Facebook Blocked Thousands of Pages to Exert Political Pressure
Last year, Facebook wrongly blocked some 17,000 pages in Australia, saying it accidentally when wanted to block news channels. Documents now show that this was a deliberate blunder to avoid stricter regulations.
When Australian lawmakers worked on law in 2020 that would require players like Google and Facebook to pay for the news shared on their platforms, Facebook went off the rails. The proposal would cost the company money and could set a precedent for other countries.
After a first draft of the law was passed, Facebook decided to preemptively shut down all Facebook news pages, formally saying it would otherwise violate the law. But that's where it went wrong. Not only news pages were shut down, but thousands of other pages. Including Facebook pages of hospitals and NGOs, just...