What do you mean I don't have Facebook news in Australia?

You may have woken this morning, boiled the kettle and nestled into the couch to check your Facebook feed for the latest news gossip, stories or local information.

But wait, Barbara? Who’s Barbara? Haven’t heard from her in ages.. why is she popping up in my feed again?

There may have been a few friends posts’ that have come out of the closet, and that’s because Facebook Australia have banned all publishers from posting news on their platform.

*leaves Facebook*

Jokes, I’m back. But you may ask why?

The changes have been made due to the proposed new media bargaining code laws in Australia. The proposed law forces negotiations between tech and media companies and how much cashola should be paid for the news content.

Facebook posted their news article (lol) announcing the banning of news content within Australia. But I do question their statement that users consume/view only 4% of news in their feed. THAT’S JUST A LIE.

“For Facebook, the business gain from news is minimal. News makes up less than 4% of the content people see in their News Feed. Journalism is important to a democratic society, which is why we build dedicated, free tools to support news organisations around the world in innovating their content for online audiences.” Source Facebook.com

Facebook had two choices, to comply with the law or to ban news content on its service, and they chose the latter.

So what does this mean?

You can stop stressing as I’ve already checked, and we still have posts from the Betoota Advocate.

Other than that, pull the recliner back and watch the news uncoil.. but just not on Facebook.