Facebook threatens to cut news content from Australia

Facebook said that while it supported the idea of a code of conduct between the digital publishers and social platforms, however it accused the commission of being unfair in singling out itself and Google.

Facebook said that there was a ‘healthy rivalry’ between the social media giant and the Australian publishers for ad revenue. (Pixabay)

Facebook is threatening to cut news content in the News Feed from publishers in Australia. The company is saying that it could cut news content from Australian news publishers without having a significant impact on business.

In its response to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) the company said that there was a ‘healthy rivalry' between the social media giant and the Australian publishers for ad revenue. “We made a change to our News Feed ranking algorithm in January 2018 to prioritise content from friends and family...If there were no news content available on Facebook in Australia, we are confident the impact on Facebook's community metrics and revenues in Australia would not be significant,” Facebook said in a statement, as reported by The Guardian.

Facebook said that while it supported the idea of a code of conduct between the digital publishers and social platforms, however it accused the commission of being unfair in singling out itself and Google. “It is not healthy nor sustainable to expect that two private companies, Facebook and Google, are solely responsible for supporting a public good and solving the challenges faced by the Australian media industry,” the company added.

Facebook's remarks came in response to a proposal by the ACCC which may force Facebook and Google to share advertising revenue with the publishers in Australia.

The Australian federal government last year asked the ACCC to develop a code of conduct between digital platforms and media companies that would in essence make the digital platforms pay a part of their advertising revenue to the media companies for the content that they create. The proposed code was initially supposed to be a voluntary one. However, following significant losses in revenue in the news publishing industry and some newspapers folding their businesses and others giving a pay cut, the proposed code of conduct was made a mandatory one with the inclusion of penalties and defining the type of content covered by the code.