There Are No Girls on the Internet - DISINFORMED： Facebook’s bans news in Australia is silencing activists

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00:01:04.060 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

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00:01:54.660 You're listening to Disinformed, a miniseries from There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:59.680 I'm Bridget Todd.

00:02:04.180 This week, Australian social media users suddenly found themselves banned from sharing content on Facebook.

00:02:09.960 This was an escalation of Facebook's attempts to resist the Australian government's push

00:02:13.680 to make big tech companies pay news publishers

00:02:16.500 when news content shows up in their search results and their platforms.

00:02:20.280 And according to FT, it's one of the most far-reaching restrictions

00:02:23.440 Facebook has ever placed on publishers in any part of the world.

00:02:26.500 This comes as Google struck a separate deal with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp

00:02:29.800 to pay for some of their news content,

00:02:31.940 resolving their ongoing dispute with the Australian media giant.

00:02:35.460 Last month, Google threatened to pull out of Australia altogether.

00:02:38.980 Now, the Facebook ban is far-reaching.

00:02:41.680 It blocks posts from any Australian publisher from being seen anywhere in the world,

00:02:45.420 and it blocks all users in Australia from seeing any news content,

00:02:49.220 even from non-Australian publishers, the Washington Post reports.

00:02:53.200 Facebook used the broadest definition of news content,

00:02:56.060 so it's not just impacting news publishers.

00:02:58.240 Organizations like nonprofits and activist organizations,

00:03:01.060 many of whom rely on social media to get their message and resources out there,

00:03:04.320 were unable to do so.

00:03:06.140 So for services like food banks or domestic violence centers, some of whom found themselves

00:03:10.040 blocked from posting, Facebook's hasty move could keep people from getting access to critical

00:03:14.560 resources during a pandemic.

00:03:16.560 We need to talk about the ways this move will impact Australians who use the internet to

00:03:20.140 do important work.

00:03:21.520 People like digital organizer Tabitha Falker. 0.86

00:03:24.300 Tabitha and I met in the United States when I was running a boot camp for digital activists.

00:03:28.480 Today, she runs Organize Us, an organization that trains Australian activists to use the

00:03:33.120 internet and social media to make change.

00:03:35.500 I joined her in Australia to help train digital activists in 2017, and she's been fighting

00:03:40.040 for change since college.

00:03:41.700 When I was at university, I got involved in grassroots environmental activism.

00:03:47.660 So I was actually going down to forests and helping stopping them getting cut down for

00:03:54.180 wood chips.

00:03:54.940 And so I very much started my kind of career, I guess, as it's become, in activism as a

00:04:01.940 university student just seeing some injustices in the world and wanting to make some positive

00:04:06.740 change around them and that led me into actually changing my major and becoming a journalist

00:04:12.080 and from there after working on daily newspapers for years I really missed the progressive sector

00:04:19.100 so I took a full-time role at a big national environmental organization where I was lucky

00:04:26.100 enough to join that just as the time where digital technologies really started to shape the way

00:04:32.760 that organisations were talking to their supporters. But through that, I kind of found

00:04:37.160 myself again, realising that there was a lack of skills and understanding of what digital

00:04:42.220 technologies can do. And I left that organisation to start up Organise Us, which is a digital

00:04:49.380 communication and training agency. So we work with lots of different non-profits and grassroots

00:04:54.940 its organisers, both helping them to develop their digital strategy and roll that out,

00:04:59.740 but also running a really comprehensive training program.

00:05:03.520 And that's actually where I met you, Bridget, when I was lucky enough to come across to

00:05:08.680 the US and learn under some amazing digital organisers in how to both use technology,

00:05:17.160 but also how to train other people in using technology.

00:05:20.700 So that was quite a life-changing, pivotal moment for me.

00:05:24.940 From her training work, Tabitha has tapped into a network of Australian climate and human rights

00:05:29.560 campaigners who all use social media heavily in their work. And she says the Facebook ban

00:05:34.540 sent panic through her community. So we all grabbed out our phones and went to log on to

00:05:40.320 our Facebook pages and suddenly noticed that we couldn't share or post any news articles.

00:05:47.400 And actually for a lot of non-profit organizations, their Facebook profiles were entirely blank. So

00:05:53.600 the banner images gone and all the content was gone from their feeds and we went oh god what's

00:05:59.940 going on here and so jumped onto news sites and quickly realized that Facebook had decided to

00:06:08.460 implement their new sharing ban across the platform for anyone in Australia. So that

00:06:14.260 basically means that you can't access or share any news articles of Australian media or international

00:06:20.700 media across their platform if you're residing in Australia. We knew that this was a possibility

00:06:28.020 for a little while. So Australia, the Australian government has been in conversations with Facebook

00:06:35.880 for a while around this idea that Facebook should be paying news agencies like Rupert Murdoch to

00:06:45.160 have access to news on their platform so there's been a really big tussle going on politically

00:06:51.280 and facebook basically a large piece of that legislation passed our house of representatives

00:06:57.780 last week and is likely to pass our upper house the senate within a week's time so i guess facebook

00:07:05.440 realized that it needed to kind of fire a warning shot about what this new new media landscape would

00:07:14.360 looked like if the Australian government went ahead with creating this legislation.

00:07:18.820 So how was Facebook able to do this? And what were some of the impacts that you saw?

00:07:21.920 Well, the problem was, is that there, and the problem is, is that there's no legal definition

00:07:26.840 of what news is in Australia. So Facebook has turned around and said, well, if there isn't a

00:07:33.360 legal definition of what news is that we can agree on, we're going to take the broadest term of what

00:07:39.540 news is and that is how it's impacted a lot of government Facebook pages, health-based Facebook

00:07:45.880 pages and non-profit and community organising Facebook pages. They sort of cast the net really

00:07:51.760 wide to show that it's going to be really difficult to regulate this piece of legislation if it goes

00:07:59.020 through and so for us it was really difficult because first of all we're in a global pandemic

00:08:05.320 and people are relying on social media to access health information and there were local and

00:08:10.560 community pages that are giving that information who suddenly found their entire Facebook feed

00:08:15.760 empty of content and also a lot of amazing campaigns and organizations that have invested

00:08:21.960 time energy and money into developing these Facebook communities over years and years and

00:08:27.840 years find panicking that all of that hard work and that community was now gone so there was

00:08:33.720 definitely a sense of panic and we noticed that my inbox started to explode my messaging was

00:08:38.840 exploding because we work with so many organizations across their digital where they

00:08:43.040 were saying our pages are blank what's going on and so we reached out to Facebook um and and pulled

00:08:50.540 together a spreadsheet and currently in that spreadsheet there's over 200 non-profits and

00:08:54.880 community groups whose pages have been impacted so we've put out the call and organizations have

00:09:00.540 been listing their issues so basically there's two issues one is that as I've already explained

00:09:05.140 pages are entirely blank of content or a second issue and you could fall into both of these

00:09:11.680 categories or just one of these categories the second issue is that organizations found that

00:09:16.560 they could no longer post web links from their own websites so for example the Australian Council

00:09:21.880 of Trade Unions couldn't post the link to their join the union page it was blocked and so Facebook

00:09:29.580 we reached out to Facebook and they told us that they were taking the broadest sense of what the

00:09:37.580 news was but that they did not expect government political and some non-news and

00:09:44.760 non-for-profit pages to be impacted by yesterday's announcement and that the actions that they were

00:09:51.160 taking were focused on restricting publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing

00:09:55.240 Australian and international news content the problem was is that they implemented this incredibly

00:10:00.460 fast based on the government's process and it's it's caused chaos there's been a lot of issues

00:10:06.980 and a lot of glitches so they've asked us in good faith to give them that spreadsheet and that they

00:10:13.100 are going through and reinstating those pages that are impacted um and of those 500 pages I've had a

00:10:20.200 this morning and about 10 have been reinstated so far. And they're moving through and have

00:10:25.960 committed to be reinstating those pages. I've read reports of food banks having their Facebook

00:10:32.180 pages be blocked, domestic violence shelters. We're still in a pandemic. And it's the idea

00:10:39.280 that Facebook would allow for people who are providing critical services, time-sensitive

00:10:45.600 critical services you know food domestic violence this stuff can't wait the fact that they would

00:10:51.100 block these pages as a as a kind of bargaining chip is really something

00:10:56.300 it is really something but I do I do want to clarify that I don't think it's as a war between

00:11:03.920 Facebook and the Australian government I think this is a war between Facebook and Rupert Murdoch

00:11:08.380 and so we have two massive monopolies we've got the traditional media monopoly with the figure

00:11:15.900 head of Rupert Murdoch and then we've got this new media landscape and monopoly with the head

00:11:21.980 of Zuckerberg and so this is really a money-grabbing exercise so I think that when you look at the media

00:11:29.860 bargaining code which is this piece of legislation that we're talking about the code itself is really

00:11:35.720 flawed. It's had a flawed approach from the start. Facebook blocking access to news for Australians

00:11:41.860 is just one of the possible outcomes of this proposal. If we're really serious about looking

00:11:47.540 at media ownership and having a fair democratic media landscape, both in the traditional media

00:11:53.640 and the new media, we need people who are making decisions around this that are informed on these

00:11:58.540 technologies, who are understanding that these are also communities. It's not straight broadcast

00:12:04.700 media in that traditional term, and that fundamentally Facebook doesn't have to be

00:12:11.460 putting up news media because they're a privately owned company. So they have done that in the past.

00:12:16.940 So I think that there are some big, broad, philosophical conversations that we need to be

00:12:21.140 having around the future of media, both in the traditional sense and the new media sense.

00:12:26.400 This dispute between Facebook and Rupert Murdoch has created big problems for digital

00:12:30.480 organizers like Tabitha. But as a campaigner and a former journalist, someone whose work involves

00:12:35.520 persuasion and sending an effective message, she kind of understands it as a tactic.

00:12:40.160 Rupert Murdoch has a direct line of communication with Australia's prime minister.

00:12:44.640 So I think that as much as I entirely disagree with Facebook's approach of blocking so many

00:12:52.540 pages and so many incredibly vital pages, I do understand the approach and we're campaigners.

00:12:59.860 and so if I was going to run a campaign on this front you would be thinking about there's a threat

00:13:04.660 of legislation being implemented in five days time we need to show what the impact of this could look

00:13:10.920 like and Australia is being used as that case study and that scapegoat in that so Facebook

00:13:17.180 really needs to reinstate these pages if they're going to keep um that community spirit alive on

00:13:25.220 its platforms it needs to understand and apologize for this with its community but I also part of me

00:13:30.820 as a as a reform journalist as I like to call it I understand the why the why they've taken this

00:13:36.720 approach um news media in Australia accounts for about four percent of the content that's across

00:13:43.240 Facebook and I think that there are some incredibly clever campaigners and organizers who have already

00:13:49.940 noticed that over the last 12 months Facebook has kind of been moving in this direction if you post

00:13:54.100 a news link on your your page your engagement is really low but if you are repurposing that news

00:13:59.880 and repurposing that content through the voice of your supporters and the voice of your community

00:14:04.300 then your engagement spikes so as digital organizers and content creators we need to be

00:14:09.580 thinking about how we are telling our own stories in our own way and really focusing in on that

00:14:16.000 engagement having said that then that also does bring real concerns around misinformation being

00:14:21.920 portrayed across these platforms when we can't have really solid fact-checked independent

00:14:28.660 reportage on these platforms as well. That's such a great point. And I know that as a digital

00:14:33.780 organizer and your network of digital organizers, y'all are some of the most innovative folks out

00:14:38.980 there. Have folks already started talking about creative ways around it, like how you're going

00:14:44.440 to sort of innovate so that you can still get your message out there, even with Facebook doing

00:14:48.800 these kinds of things definitely so we facilitated a snap webinar yesterday afternoon um with most of

00:14:56.800 the progressive organizers across australia so everyone hundreds of people jumped onto a webinar

00:15:01.060 and we started to have that exact conversation first of all we just wanted to let everyone know

00:15:05.540 that we've been having these conversations and that facebook is promising to reinstate these

00:15:09.920 pages but then we stepped into the space to have those conversations so um basically it's like how

00:15:16.400 to tell the news without having to actually link across to news and there are some really

00:15:22.460 interesting fun and creative ways of doing that um and we've started having that shared conversation

00:15:27.900 and and upskilling everybody to be thinking about what does this look like everyone's really happy

00:15:33.880 to move away from the Rupert Murdoch press um the part of this that is really strong is going to

00:15:39.320 continue to struggle is like independent media um satire political commentary because they are

00:15:45.740 all currently falling under that definition of news and are losing their ability to post their

00:15:51.220 content so I mean there's a really good opportunity for cartoonists for graphic designers for video

00:15:58.380 creators to think about new ways of sharing news and getting that information across but

00:16:04.980 bloody hell hopefully Facebook does reverse its decision and we can start to share news links

00:16:12.280 again because ideally this isn't the way we want to continue going forward. What do you think about

00:16:17.600 the idea that Facebook, just one company, has this kind of power to really shape the entire

00:16:24.360 media landscape of Australia? Like what do you think of one company having that power to

00:16:28.780 have that kind of impact? I think it's a flawed approach but and sadly we've been living in a

00:16:38.040 monopoly media landscape for a really long time um so i don't agree that facebook should be able

00:16:44.280 to hold that kind of power and i also don't agree that large organizations like news call could be

00:16:49.320 holding that amount of power um a decision was made uh federal again government decision was made

00:16:55.440 a few years ago which enabled rupert murdoch to buy up most of the regional newspapers across

00:17:02.700 Australia. And in the last 12 months, they've closed 112 local newspapers, just closed them

00:17:10.080 and moved them into a digital landscape. So if the news agencies and news monopolies are really

00:17:18.180 serious about driving revenue, they should be continuing these publications and allowing local

00:17:24.720 ad spends to fuel their business model. So I disagree that Facebook should be funding Rupert

00:17:30.660 Murdoch's business model. But I also disagree that Facebook should be able to basically run

00:17:36.540 tax-free in so many countries across the world as well. So we need to be looking at the way

00:17:41.540 big tech is regulated at that federal level. But I don't think that it should just be an argument

00:17:48.580 between traditional media and new media and allow that to create the discourse.

00:17:54.160 Definitely. I completely agree. And I think that something that you really point out that I think

00:17:57.880 is essential is that, you know, in this, in these two factions of media warring, it's independent

00:18:05.120 journalism, it's local journalism, it's people making content that are already marginalized or

00:18:11.180 having a hard time getting that platform, who I feel can really be in the crosshairs. And it's

00:18:15.580 important to lift up the folks who are, you know, doing that work, whether it's, you know, local

00:18:21.960 journalists or, you know, satire or folks who may not have this big platform. I worry that it's

00:18:27.960 those already marginalized creators and, you know, media makers who are going to be most hurt by

00:18:35.600 these kinds of decisions. Absolutely. It would be a great outcome of this battle if

00:18:42.940 independent media, satirists, political commentators were able to get a seat at the

00:18:50.960 table and develop a categorization of what news is and allow these smaller thought-provoking

00:19:00.680 think tanks to still be able to build up their audiences across these platforms and hold those

00:19:06.080 communities. Imagine if we were able to kind of dull the noise of the right-wing or the

00:19:13.580 Rupert Murdoch-owned media across these platforms and enabled these smaller ones to have a bigger

00:19:19.440 voice and take up more space on there. That would be a fantastic outcome of this process.

00:19:24.800 That's exactly what I want to see globally. You know, more people being included in the

00:19:27.680 conversation and having a seat at the table and a real voice and not just big right-wing

00:19:32.100 noise machines being able to drown everyone else out. So what's next? You know, what's the path

00:19:36.940 forward? We get creative. We come together as a community. We hold Facebook accountable and make

00:19:44.780 Facebook recognise that it has been like the non-profit sector is huge and they've invested

00:19:52.680 money, resources, energy and time into building these communities and they need to reinstate

00:19:59.180 these pages immediately and ensure that they continue to be thriving communities,

00:20:07.060 particularly around these issues that everyone's advocating for. But then I think this is a great

00:20:13.100 opportunity as organisers to become together and be super creative, thinking about how we are

00:20:18.500 telling our own stories, relying less on traditional media, coming up with creative

00:20:23.620 ways of amplifying diverse voices, diverse ways of developing content, and ensuring that

00:20:32.460 we also are stepping out into a whole bunch of different platforms that are allowing our stories

00:20:39.620 to be told and are not holding us accountable based

00:20:42.660 on these decisions and this legislation.

00:20:44.780 Is there anybody or any organisation out there who you think

00:20:47.900 is really doing cutting-edge creative work

00:20:50.840 around getting their story out there?

00:20:54.980 Funnily enough, I've fallen in love with a couple

00:20:58.080 of different news sources on Instagram who are just simply

00:21:02.660 using the slide technique to tell news media stories

00:21:06.520 really quickly so in sound bites um I think that that's fantastic there's a woman Jess Harwood who

00:21:13.600 has just been thriving over the past 12 months she's a cartoonist and she is supporting the

00:21:19.980 work of so many different organizations with really creative storytelling um and getting

00:21:25.060 her work kind of broadcast on the BBC for example um I think that there are some incredible video

00:21:32.780 producers and there's an organisation in Australia that has really kind of 12 months ago decided that

00:21:39.500 it wanted to sort of step away as I was mentioning from regular news media and that's GetUp and they

00:21:44.800 have just seen incredible engagement when they are putting news stories through the voices and

00:21:51.220 through the faces of their community, their membership-based community. People are wanting to

00:21:57.860 follow these pages because they're interested in storytelling from that page's perspective.

00:22:03.760 And I think we need to remember that, that we are our own best storytellers.

00:22:08.760 I love that. Tabitha, where can folks keep up with all the amazing work that you're doing?

00:22:14.180 So they can follow us at organizeus.com.au. Jump on there. We've got a newsletter that we're

00:22:21.180 emailing out to people.

00:22:22.240 We have some incredible Facebook pages and groups

00:22:27.200 that are still currently operating and we are running

00:22:32.820 a whole comprehensive training program that is going

00:22:35.520 to be really leaning into this issue and really encouraging organisers

00:22:39.420 to be thinking about how they're creating engaging content

00:22:42.160 across multiple channels in really fun and engaging ways

00:22:47.300 so that we're not caught up in this tussle

00:22:49.580 between traditional media and new tech,

00:22:52.080 but we're being able to tell our own stories our own way.

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00:23:16.460 There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:23:17.920 It's a production of iHeartRadio

00:23:19.380 and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our

00:23:23.860 supervising producer and engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,

00:23:28.760 Bridget Todd. For more great podcasts, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:23:33.140 or wherever you get your podcasts.

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00:24:04.240 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:24:08.320 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app,

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - February 21, 2021

DISINFORMED： Facebook’s bans news in Australia is silencing activists

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