A quick slice: Facebook blocks all news in Australia. Google doesn't. Why?

A lot's been going on down under. You may not have been paying attention. A quick look at all the news. Or the lack of it.

So, Facebook blocks all news (and related) posts in Australia. From Reuters:

Australians woke to empty news feeds on their Facebook Inc pages on Thursday after the social media giant blocked all media content in a surprise and dramatic escalation of a dispute with the government over paying for content.

So, how did this come to roost. I will let the BBC explain that:

How did we get here?

There have long been concerns about the market dominance of tech firms over media organisations.

Google is the dominant search engine in Australia and has been described by the government as a near-essential utility, with little market competition.

So, in 2018, an Australian government regulator launched an inquiry into the impact of Google and Facebook on competition in media and advertising.

The inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) found an imbalance of power between tech firms and the media.

Given this, the regulator recommended introducing a code of conduct that it said would level the playing field.

In July last year, the Australian government unveiled a draft law to enforce the code, provoking threats from Facebook and Google to withdraw services in the country.

What is the draft news code?

The draft calls on tech companies to pay for content, though it does not define what it is worth.

The law would enable news companies to negotiate as a bloc with tech firms for content which appears in their news feeds and search results.

If negotiations fail, the matter could be arbitrated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Google goes the other way and has broken from its common stance with Facebook and has struck deals with the big publishers, notably News Corp, as SFGate reports:

News Corp. said it would receive “significant payments” from Google in the three-year agreement, which includes heavyweight news organizations throughout the English-speaking world, such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Post in the U.S., the Times and the Sun in the U.K., and the Australian and Sky News in Australia. The deal spans audio and video and News Corp. will also get an ad revenue share from Google.

So, why have these seemingly comrades-in-arms till now gone in opposite directions. It always depends on who has more to lose. Money, that is. Facebook thinks publishers gain more than they do by being in their walled garden. They have always quoted a figure around 4% being the share of news of their audience’s total viewing. Google has a more balanced equation.

From the Business Insider:

Facebook said in a blog post that the law "fundamentally misunderstands" its relationship with publishers - which it argued benefits publishers more. Facebook said news content is "less than 4% of the content people see" and that it brought in around $315 million for Australian publishers in 2020.

With less to lose, in its view, Facebook pulled the plug.

Google this week has been working on massive deals with top Australian media companies Seven West, Nine Entertainment, and even News Corp, which the company has repeatedly sparred with, and has been expanding its News Showcase in the region.

I will leave you with this from the NYT, which best explains why Google can never not have news and Facebook can;

..Facebook and Google ultimately value news differently. Google’s mission statement has long been to organize the world’s information, an ambition that is not achievable without up-to-the-minute news. For Facebook, news is not as central. Instead, the company positions itself as a network of users coming together to share photos, political views, internet memes, videos — and, on occasion, news articles.