What happens if Facebook slows down the news flow

“Websites are our second stop,” said Kantesha Takai, a 29-year-old small business owner on the island. “We are very dependent on giants like Facebook.”

Mark Zuckerberg cut a critical piece of the chain of communication from such regions when Facebook blocked news from the social media platform across the country, a drastic backlash against the Australian government’s plan to force the company to pay news services for the content being shared on the website. Although the company reached an agreement earlier this week, the experience of Ms. Takai and her neighbors in a small town on a small island revealed a side of the world’s largest social media platform that can be blunt and brutal when challenged in a negotiation.

Their last week highlights a new chapter in the 17-year-old company’s moody adolescence, one that has turned the users of the platform into collateral damage in the battle between titans who run tech companies and those who want to regulate them.

The effect of Facebook’s sudden absence was especially felt in Australia’s indigenous people, the often remote communities who use the social media platform more as a utility, especially at a time of climate change-induced weather patterns and a pandemic. These are the places where Facebook’s goal of connecting the world has proven almost too effective – when the company got into a fight with Australian government officials, residents like Ms. Takai were left without the most effective method of bad weather alerts and Covid-19 information. After years of defending the platform against allegations of human trafficking in conspiracy and misinformation, Facebook ripped out legitimate news sources from the continent’s most vulnerable populations days before a coronavirus vaccine would be spread.

Facebook announced a deal with lawmakers on Tuesday that will allow it to bring the news back to the site. It agreed to pay for a number of newscasts through deals it made itself, although details have not been revealed. Still, the company’s initial and dramatic response also feels like a potential warning to lawmakers in other countries considering legislation that the service may not like. Alphabet Inc.’s

Google, the other company covered by Australian law, initially threatened to leave the country before agreeing to new deals earlier this month to pay some publishers for content. Those publishers include News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., which lobbied for the government’s position.

Facebook did not respond to requests for comment about the blackout’s impact on indigenous communities. In a company blog post on the Australian events published Wednesday, spokesman Nick Clegg wrote: “The events in Australia demonstrate the danger of a cash subsidy bid being concealed behind disruptions to how the Internet works.

“Understandably, some media conglomerates see Facebook as a potential source of money to recoup their losses, but does this mean they should be able to demand a blank check?” he added.

Those who run indigenous news sites admit they don’t like handing over so many eyeballs to Facebook, but the platform has become indispensable for those in the community whose priority is disclosing information. Almost half of Australia’s 25 million residents have a Facebook account, but the platform has special reach within the First Nation communities. The communities make up about 3% of Australians and are descended from those who lived on the continent before the British colonized it in the late 18th century.

Indigenous people who have moved to the city use Facebook to keep in touch with the people at home; stories passed on in the oral tradition are uploaded and shared; and public health information is posted in hundreds of local dialects.

The disproportionate impact that Facebook’s disappearance had on Australia’s indigenous communities seems contrary to the ethos touted by the company. You can imagine Facebook at another time putting the fishermen and elders of Thursday Island in a commercial about the beauty of interconnectedness.

Indigenous news outlets whose pages were darkened on Tuesday found it difficult to reach Facebook directly, and instead relied on lawmakers to address the matter and be reinstated as soon as possible, said Naomi Moran, the deputy chair of First Nations Media, the leading organization of news outlets serving the community.

“The bottom line is that our people pick up the pieces for a problem that we didn’t cause. It’s the age-old story when it comes to First Nation peoples around the world, ”she said.

The information vacuum that Facebook created was especially irritating to those in the indigenous media, as it came just as the country was preparing to roll out the Covid-19 vaccine, and indigenous communities have a higher rate of comorbidities that could make the virus more deadly . .

Hannah Cross, the editor of the National Indigenous Times, was shocked to see all of her newspaper’s Facebook posts – which typically covered everything from indigenous artist exhibits to information about where to access social-distancing guidelines in your local dialect – from the page saw swipe. Instead: a note that says “No messages yet.”

“I didn’t know I woke up in Orwell’s 1984,” she said.

Facebook’s response quickly took a backlash as its machines fetched non-news pages and led to temporary blackouts from the country’s Bureau of Meteorology – another source for cyclone warnings – and services like domestic violence hotlines. Independent bloggers with small followers were also cut.

Even with an agreement in place, the experience of waking up without news on the world’s most popular social media platform will have a lasting impact on those in Australia and those looking at a Menlo Park-based company that appears to be operating beyond every border or jurisdiction. The blackout was in response to a bill the Australian government was preparing to pass democratically. But the “proxy battle”, as Australian treasurer Josh Frydenberg put it, cannot help but send a chilling message to other lawmakers who want to regulate the service in a number of ways.

For those whose locations were in power outages, the week taught them to turn around – in Silicon Valley parlance. Ms. Cross has pushed readers to her newspaper’s newsletter and website.

“We have learned that we cannot rely solely on Facebook,” she said.

And for those who make a living on Thursday Island, Ms. Takai said her fishing family can rely on natural instincts when they are on the water and the cell phone isn’t working.

“We know the seasons and when the wind changes, we know what that means,” said Ms. Takai.

Write to Erich Schwartzel at [email protected]