Australia should hold its nerve against Facebook Rod Sims says

Papua New Guinea has banned Facebook and Australia should make a similar bold move and grant regulators more power to rein in the tech behemoth, former competition tsar Rod Sims says.

Rod Sims says ‘governments have got to set their own policies’. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Australia should take note of Papua New Guinea’s ban on Facebook and give local regulators greater powers to rein in US tech giants as scams and misinformation run rife on their platforms, former competition watchdog boss Rod Sims says.

PNG – which has about 1.3 million Facebook users – has blocked access to the social media platform to limit hate speech, misinformation and pornography.

It banned the platform under its Anti-Terrorism Act, attracting criticism that it was suppressing free speech, with Opposition Minister Allan Bird branding the move “draconian”.

But Police Minster Peter Tsiamalili defended the move, saying the government had a responsibility to protect PNG citizens from harmful content. Meta declined to comment on the ban.

Mr Sims – the architect of Australia’s news media bargaining code which allowed social media platforms to compensate news outlets for using their content – did not advocate prohibition like PNG.

But he said the bold move from the Pacific nation should embolden the Albanese government to hold its nerve and not be pushed around by Facebook owner Meta and other US tech companies that are seeking to use their power to influence government policy.

“Governments have got to set their own policies. They can’t be dominated by another country, particularly another country that’s being driven by the massive financial strength of the platforms,” Mr Sims said.

“We just need to think about the massive power where people have got so much money they can bankroll governments and get their own way to suit their own self interest.”

A powerful grouping, which represents the interest of US tech giants – including Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and one of Donald Trump’s biggest financial backers Elon Musk – has accused Australia of unfairly targeting them through the News Media Bargaining Code.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association said in a submission to US trade representative Jamieson Greer that the code was a “coercive and discriminatory tax that requires US technology companies to subsidise Australian media companies”. Mr Zuckerberg walked away from the code last year and switched off Facebook’s news tab.

It comes amid growing concerns in Canberra over Mr Trump’s trade war, the imposition of steel and aluminium tariffs on Australia, and fears over the future of agricultural and pharmaceutical exports bound for the US.

Donald Trump has started a trade war as part of his efforts to ‘Make America Great Again’.

“This is policy being driven by very large donors to the US government, and really to give into that would be awful,” Mr Sims said.

“We in our society have to think about companies getting so big that they can control governments and manipulate them in their own self interest. That’s something we really as a society need to worry about, and think about how we respond to it.”

Mr Sims said the government has been slow at responding to a proposal from 2022 to give the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission greater powers to rein in the US tech companies.

At the same time, Andrew Forrest has urged the government to toughen laws to hold Meta and other foreign companies to greater account. The mining billionaire has been forced to sue Meta in the US after it failed to take down hundreds of thousands of scams featuring his likeness that have fleeced Australians of their life savings.

“I’m hoping that the government will give the ACCC the powers to set frameworks within which the platforms should operate, both for Competition and Consumer purposes,” Mr Sims said.

“That’s what happens in the UK and there is something similar in the European Union. So these things are moving slowly, deliberately, sensibly, so they’re not knee jerk, but they’re giving the regulator the powers to deal with these things in a really considered way.”

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg walked away from Australia’s news media bargaining code last year.

Mr Sims expected Google to continue to deals with media companies despite Facebook abandoning the code.

“Obviously they (Google) just can’t run their service without news, and so it’s sensible that they pay for it, and they really can’t take news off their Google search, because then it won’t be accurate searches anymore.

“Facebook are a slightly different proposition, but nonetheless, they’ve got a feed – which used to be called a news feed – until the media bargaining code came in, and then they changed it. It was meant to tell you what’s going on, and if you don’t have news from trusted sources, then you’re going to have information from less trusted sources, and so that’s certainly bad for Facebook users, but I would have thought bad for Facebook as well.

“Although sometimes you get the impression Facebook don’t actually care what people are seeing on their platform. They just want to get people on their platform so they can advertise to them.”

Kayla Medica, who wrote the marketing book The Mehdeeka Method, said Australia has “developed a bold reputation for taking first steps”.

“Papua New Guinea banning Facebook is not too different – growing uncertainty around the power of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook in the Trump administration and their walk back of content moderation is a genuine cause for concern,” she said.

“Australia hasn’t been shy about setting expectations with Facebook in the past and may look to Papua New Guinea to see what a post-Facebook society looks like.”

Originally published as Australia should hold its nerve against Facebook Rod Sims says