Facebook users are currently caught in a fight between the social network and the Australian government over the sharing of news on tech platforms.
On Wednesday, Facebook banned users in Australia from sharing links to any local or international news stories, blocked Australian news publishers from sharing their own stories, and prevented users worldwide from sharing news articles published in Australia. The drastic move is a response to the Australian government’s Media Bargaining code, which tries to counter tech giants’ decimation of the news business by making Google and Facebook share some revenue with local news publishers.
It’s unlikely that the news ban will last forever, at least in its current form. Australia’s treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has said that he continues to have constructive discussions with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google has already made its own made its own deal with News Corp, agreeing to pay the publisher for news in United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Deals between Google and other publishers are expected to follow, which could put pressure on Facebook to be less belligerent in its response.
But in the meantime, Facebook users are stuck without a way to share reliable information on the world’s largest social media platform. That’s not ideal, given how easily misinformation can flourish on Facebook instead.
Fortunately, there is a workaround. By sharing links through a proxy website, you should still be able to post Australian news articles on Facebook.
The best service I’ve found for this is Outline, which presents articles in a reader-friendly view. Just visit Outline.com in any web browser, paste the link you want to share, and hit “Create Outline.”
You may be able to use other services to share links as well. I found that using cached versions of articles from the Wayback Machine also worked, but certain URL shorteners did not.
In the short-term, then, the best option for Australian Facebook users is to share links through sites like Outline and encourage others to do the same. Granted, those sites won’t provide publishers with any traffic or ad revenue, since they’re effectively republishing the same content for free, but it beats not being able to share trustworthy information at all.