Australian government concerned as Meta dumps transparency tool CrowdTangle

The federal government has reiterated its concerns about the behaviour of digital platforms, after Meta announced it is closing its own tool designed to root out disinformation.

Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland. Picture: Martin Ollman

The Albanese government has reinforced its deep concerns over the corporate and social behaviour of digital platforms, after Meta announced last week it was closing its own misinformation research tool.

Over the next five months, the tech giant will gradually phase out CrowdTangle — a service used by news outlets, academic researchers, and regulators worldwide to monitor viral content and misinformation across social media — and will abandon it completely on August 14.

Meta’s decision to ditch its most effective weapon against the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories — just months out from the US election — has heightened fears that the Mark Zuckerberg-controlled company is actively disengaging with newsrooms across the globe.

The announcement about the decommissioning of CrowdTangle, which was purchased by Facebook as a “content-tracking” tool in 2016, came just a fortnight after Meta informed Australian news publishers that it was going to walk away from discussions about the renegotiation of existing payment-for-news content deals, in a move that will suck hundreds of millions of dollars out of the local news media industry each year.

The Albanese government is under pressure to “designate” Meta under the news media bargaining code, which would require the tech company to negotiate with Australian news publishers for payment-for-content deals or risk fines that could potentially exceed $1 billion.

On Sunday Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the government was continuing to “receive advice” from Treasury and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission about how best to proceed.

“Currently, the ACCC is seeking information from Australian news media publishers as this goes to the important issue of designation under the code,” she said.

“There are certain thresholds that need to be satisfied and information that needs to be gathered. We promptly requested that Australian news media publishers co-operate with an information request.

“We are pleased to say that many of them are doing so right now and that the ACCC is undertaking that important work.”

In a separate statement on Sunday, in response to Meta’s decision to close down CrowdTangle, the federal government doubled down on its criticism of the tech giant’s corporate tactics.

“The government is concerned about the lack of transparency from digital platforms,” the spokesman told The Australian.

“Transparency is an important market and social responsibility of any corporation, including digital platforms. The government’s focus is on the news media bargaining code and ensuring adherence to that law.

“The government has publicly and privately made our position to Meta very clear: Australian news media businesses should be fairly remunerated for news content used on digital platforms.

“Meta’s decision is a clear dereliction of its own commitment to support Australian news media.”

A spokesman for the Australian Communications and Media Authority told The Australian: “The ACMA is concerned the closure of CrowdTangle will reduce the transparency of problematic content and behaviour including misinformation and disinformation on Facebook and Instagram.

“This move will be detrimental to efforts by journalists, third-party fact-checking organisations and others to analyse and report on what is happening on the platforms and will be detrimental to efforts of independent researchers to improve public understanding of disinformation and misinformation.

“We will closely scrutinise Meta’s next transparency report for the measures it puts in place.”

Katy Byron, former editor of news for Snapchat and director of tech partnerships at the Poynter institute in the US, posted on Saturday: “This is just the latest example of platforms like Meta utterly abandoning, longstanding partnerships and relationships with newsrooms. It is so disheartening to watch. But in the much bigger picture, getting rid of this … fact-checking tool says so much about how little these platforms care about democracy.”

A Meta spokesman told The Australian: “Fact checking organisations that work with Meta to identify misinformation on our platforms are being onboarded to the Meta Content Library, this includes fact-checking organisations that we partner with in Australia. Meta will continue to offer its commercial partners – including news and media partners – social insights and analytics through Meta Business Suite and Ad Library.”