Australia tried to ‘camouflage a bid for subsidies’, says Facebook’s Nick Clegg

Facebook executive Sir Nick Clegg

Credit: PA

Sir Nick Clegg has accused the Australian government of trying to “camouflage a bid for cash subsidies” after it attempted to force large technology companies to pay for news.

The former leader of the Liberal Democrats, who is now Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, defended Facebook’s decision last week to block news stories in Australia.

He drew comparisons between Australia’s policy, which would have forced Facebook to pay to display links to news, as being "like forcing car makers to fund radio stations because people might listen to them in the car".

Facebook eventually reached a deal with Australia that will see it restore online news posts from Australian newspapers. The government agreed to a compromise that will give technology companies more time to strike deals with publishers.

Nick Clegg Facebook

However, Facebook’s ban on sharing news in Australia was sharply criticised by politicians after it also shut down public information and charity websites warning of the risks of coronavirus.

Sir Nick admitted the company had “over-enforced” its ban. He added Facebook planned to invest $1bn (£710m) in news over the next three years, matching Google’s spending plans.

Damian Collins, Conservative MP and former chair of the Digital Select Committee, said Sir Nick was “making out that Facebook is doing the news industry a favour”.

“The truth is that along with Google, the company controls 80pc of the advertising market in Australia and newspaper advertising revenues in that country have fallen by over 50pc since 2006. This has been responsible for news organisations laying off journalists, cutting back on investigations or closing down altogether.”

Jamie Stone, the Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, said: “I’m glad Mr Clegg acknowledged the importance of not punishing Facebook users for the sake of a company’s spat with a democratic state. What must always be the top of a company or state’s priority list is the safety and well-being of individuals.”

Last week’s move by Facebook to stop sharing news in Australia left many people rightly asking: what on Earth was all that about?

At the heart of it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between Facebook and news publishers. 🧵https://t.co/A5An9caQ70

— Nick Clegg (@nick_clegg) February 24, 2021

Sir Nick’s defence of Facebook comes as the company faces renewed calls for a break-up. 

Stephen Scheeler, Facebook’s former head of Australia, told the Today programme: “The scale, size and influence of these platforms, particularly on our minds, our brains, and all the things that we do as citizens, as consumers, are just so powerful. Leaving them in the hands of a few, very closely controlled companies like Facebook is the recipe for disaster.”

Andrea Coscelli, the head of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, dismissed similar arguments that Facebook providing news could be similar to cars providing radios.

He told the BBC on Tuesday: “We are dealing with news, we are dealing with democracy and we are dealing with fake news, it is a different example."