Vital public service pages like the Department of Fire and Emergency Services WA and the Bureau of Meteorology have been caught up in the Facebook ban.

The pages provide life-saving information to Australians during emergencies, and have hundreds of thousands of followers.

6PR’s Gareth Parker labelled the move as “disgraceful”.

“They use Facebook to communicate emergency warnings to the public, bushfires, cyclones, floods, fires, extreme weather events. Facebook have censored it and gotten rid of it,” Parker said.

In a statement A DFES spokesperson said they have been in contact with the social media platform.

“The Department of Fire and Emergency Services’ Facebook page has been impacted by this morning’s Facebook changes restricting news pages,” a spokesperson said.

“We have been in contact with Facebook and they have assured us they will restore the page as a priority.

“In the meantime, information about incidents can still be accessed through the Emergency WA website and 13 33 37 (13 DFES).”

Rest Australia also slammed the decision by Facebook to restrict Australian news content from its platform.

Executive Director Chris Cooper, said it will lead to more misinformation.

“They have just removed the best and most reliable sources off their platform, which will essentially leave all of the trash that we are mostly concerned with,” he said.

“It is pretty frustrating for all those businesses who are caught up in this.

“This is a perfect example of where government tried to bring in reasonable regulations, and these platforms who have outsized power and outsized ego effectively have had a dummy spit.

“A large majority of Australians do get their news from Facebook, so it is going to impact the every day Australian.”

Click play to hear more on 6PR Breakfast.  

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