The Yass Valley Times has been caught up in the global juggernaut FaceBook’s muscle flex in response to the Australian Federal Government’s new Media Bargaining Code.
The Code will force the social media giant to pay mass media companies for their content when shared to the digital media platform.
The algorithm to block all content posted to the Yass Valley Times FaceBook page was put into play this morning.
Yass Valley Times along with most other newspapers, radio and television stations across the nation were also banned with some unexpected targets caught up such as government health sites and businesses.
Our 5000+ social media followers now see no home page photo and a blank post column with a statement “No Posts Yet” despite the regular feed of posts we provide our community with for free.
“We’ve received more than 80,000 hits to our website since our first edition on June 10 2020 and a significant amount of those visits have been referred to us through our social media posts across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram so Facebook’s actions definitely hurt media and local communities,” said Yass Valley Times Editor and co-owner Jasmin Jones.
It’s particularly galling for regional and rural communities where distances between towns and villages can be vast and local media is an important source of relevant fact-checked information about local services and time-sensitive events and opportunities,” Jasmin said.
She also described the shock-action by Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant as proof of why it is so important to have diverse, independent and locally run news services.
“This just demonstrates why local business, councils, state and federal governments should be spending their advertising dollars with local, independent media, and not Facebook. Australians should not give another cent to Facebook which has indirectly allowed inferior news to be shared while legitimate local news services who pay local journalists and support local communities are banned,” she added.
“I don’t see the Federal Government’s Code benefiting regional media operators, it seems to be only taking care of the National players but I also think attempts by Facebook to justify why its business should be exempt from the code unlike Google are farcical.”
“Just because media organisations choose to post their news links to Facebook doesn’t negate FaceBook’s gain from the valuable content our news presents as a legitimate medium to splice their own sponsored content in between post feeds.”
The Yass Valley Times is accessible in traditional print every Wednesday, as an annual subscription for full digital access as a flippable online paper and featured news via our website www.yassvalleytimes.com.au
Editor Jasmin Jones gave this pearl of wisdom to anyone considering using FaceBook for advertising.
“Do yourself a favour, advertise in your local paper but if you are determined to use Facebook to spread the news about something, don’t buy an ad from Zuckerberg’s, buy a tray of meat from your local butcher or a basket of locally made goods and ask people to like and share your post for a chance to win. You’ll be supporting a local business while not paying directly for advertising with Facebook.”
