This news start-up will lose half a million readers if Meta goes nuclear

“It would hurt [if Meta blocked news], but it wouldn’t be the end,” Ms Seidler said.

“Obviously, our biggest audience remains there. But we think about it as the front door ... We could have grown Instagram to double what it is – but didn’t.

“We had to find where else we could create the relationships.”

Publishing primarily on Instagram, Ms Seidler and Mr Koslowski were told by potential investors, when they were raising capital in 2021 and 2022, to protect their business from being at the whim of a global social giant. In 2017, the year they started The Daily Aus, Facebook changed its algorithm and virtually killed off viral, social-led publishers – Buzzfeed, for example – within months.

The Daily Aus has spent the past three years building audiences outside Meta’s platforms – including a newsletter audience of 180,000 people and a daily podcast that reaches 125,000 monthly listeners – but its biggest presence is still Instagram. It has 120,000 followers on TikTok and 8000 on Facebook.

Ms Seidler and Mr Koslowski say a news ban would “influence future hiring decisions” but they insist the publication would survive. Their gravest concerns are about where younger Aussies will get their news if a ban does go ahead.

“I think it’ll be disastrous. We’ll see a rise of influencer-led commentary – I imagine Meta won’t include those accounts in a blanket ban,” Ms Seidler says.

“We’ve got all of this opinion and a very little foundation of knowledge accompanying it. We’ll have a void. We can’t expect young people will move elsewhere. Every bit of research says they use these platforms to inform themselves.”

The Daily Aus didn’t do a deal with Facebook in 2021. It did, however, receive money from the platform through its $15 million Meta Australian News Fund, which was managed by The Walkley Foundation. It has also joined an industry group for digital news publishers, the Digital Publishers Alliance.

“In 2021, we did not have a seat at the table. We’re in a much better position. The DPA means we even get a voice in these things,” Ms Seidler said.

The DPA will run a full-page open letter to Facebook in some Australian newspapers, including The Australian Financial Review, on Monday, saying there was “a lot to dislike” in the platform’s decision not to renew commercial deals with newsrooms.

“Your decision … will lead to a rise in mis- and disinformation on your platforms, less trusted sources, fewer journalists and a weakened society,” the letter, signed by 35 digital news outlets, says.