Good morning and welcome to your daily Press Gazette news briefing on Wednesday 30 April, brought to you today in association with Wright’s Media.

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The weird double-standards and topsy-turvy morals of Meta are highlighted by the case of the Leicester Gazette.

The independent local publisher has had its Facebook account suspended for breaching "Community Standards", depriving it of a major source of referral traffic. No explanation has been given and the timing could not be worse, coming on the eve of major local elections.

The actions of Meta here stand in stark contrast to its inaction over seriously defamatory posts which have been viewed millions of times and which steal the identities of trusted journalists to promote scam investment schemes.

I would guess that the real crime committed by the Leicester Gazette is posting links to its own site and so encouraging readers to leave Facebook. Taking even a few cents away from Meta's $164.5bn annual revenue (up 22% year on year in 2024) is a crime which results in exile without reprieve from the UK's dominant social media platform.

Facebook hates outside links (hence the fact most publishers now opt for the 'link in comments' strategy to avoid posts being removed as "spam").

Meanwhile, illegal scam adverts continue on Facebook because they are bringing in revenue and keep people within Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp).

The Advertising Standards Association does not regulate Facebook.

Under the Online Safety Act 2023 Ofcom should take action to stop illegal content and to ensure platforms like Facebook are not unfairly curbing freedom of expression.

I've flagged the above to Ofcom but not heard a dicky bird back from them as yet.

Ofcom says on its website: "Ofcom cannot respond to or investigate individual complaints, but we use complaints to assess whether companies are doing enough to protect their users."

Instead, it directs users to a charity-run website called "Report Harmful Content" which is really just an interactive guide on how you can make complaints to the platforms themselves. Fat lot of good that will do. Harumph!

Today we also report on the demise of ESG Investor along with its nine-strong team. Publishers have to do so much right in order to succeed, not just the content and business model but also picking an information niche which has legs. We spoke to co-founder and editor of the title Chris Hall to find out what went wrong.

In brighter news, the UK's second biggest mobile phone manufacturer Samsung has rolled out a new default app on its millions of devices which promises to provide some much-needed competition for Google Discover.

Discover serves me a pretty unsatisfactory mix of clickbait-y 'curiosity gap' headlines mainly about snooker, such as "Ronnie O'Sullivan makes snooker retirement decision", so I'm ready to try a different news aggregator. Samsung News looks more curated and controllable than Discover's purely algorithm-driven approach which is designed to keep readers scrolling. We have more on the launch of Samsung News here (including the publisher launch partners).

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Leicester Gazette's Leicester News and Events Facebook group

UK local publisher ‘deeply concerned’ about Facebook account ban ahead of election

The Leicester Gazette team were initially invited by Facebook to submit a verification video, which they did, but were subsequently told their account had been permanently suspended with no mechanism through which to dispute it.

Read more