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Opinion
Facebook’s dispute with Australia highlights the danger of news deserts
- Facebook’s reaction to new legislation indicates it is focused entirely on turning in huge profits, regardless of the cost to society
- Limiting access to journalism only serves to cover up the truth and provide a cover for disinformation
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Marcelo Rech is a Brazilian journalist and former president of the World Editors Forum (WEF)
The arm-wrestling in Australia, with Facebook and big tech taking on the government and much of civil society, crystallised a question of global concern: what is the purpose of a company that is based on the sharing of content, which it neither pays for nor takes responsibility for, despite earning some US$86 billion in 2020?
Although only a decade-and-a-half old, Facebook already seems out of step with new environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards that the world demands of global companies. Instead, it seems focused entirely on turning in huge profits, regardless of the cost to the democracies and societies it claims to serve.
Since its foundation, Facebook’s business model has been similar to that of a media company – it raises its mountain of cash by selling advertisements to people who view its content. Newspapers and magazines discovered a similar model more than three centuries ago. Facebook, however, took this business model to an extreme. It receives billions of dollars from advertisers, convincing people to provide their data and expose their habits, without paying a penny for the content received.
The dispute in Australia presented itself as a financial controversy. But in essence, we are deciding whether we and future generations will live in democracies in which differences are treated with respect, enabling the search for a common purpose that allows societies to function harmoniously.
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