WA politicians, agencies and businesses caught up in Facebook page ban

Chris Janz, chief publishing and digital officer for Nine Entertainment, owner of this masthead, said the Silicon Valley executives had showed they were not afraid to bully and intimidate.

“Imagine there were bushfires or cyclones across the nation today. A company that is willing to do that I think is a company that shouldn’t have a license to operate here,” he told 6PR’s Liam Bartlett.

Former Facebook chief executive for Australia and New Zealand Steven Scheeler said the move was “irresponsible”.

He said the developments demonstrated why strong regulation of social media was needed in Australia.

“We shouldn’t be at the mercy of Mark Zuckerberg,” he said.

He speculated Mr Zuckerberg wanted to stand his ground in Australia because social media was under attack across the world.

“There are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake here,” Mr Scheeler said.

A DFES spokesperson said the agency had been assured their page, which alerted followers to fires and other emergencies around the state, would be restored as a priority.

“In the meantime, information about incidents can still be accessed through Emergency WA (www.emergency.wa.gov.au) and 13 33 37 (13 DFES),” they said.

In Sydney and Melbourne, some health and hospital pages were also affected by the sweep.

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The pages of sports bodies like Cricket Australia, Rugby Australia, and streaming services like Optus Sport and Foxtel have also been impacted.

In WA, the Bureau of Meteorology, City of Perth, Optus Stadium, Perth Airport, Western Power, Surf Life Saving WA and resource giant Woodside also had their pages blocked.

Mr Kirkup said he was disappointed the social media giant removed his page just weeks out from the WA election.

“We are working with the company to have this error fixed as quickly as possible,” he said.

He said Facebook’s decision to ban local news and journalism was a concern.

“Australians are more and more reliant on social media to get their news and current affairs,” he said.

“I’m also of concerned the changes have impacted DFES and vital news sources during the fire season, which provides critical emergency information for Western Australians.”

Premier Mark McGowan said the move by Facebook was completely unacceptable as a number of important government services were affected.

“What Facebook has done is irresponsible and could have damaging consequences. A solution is needed immediately,” he said.

In a statement, Facebook said government pages should not have been impacted by the ban.

“The actions we’re taking are focused on restricting publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content,” the Facebook spokesperson said.

“As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted. However, we will reverse any pages that are inadvertently impacted.”