 vaccine rollout was set to begin.
The page of Western Australia's opposition leader, Zak Kirkup, was also blocked, prompting Western Australia's premier Mark McGowan to say Facebook was "behaving like a North Korean dictator," the BBC reported.
Australia's tourism and trade minister Dan Tehan described the ban as a "clumsy negotiating effort," according to The Guardian.
Getty/David Greedy
Communications minister Paul Fletcher said the bans should be immediately reversed for non-media groups: "The fact that there are organizations like state health departments, fire and emergency services and so on who have had their Facebook pages blocked - that's a public safety issue. I've spoken to Facebook this morning and said the Government expects them to restore those pages as quickly as possible."
Those pages returned to normal operation early on Thursday afternoon.
Facebook said government pages should not be impacted
In a statement, Facebook said government pages should not be impacted by the new restrictions.
The multi-billion dollar company also said it applied a broad definition of "news" content to comply with the draft legislation, which it said was unclear.
But Fletcher disputed that claim, saying "the provisions of the code are very clear."
"The code is not yet in the law," he said. "So it raises an obvious question, why are they doing this now?"
"Facebook's actions were unnecessary," Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said of the general ban. "They were heavy-handed, and they will damage its reputation here in Australia."
The Australian government has no plans to back down
The Federal Government has been in conversation with Facebook about the legislation for months, with Frydenberg speaking to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg several times in recent weeks.
On the banning of government pages on Thursday, Frydenberg said "we certainly weren't given any notice by Facebook."
The Australian government's draft legislation, which passed in the House on Wednesday, is due to head to the Australian Senate.
"We will legislate this code. We want the digital giants paying traditional news media businesses for generating original journalistic content," Frydenberg said, adding that "the eyes of the world are watching."
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