Facebook To Unblock Australian News Content

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The madmen actually did it!

ABC News and SMH content are not working, they are throwing up errors saying ‘sorry, something went wrong’.

And upon a second look, ALL news content is gone from within Australia.

I can still see all AU content here in the UK.

The statement said it international users would not be able to see AU content, but as of now we can

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I can’t see any news content, Australian or international. News and media (TV and radio station) pages bring up the ‘about’ section, but the cover photo is blank and there are no posts.

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This is a boss move by Facebook. Well done!

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What it potentially does do is push more disinformation through its service given there is no ‘pushback’ from reputable news sources.

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I’m not convinced they care to be honest - it’s taken nearly 12 months for Facebook to actively remove misinformation about coronavirus

It will be interesting today to see what the response from the media companies and the government is - I think they’ve underestimated what Facebook would actually do in response to the code

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Would a lot of the social media teams at news organisations have been made redundant since there’s no news to put on Facebook anymore?

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Looks like they are now all blocked cannot are anything. Header is grey and can’t scroll down

You mean, in the 2 hours since this came out? No I don’t think they’ve been made redundant.

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Time will tell how long this stunt will last for.

Kudos to the Australian government for their pig-headedness, yet again, in this matter.

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Impacting outlets differently it seems.

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How long do we think this will last?

MEAA secretary Marcus Strom was on ABC News Radio this morning to talk about Facebook’s ban. He basically said that it would prevent people from seeing independent, quality news articles from Australia while still allowing conspiracy theories and QAnon content to be published. He said the move could backfire as FB is facing antitrust investigations in its home country of the US.

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regardless of which side you are on, this is all very, very funny imho

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News organisations and publishers have for too long relied on Facebook to drive traffic to their own sites. Now they can’t.

Boohoo, media companies. Suck it up.

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They’ve gone as far as blocking BOM and SA Health.

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No more weather - will have to look outside now.

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Statement on Facebook by ABC Managing Director David Anderson

ABC News is Australia’s number one digital news service and the nation’s most trusted news outlet.

The ABC’s digital news services will always remain free and accessible to all Australians on the ABC website and via the ABC News app, providing independent and reliable news, information and analysis.

Despite key issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic having ongoing effects on all Australians, Facebook has today removed important and credible news and information sources from its Australian platform.

We will continue our discussions with Facebook today following this development.

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