Invited presentation at the Griffith Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Brisbane, 26 Nov. 2021.

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Facebook’s Australian News Ban and
Its Implications for Critical Platform Studies
Prof. Axel Bruns
Australian Laureate Fellow
QUT Digital Media Research Centre
a.bruns@qut.edu.au | @snurb_dot_info

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The News Ban

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(https://www.acma.gov.au/news-media-bargaining-code)

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(https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code)

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Threat

7. (https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/17/21371709/google-australia-paying-for-news-lobbying-media-ads-search-market)

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(https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/changes-
to-facebooks-services-in-australia/)

9. [ … ]
(https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/changes-
to-facebooks-services-in-australia/)
(https://mumbrella.com.au/ill-timed-and-misconceived-the-industry-responds-to-facebooks-threat-to-ban-news-in-australia-641475)
[ … ]

10. (https://thewest.com.au/politics/australia-accuses-facebook-of-news-bluff-ng-s-2027888)

11. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-18/facebook-news-ban-what-just-happened-post-zuckerberg/13166710;
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/02/how-australias-facebook-news-ban-will-impact-you/;
https://twitter.com/MonteBovill/status/1362155485881790465;
https://twitter.com/jason_om/status/1362168118383026178)
18 February 2021

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Australian public Facebook pages only (i.e. public pages with a majority
of Australian-based admins). Data provided courtesy of CrowdTangle.
Impact

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Facebook News Ban: 18 Feb. 2021 ~7:00 to 26 Feb. 2021 ~5:00
(Data provided courtesy of CrowdTangle.)

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Facebook News Ban
Weekend

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YouTube unaffected
bit.ly affected
Not classified as news?
Still trying to post
Google unaffected

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New launch?
Sharing news tweets

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Near total loss for news sites
News satire flourishes
Bit.ly news links inaccessible
Food media ban reversed
Google as pathway to news
YouTube as pathway to news

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News satire flourishes
News satire flourishes
Tweets as pathway to news
What’s left?
Lifestyle, food,
and sports

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Aftermath

20. (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-
23/facebook-reverses-news-ban-on-
australian-sites-media-code/13173984)

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Platforms Facebook
Behaving Badly

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Defence

23. (https://www.c-span.org/video/?446535-1/cambridge-
analytica-ceo-alexander-nix-testifies-data-misuse)

24. (https://www.thesun.ie/news/2426061/what-did-mark-
zuckerberg-tell-congress-and-did-the-facebook-ceo-address-
the-cambridge-analytica-data-leak-in-his-testimony/)

25. (https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/facebook-instagram-api-shut-down/)

26. (https://thenextweb.com/twitter/2018/07/24/twitter-
to-place-new-restrictions-on-its-api-to-stop-abuse/)

27. (https://socialscience.one/)

28. (https://socialscience.one/blog/public-statement-
european-advisory-committee-social-science-one)

29. (https://www.engadget.com/facebook-misinformation-
researchers-incomplete-data-050143486.html)

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Offence

31. (https://adobserver.org/)

32. (https://mashable.com/article/facebook-nyu-ad-
observatory-time-for-government-regulation)

33. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/
opinion/facebook-misinformation.html)

34. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data.html;
https://twitter.com/brandonsilverm/status/1453147992576258049)

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So Now What?

36. (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1637447)

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The Path Ahead
Four options for scholarly researchers in a hostile environment:
1. Walk away
2. Lobby for change
3. Accommodate and acquiesce
4. Break (?) the rules

38. (http://thepoliticsofsystems.net/2018/08/facebooks-app-review-and-how-independent-research-just-got-a-lot-harder/)

39. (https://us8.campaign-
archive.com/?u=d7d4d3ebfebc5
3a4cc2633526&id=e9a4749c9e)

40. (https://policyreview.info/articles/news/face
book-shuts-gate-after-horse-has-bolted-
and-hurts-real-research-process/786)

41. (https://algorithmwatch.org/en/defend-
public-interest-research-on-platforms/)

42. (https://apps.crowdtangle.com/)

43. (https://fort.fb.com/)

44. admscentre.org.au/searchexperience

45. admscentre.org.au/adobservatory

46. (https://global.polidashboard.com/facebook_ads_v2?country=au)

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Ceterum Censeo

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Cato the Elder, ca. 157 BCE
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Furthermore, I propose that Carthage is to be destroyed.

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Social Media Researchers, ca. 2021 CE
Furthermore, we demand that social media platforms
provide data access to critical, independent, public-interest research.

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This research is funded in part by the Australian Research Council project
DP200101317 Evaluating the Challenge of ‘Fake News’ and Other
Malinformation, and supported by the Australian Research Council Centre
of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.
Facebook data are provided courtesy of CrowdTangle.
The Australian PoliDashboard is a project of the Social Media Lab at
Ryerson University, in partnership with the QUT Digital Media Research
Centre, and is part of an international election transparency initiative.
Acknowledgments