Social media giant Facebook has retaliated against proposed Australian legislation on social media by blocking Australian users from sharing or viewing news content on the platform.
According to a BBC report, Australians woke up yesterday to find that Facebook pages of all local and global news sites were unavailable. This included several government health and emergency pages, which Facebook later said was a mistake.
Facebook’s action is a response to a proposed law which would make tech giants pay for news content on their platforms.
The Australian government has strongly criticised the move, saying it demonstrates the ‘immense market power of these digital social giants’.
The BBC says Google and Facebook have fought Australia’s proposed law because they say it doesn’t reflect how the internet works, and unfairly ‘penalises’ their platforms. The report says that, in contrast to Facebook, Google has in recent days signed payment deals with three major Australian media outlets.
Australia says it drew up the law to ‘level the playing field’ between the tech giants and struggling publishers over profits. But Facebook says the law leaves it ‘facing a stark choice: attempt to comply with a law that ignores the realities of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia’. The platform said in a blog post: ‘With a heavy heart, we are choosing the latter.’
The BBC quotes Australia’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg as saying the ban on news information has had a ‘huge community impact’. About 17 million Australians visit the social media site every month.
Frydenberg says while the government is committed to passing the law, ‘we would like to see them [Facebook] in Australia’. He is quoted as saying the social media platform’s ‘actions today were unnecessary and wrong’.
[Image: Thomas Ulrich from Pixabay]