China has home-grown tech for both certainly, but I don't know if the fact that everyone uses a flavor of search engine and social media proves that they're nonessential.

I guess you could say search engines are nonessential like music and entertainment are nonessential. Somehow people end up wanting both anyways.

most Australian news outlets are 100% non essential click bait trash, too.

I'd say all of them, particularly the state media which have journalistic policies that allow them to skirt the issuing of retractions for months (ABC) or not at all (SBS). At least the private sector media will retract and correct in a reasonable period of time, in my experience both Fairfax and News Corp, although they're also generally rags at this point.

Interesting point, do you have any examples? I’m generally left swinging but find the general style used by sbs and abc are generally less click baity and manipulative but are at times pretty left swinging themselves.

Context: left = progressive, right = conservative. I think those terms switch in some countries so figured id mention.

After requesting a retraction for some false news on SBS' website, I was informed after a very lengthy delay that they did not issue retractions to articles unless there is a complaint received within an arbitrary period of time. There's that, then there's the fact ACMA has zero oversight over SBS' online operations because they can only regulate their television content.

For the ABC, on two separate occasions I reported some pretty egregious incorrect reporting and both times retractions occurred over a month later.

Contrast this to the retractions I've gotten from the private sector. A reporter on a News Corp website replied to my email in under 10 minutes (!!) and issued a retraction. A reported for Fairfax similarly retracted a point in an article the following day after a complaint.

So, the contrast is stark and revealing. ABC and SBS will lie to you with impunity and zero oversight, while the private sector at least has the decency to correct themselves in a reasonable period of time.