On February 18, Australians woke up to the following message on a platform they have come to regard, in many instances, as the place to get news and share news content. ‘This post cannot be shared,’ came the curt message from Facebook. ‘In response to Australian government legislation, Facebook generally restricts the posting of news links and all posts from news Pages in Australia. Globally, the posting and sharing of news links from Australian publications is restricted.’
The rather rude note is striking a reminder of those old, gangster-styled threats issued by companies keen to protect their share of the marketplace against the popular policies of sovereign states. It is conduct more commonly associated with entities such as the United Fruit Company, whose interests were backed by the United States in a coup against President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. The Octopus, as that company came to be known as in Latin America, sneered at sovereignty, threatened the security of governments and always ensured its profit margins were never compromised.
Facebook’s effort at a coup is not quite as violent, and certainly not quite in that league. Instead of retaining its control of a fruit market, or preserving an oil monopoly, it harnesses another resource: data generated by users. ‘To feed its AI and algorithms,’ wrote Roger McNamee, who formerly advised Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ‘Facebook was spying on everyone, including people who do not use Facebook.’
Harvard academic Shoshana Zuboff considers Facebook’s influence, along Google, to be more dangerous than that. It is anti-democratic and exploitative of human users using surveillance capitalism, ‘the default model for capital accumulation.’ Any regulator or sovereign state keen to challenge the way the Silicon Valley giant gathers, monetises and uses that data will face their ire.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in responding to Facebook’s action to ‘unfriend’ Australia, was keen to work the theme of Big Tech versus government. ‘These actions will only confirm the concerns that an increasing number of countries are expressing about the behaviour of Big Tech companies who think they are bigger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them.’ Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan even went so far as to liken the conduct of Facebook to North Korea more ‘than an American company’, wishing that the US government would intervene.
Facebook’s actions are a meaty response to the proposed News Media Bargaining Code. The draft legislation ostensibly pushes