Melbourne: Social media giant Facebook said Tuesday it will restore news services in Australia. This announcement came after Facebook it reached a revised agreement with the government on the proposed media bargaining laws. The laws aim to make technology companies pay for hosting news content. Users of the social media site heaved a sigh of relief on the new development.
The dispute on paying news organisations for sharing journalism content came to a head last week. Then Facebook banned Australians from sharing news articles. Inadvertently, some government pages and announcements, including alerts on COVID-19, were blocked too, drawing severe backlash.
The Australian government’s landmark media bargaining laws, also being called ‘the code’, is yet to be passed in its Parliament.
Also read: Media row: Facebook blocks Australians from accessing news on platform
Australia government Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who has held detailed discussions with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, said Tuesday: “Facebook has re-friended Australia. Australian news will be restored to the Facebook platform, and Facebook has committed to entering into good-faith negotiations with Australian news media businesses and seeking to reach agreements to pay for content.”
Frydenberg, quoting Zuckerberg, said Facebook will sign individual commercial deals with news publishers and that these discussions ‘are pretty advanced with a number of (news) parties’.
Similar to Facebook, internet services heavyweight Google is also expected to follow the media bargaining code. Google and Facebook can avoid the code altogether, if they can satisfy the government that enough deals with news organisations have been struck outside it.
“It has been a difficult process, but these are really important issues. Facebook is now going to engage in good faith negotiations with the commercial players,” informed Frydenberg.
In a statement, Facebook said it was ‘pleased’ the company was able to reach an agreement with the Australian government.
“After further discussions, we are satisfied that the Australian government has agreed to a number of changes and guarantees that address our core concerns about allowing commercial deals that recognise the value our platform provides to publishers, relative to the value we receive from them,” Facebook said.
“As a result of these changes, we can now work to further our investment in public interest journalism and restore news on Facebook for Australians in the coming days,” the social media giant added.