Facebook ban hits Australian news in response to a proposed law

On Thursday (18 February) Facebook started preventing Australian news outlets from sharing their posts, while users (both Australian and international) couldn’t view or share any content from the news sites. However, this didn’t affect news sites alone. Australian government pages were affected too. While the ban only meant to affect Australian news publishers, it also affected many pages run by unions, politicians and community pages.

Big tech and monopolies

Julian Jones examines what the record gains of big tech companies during the COVID-19 pandemic mean for the Marxist understanding of capitalism, monopolisation and crisis in 2020.