Facebook Bans Australian News
Australian News Unfriended by Facebook.
UPDATE: Facebook has announced at 04:00 GMT, February 23, 2021 that they will bring back news for Australians.
“[Facebook will] restore news on Facebook for Australians in the coming days.”
Originally published on February 19, 2021
You have probably heard about the changes happening on Facebook with the way Australian’s can post, view and share news content.
In Facebook’s words, which was released in this article https://australia.fb.com/news-law/,
“Unfortunately, in response to Australia’s proposed News Media Bargaining Code legislation, Facebook will have to restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content on Facebook.”
This means that Australian’s cannot post, view or share Australian or international news content on Facebook or content from Australian and international news pages.
Unfortunately, this has seen many pages that are not news outlets affected and unable to share or post their own content, which include community services, Government agency pages, Fire & Rescue, Hospitals, Beureau of Meterology and other important community pages many people rely on for updates.
Even Facebook banned… Facebook (for a few hours).
Whilst Facebook’s actions have caused disruption to news outlets and some businesses that only exist on FB, it seems business as usual for cost per click ads in the FB network. We will of course, be following the Federal Government negotiations and advise you of any further updates as they are made available.
This has also affected the Domain and realestate.com.au Facebook Pages, which are no longer able to show or post any content, and all of their past content to date has been removed. However, this does not affect any Audience extension advertising campaign.
realestate.com.au has released the following update:
- Any listing with an Audience Extension or Audience Maximiser campaign will not be impacted. These campaigns will continue to run as normal, displaying your listings to engaged buyers across Facebook and Instagram and many other platforms.
- Sharing property listings, Project Profiles and Builder Profiles may be restricted. We are working with Facebook to have this matter resolved.
Domain has also released the following information:
- This does not impact our ability to run advertising campaigns on Facebook. Our commercial products (e.g. Audience Extension) are active and delivering impressions in full.
- Audience Extension and sponsored content campaigns are still running, and we are continuing to post content across LinkedIn and Instagram to reach property enthusiasts.
- We are in active discussions with Facebook and are hopeful that a resolution will be found quickly that is mutually beneficial to both parties.
In response to non-news outlets being affected by this change, Facebook stated that they “will reverse any Pages that are inadvertently impacted.” However, there is no doubt this has already had a negative implication on the wrongly affected pages.
How’s that for Artificial Intelligence?
We will continue to monitor this situation and provide updates to our clients.