Sydney: Australia and Facebook held high-stakes talks Friday after the social media giant sparked global outrage by blacking out news for its Australian users, as Canberra insisted it wouldn’t back down on a new law that would force the tech firm to pay for journalistic content.
From Thursday, Facebook has blanked out the pages of media outlets for Australian users and blocked them from sharing any news content, rather than submit to the proposed legislation.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged Facebook to “move quickly past” what he called threatening behaviour and “come back to the table.”
He said his government’s world-first legislation to force Facebook and Google to pay Australian media for news content published on their platforms was garnering interest from leaders around the world.
“People are looking at what Australia is doing,” he said, noting that he had already discussed the situation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canada’s Justin Trudeau.
The legislation, called the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code, was approved this week by the lower house of parliament and will be debated beginning Monday by the Senate, which is expected to adopt the law by the end of the week.
Facebook has defended its dramatic response to the law, saying the legislation “fundamentally misunderstands” the platform’s relationship with media organisations and that it had no choice but to bar news content from its services in Australia.
Despite earlier threats to pull its services from Australia over the legislation, Google softened its stance and instead brokered several deals with large media companies, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Billions of people around the world rely on Facebook for essential information — not just news, but charity and government pages, emergency announcements and other important channels.
Facebook’s news blackout swept up many of these, including humanitarian organisations like Foodbank Australia and Doctors without Borders in Australia, who found their pages temporarily disabled. The ban affected articles from large international news organisation and small community newspapers or radio stations alike. Those restrictions potentially deprived many Australians of basic information on Facebook about Covid-19 or the country’s fire season — from a company that bills itself as committed to building “connection and community.”
Canada vows to be next
OTTAWA: Canada has vowed to make Facebook Inc pay for news content, seeking allies in the media battle with tech giants and pledging not to back down if the social media platform shuts off the country’s news as it did in Australia. Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, in charge of crafting similar legislation to be unveiled in coming months, condemned Facebook’s action and said it would not deter Ottawa. “Canada is at the forefront of this battle … we are really among the first group of countries around the world that are doing this,” he told reporters.