LEGO Fan Media sites caught up in Australian Facebook News Blockade
February 18, 2021
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Update: Facebook and the Australian government have found a truce, after holding news sites hostage, so your favourite LEGO sites are now accessible again via Facebook!
It’s been a whirlwind day in Australia, with Facebook implementing a hard ban on News Sites from their social network.
If you woke up today and felt that your News Feed was a little quiet and missing uh, News, it’s because the social media giant made sweeping changes, removing news sites and pages from Australia.
Read Facebook’s announcement here, and an explainer by our national news broadcaster.
It’s pretty bad because a LOT of other important organisations like Weather services, Local Health Authorities and Community groups also got banned.
When this issue was bubbling in the background, most people were expecting that this would only impact large commercial news organisations, but turns out LEGO bloggers, fan media and news sites have all been essentially banned from Facebook today.
The situation is changing rapidly, but boy is this is an annoyance that’s on par with stepping on LEGO.
Thankfully, my Facebook page miraculously escaped unscathed BUT links to posts and my blogs have been banned from Facebook, so you can’t share links to any of my posts directly to the news feed.
This is what happens when I try to share direct links to the Facebook feed.
Other LEGO sites and bloggers have not been too lucky.
If you’re located in Australia, you won’t be able to visit the Facebook pages of sites like Brickset, The Brick Fan, or even local bloggers like Bricktastic Blog & Blockwarts
You’ll be greeted with this blank post if you try to access most of your favourite LEGO news sites – which is bad news if you rely on Facebook to keep up with LEGO news.
It’s a little inconsistent, because pages like New Elementary and mine are still up.
So what can you do? If it helps, try visiting these websites directly, especially my Australian peers who are impacted directly by having their entire pages nuked – I believe they can’t even be access from overseas.
Note: If you’re from overseas, this won’t impact you in any way, except that you won’t be able to access some Australian LEGO fan media pages
To not miss out on any news, reviews and new content, be sure to subscribe to my Newsletter below, and follow on Google News, Twitter, or Instagram to be alerted on new posts.
I highly recommend subscribing to their newsletter as well, and also to check whether you’re subscribing to other international LEGO sites Brickset if you used to get news from them via Facebook/Facebook Groups.
It’s all a mess, and while I run this blog as a hobby, it’s really unfair and shows off just how incompetent the Australian government is when it comes to regulating social media, and their ham-fisted approach to technology.
Please consider visiting other Australian LEGO fan media directly, and also subscribing to their newsletters to ensure that they’re still able to reach LEGO fans.
Hopefully this all blows over and Facebook eases up on some of us smaller publishers and content creators!
