Star Observer’s Statement On The Facebook Ban
On Thursday nearly 30,000 LGBTQI community members lost access to Star Observer’s Facebook page. On a daily basis they accessed Australian generated, queer focused content from across our country and around the world.
For over 42 years the Star Observer has been one of Australia’s only LGBTQI owned and operated publishing businesses. We provided some of the first coverage in Australia about the HIV AIDS epidemic. This week we were the only media outlet to report on a shortage of PrEP in Australia. We condemn Facebook’s decision to remove that and other posts that inform and champion the issues of the community.
Facebook’s decision to block access to often life-saving information from one of Australia’s and the world’s oldest running LGBTQI publications comes in the midst of a global pandemic. Just when COVID-19 vaccine rollouts are due to begin in Australia, it is a disconcerting, troubling and irresponsible development.
Since 1979, the Star Observer has printed, published and distributed a freely available LGBTQI print publication containing unique and vital Australian content.
We will not be silenced by Mark Zuckerberg. We intend to continue printing and freely disturbing queer community news without fail. We will ensure our readers are able to access crucial news and information on all the available social media as well as via old-fashioned, offline platforms.
We encourage everyone to subscribe to our regular e-newsletter for free. Once a week subscribers will receive our diverse community news coverage along with national and international LGBTQI stories in your inbox free of charge. Our stories are not barricaded behind a corporate paywall. Please comment sensibly and sensitively on our website without fear of being censored.
Facebook didn’t invent robust, credible, independent journalism. But they’re doing everything they can to kill it. Log on to www.starobserver.com.au and subscribe to our free newsletter. Pick up our free monthly magazine in Sydney and Melbourne. Support independent queer, Australian media. Together, will not be silenced.
– Star Observer Editorial Team
I know lots of people use Facebook but I think since it is such a right wing capitalist company owned by an anti social arrogant idiot we should not give hiim the pleasure of caring about his Facebook monopoly. I have never used it and get all the news and emergency services I need. I am amazed so many think it is essential. It’s not. Give Facebook the flick.
Star Observer is either a patsy for the LNP, or you’re being played by them.
The AU LNP gov’t is the bully here. I’m shocked at how many people don’t understand they’re being manipulated for the benefit of Murdoch & to redirect attention away from the many corruption issues current in the LNP party in AU. There is a royal commission ready to bring Rupert Murdock’s monopoly of the media to court, ffs! The LNP gov’t is 1) launching this attack for his benefit because he OWNS THEM, & 2) it’s a smokescreen to evade ALL of their MANY corruption issues at hand!
Facebook & Google have been attacked for nothing. THE AU LNP GOVT IS THE BULLY. The following is a description of narcissists, but just replace that word with, “LNP” as you read:
Narcissists also like to truncate the story and present only the bit where the aggrieved party reacted to their toxic behaviour, framing it as if that’s where the story started.
Or they twist it by using euphemisms and deceiving language (I’m not controlling, I just want what’s best for you.).
For example, if a narcissist dislikes you and tries to bully you but you stand up for yourself, they will frame it as if they are the ones being a victim of bullying. In their narrative they simply left out what happened beforehand when they bullied you, so actually you being mean to them is a normal response to toxic behaviour.
Here, by leaving out or downplaying their aggression they simply frame you engaging in self-defense as vile aggression against them. And then they think: How dare you react or challenge me! You’re so sensitive and unfair! That’s why you deserve everything that’s coming!
Here’s what my son wrote to his local MP. I’d like to see SOMEONE get this posted to a WIDER audience:
I logged on to Facebook this morning, and was greeted by the following message: “In response to Australian government legislation, Facebook 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.” Reading the legislation itself, I’m not surprised Facebook went down this route.
This legislation proposes things that are deeply unsettling:
– The government grants private companies the right to moderate individual citizens’ correspondence (Facebook posts).
– Your user data, collected by digital services, is forcibly given to third parties WITHOUT your consent.
– The code is sweeping in nature, such that the Treasurer can apply it to ANY digital platform (Twitter, email, private correspondence) at any time, and hampers future innovation
– The fact that the ability to communicate public information, free speech itself, on various platforms, is permanently compromised.
As someone who works in technology, seeing things like this doesn’t just make me want to vote against the Liberals, I want to pull out of Australia altogether. This is the exact opposite of “promoting individual freedoms”, and having a “lean government that doesn’t put undue burdens onto businesses”. The government is setting the precedent that they can openly mischaracterise businesses (Google is NOT “a referral service” any more than Domino’s is a transport company!) and approves of heavy-handed tactics that compromise not just the free market, but the speech and services available to its citizens. I can no longer post links to news sites on Facebook, and no tech startup in their right mind would start work on a service that has to deal with sudden, burdensome legislation like this.
Google and Facebook are NOT monopolies, and news businesses can advertise however they see fit. Other search engines exist, and anyone could begin development on one today. And I’ll be very honest: IF a news company would not exist, simply because of poor placement in a search algorithm and in spite of advertising, then the free market decided that their content was not valuable and they should not exist. There are countless, lucrative businesses that exist behind paywalls or have content that is not indexed with Google.
Google and Facebook don’t even decide what websites people visit, or what things end up in posts, people do. What this legislation does, is interfere with organic online communication and hurts an “open internet”. If you want to launch an antitrust regarding exactly what results are shown to users, because you think Google has an anti-news-media bias, then I’m on board. If you just want to introduce a “big tech tax” and use it to fund things like journalism or social services, at least that would be honest. But it frankly pisses me off when governments act like they’re being laudable, whilst actually stifling the rights of their own citizens. (narcissistic trait, again).
LNP – Google provides a referral service to news media businesses…
It is IMPOSSIBLE to run advertising on Google News; Google Search is not a referral service for news media businesses, it’s a hypertext search engine. Their service takes user queries and finds the best possible match amidst billions of possible HTTP resources which they have catalogued using web crawlers, and track the relevance of results using analytics.
As such, this argument could apply to literally any industry if they have any web presence at all. For example: “As a car salesman, there is a bargaining imbalance; if links to my website don’t appear in Google, it hampers my sales”, as a “realtor”, as a “restaurant owner”, etc. The issue is that any digital service that attempts to catalogue HTTP resources, to allow for logical navigation of the internet, is in this position. Hence why I stated that, “… the ease and availability of content on the internet itself seems to be the cause of the situation”. Google is not a “headhunter” that “finds news organisations an audience”, they are a database service that matches keywords to relevant results. This legislation proposes to charge tech companies for providing a service, wilfully miscategorises what they do, and endangers future tech companies in Australia.
Charging search engines & aggregators for collecting and distributing publicly available content sets a chilling precedent. I am not paid by the whitepages for them to include my phone number in their catalogue. If they had to pay everyone who they collected the data from, as well as pay you every time someone used their information to contact you, then how does whitepages exist? Entire business-models are undermined.
LNP – Links to, and snippets of, news media content enhance the attractiveness of the service Google is able to offer consumers
Google is providing a free service to news sites by directing users to them. If search engines didn’t exist, the average website would get less traffic and news companies would make less money. If Google granted unfair search engine ranking, or you had to pay to be listed with Google, there’d at least be an argument there. And Facebook just shows a user’s posts to their friends; outside of paid ads, how does my mother being able to post a news link for my sister create an “unfair bargaining imbalance with news media”?
And I’m sorry to be blunt, but this also seems like a strawman argument. It proposes that Google extracts unique value from news media content, that their service would be worse without. However, they allow any and all websites on the internet the ability to exclude their URLs from Google’s web crawlers. If news content was integral to their service, why would they freely and easily let people opt out of being indexed? This is doubly true with Facebook, as they opted to just disable links to news sites altogether, that is how obviously peripheral it is to their service.
LNP – …it is an unavoidable trading partner… having links to their websites on Google is a necessity
I think not acknowledging the benefits afforded to sites with good SEO would be silly. Google is the biggest search engine in the world, so having good SEO should help more people discover your content. However, to play devil’s advocate, for many news sites / online publishers, this statement is untrue. This is a direct quote from the New York Times in 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/projects/2020-report/index.html:
We are, in the simplest terms, a subscription-first business. Our focus on subscribers sets us apart in crucial ways from many other media organizations. We are not trying to maximize clicks and sell low-margin advertising against them. We are not trying to win a pageviews arms race. We believe that the more sound business strategy for The Times is to provide journalism so strong that several million people around the world are willing to pay for it. Of course, this strategy is also deeply in tune with our longtime values.
Subscription based services are being actively used to fund numerous news organisations today, like the NYT and Medium among others. A subscription-based service is not reliant on search engines like Google to maintain revenue, assuming they continue to provide a useful service. Likewise, news sites could advertise or distribute their content via literally any other mechanism: Ads on buses, billboards, television, radio, word of mouth, even other websites (this is how most businesses work). I don’t look for tradesmen on Google, I find them via referrals from friends and family, because I value their opinions more than an algorithm. If a news site puts out quality, trusted content, then viewers will remain loyal and continue to pay for it; that’s precisely the way the free market is supposed to work.
I’d also honestly disagree with the determination that Google is even a “trading partner” for news media in a strict sense. According to the Cambridge dictionary, a trading partner is, “A region or country that another region or country buys goods from or sells goods to”. Outside of the purchasing of preferential ad placement, news media companies do not sell goods to or buy goods from Google Search, nor vice versa. And Google does not run ads on Google News.
If the issue was an imbalance of power when it came specifically to news resources, then why is it not the proposal that Google is simply disallowed from selling preferred ad placement to news agencies? If this were put in place, then Google wouldn’t be a “trading partner” with news agencies at all, as they would receive zero goods from one another. If the issue is that Google is unfairly manipulating search results, then why isn’t the proposal a tribunal or an antitrust investigation into the company, such as those launched by the European Union on different issues?
LNP – It is intended to protect smaller companies while encouraging negotiations…
Then why does this code not apply to businesses that make under $150,000 annually? My reading of the proposed legislation leaves me believing that independent and international journalists with small turnovers are specifically unprotected? Has there been an amendment to this section, or in what way am I wrong?
From my original correspondence, these following comments were unaddressed:
– Risks / reduction of future tech development in Australia,
– Threats to freedom of speech and expression,
– Forced personal data disclosure to third parties,
– Hindering of digital services used by Australians by locking development behind a 28 day waiting period,
– Current media ownership/monopoly in Australia has a pending royal commission,
– The point of the $150,000 revenue test, which seems to stifle proper competition,
– International news sources do not receive the same treatment under the code.
A cursory reading of the code, really seems to show a slant towards big news media in Australia (Murdoch) whilst simultaneously hampering tech innovation & individual liberties.
You may want to edit that from “disturbing” to “distributing” ;-)
I gave up on facebook for my mental health’s sake in 2016. It just left me permanently furious about something or other.
When Facebook began I joined. The next day on the oh-so-genteel ABC-TV’s Morning Breakfast Show they raise an issue – nothing controversial you understand – and asked viewers to comment via facebook. I made a comment – my 1st on facebook – the next thing I knew I received a torrent of abuse – I never worked out just what it was I had said that was so obnoxious! I immediately closed my account. That was some years ago and I have never tried to rejoin. I get the Star Observer on-line – yes. it is a bot East Coast Centric but at least we in South Australia have that for there is absolutely nothing in SA in the way of media coverage for our community.
We don’t really NEED facebook do we? There are so many ways to communicate today and SO’s On-line edition is great.
Blame Scomo and Murdoch not facebook
Facebook’s actions are risible, but the poorly drafted and rushed legislation, basically drafted by Murdoch, takes some of the blame as well. Murdoch ensured the impacts would be felt as widely as possible.
One has to seriously reflect on how conditioned society has become. Time to go “old school” people, Facebook is not the only source of information.
Remember: It is a “tool to aid in the communication of information”. I grew up with “Star⭐️Observer” and love what you do, and I’ll continue to go to “the source”.
I’m no fan of Facebook but that story sounds like misplaced anger. I doubt Zuckerberg even registers Star’s existence let alone targeting you guys. I mean for years you’ve benefited from Facebook for free right? Whether that be through promoting Star & it’s stories, accessing people that wouldn’t normally be able to access hard copies of Star or being able to relay important news to the community. Maybe it’s more of a case of the media & government trying to save media businesses not through innovation but by essentially demanding that the hand that feeds them also fund them. As for Covid, maybe that should be directed at why Morrison & cronies chose now to take on 2 of the biggest social media news sharing platforms during the pandemic. Just a slightly less hysterical & not self interested perpective.