AS OF midnight (Australia), Facebook has blocked many sources of news for their users. A number of sites simply report “no posts” and thus no news feed.
Although the actual newspapers have their own sites that are still available and will continue to be so, many people get all of their news from Facebook and so are at the moment uninformed.
The Facebook pages that are blocked also concerningly include state police, health sites and even the Bureau of Meteorology.
At this stage, the spread seems overly broad with commercial and charity pages blocked from new postings, perhaps any site the says “News”.
The Australian government is enacting legislation that would require digital companies, including Facebook and Google, to pay for news content. Although the majority of these news stories can be obtained from their home sites, the blocking of any media and news reporting by anyone is very worrying.
It could be that this is Facebook’s way of saying that if you want us to pay for your journalism, then we are not going to play and going away.
If news, especially reliable, researched and accurate news, is to be developed, then anyone who uses it should pay for it in some way, as I and many do with a subscription to several physical and online newspapers.
I will be following this story although apparently not by Facebook posts.
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Just like Dad
It is often thought that intelligence is inherited although now there may be evidence that stupidity can also be inherited.
Donald Trump Jr. has attacked teachers because they don’t want to work in unsafe conditions and said that “The teachers’ unions are out of control and are destroying our kids’ future!”
Nobody should have to work in an unsafe environment although often service members, first responders and medical workers face danger regularly.
The teaching environment is meant to be a safe and supportive one, whereas Trump Jr. is not showing any support and wants them to face a danger to their health.
Yes, poor education can damage a kid’s future, but so can poverty, racism, poor medical facilities and poor employment prospectives. Time to turn off not just the Trump twitter feed but the whole family’s coverage. (dfitzger@melbpc.org.au/PN)
