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In what appeared to be a botched effort to ban news sites on its platform in Australia, Facebook appeared to ban its own page — along with a number of pages for government agencies, health services, and charitable organizations. In February 2021, Facebook banned news on its platform in Australia in response to a proposed law working its way through the Australian government that would require technology platforms such as Facebook and Google to pay news sources for content. Google has chosen to negotiate and strike deals to pay news agencies. But Facebook stated that with a heavy heart, it was instead choosing to ban news, stating: It appears that in so doing, Facebook caught a number of non-news pages up in the ban, including its own page. The ban only affected pages for Facebook users in Australia, however — these changes wouldn't have been visible to audiences on other continents. But Josh Taylor, a journalist for Guardian Australia, captured a screenshot: Facebook's own page wasn't the only one that was affected by the broad ban in Australia. As The New York Times reported, government agencies and various public welfare organizations were also banned: We reached out to Facebook asking whether the problem would be resolved, but as of this writing, we haven't received a response. Guardian Australia reported that a Facebook spokesperson said the banning of non-news pages was a mistake:
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