[News] Australia News Is Banned On Facebook ... The Social Media Giant Defies Country Laws

[#Hassan.]

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison pledged on Friday to go ahead with laws that force Facebook to pay media for content, saying it had received support from world leaders after the social media giant blocked all media.

Facebook banned the website pages of domestic and foreign news outlets for Australians, and also banned users of its platform from sharing any news content on Thursday, saying it was left with no choice before the new content laws.

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The move, which also wiped out many government and emergency department accounts, as well as non-profit charitable sites, caused widespread outrage.

Morrison, who criticized Facebook on its own platform on Friday, said the leaders of Britain, Canada, France and India had shown their support. "There is a lot of global interest in what Australia is doing," he told reporters in Sydney.

"That is why I invite Facebook to participate constructively, because they know that what Australia will do here is likely to be done by some other western judicial authorities."

Canadian Heritage Minister Stephen Gilbo said late Thursday that his country would adopt the Australian approach as it formulated its own legislation in the coming months.

The Australian law, which will force Facebook and Google to strike business deals with Australian publishers or face mandatory arbitration, has already been approved by the Federal House of Representatives and is expected to be approved by the Senate next week.

Not a trade deal but rather the sovereignty of Australia
Australian Treasury Minister Josh Freidenberg said he had spoken to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook for the second time, "We talked about the outstanding issues, and we agreed that our relevant teams will work on them immediately," and added in a tweet, "We will talk again during the weekend."

On the other hand, Facebook said, in its statement announcing the move in Australia, that the Australian law "misunderstood" its value for publishers.

But Friedenberg responded earlier, telling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, "There is something much more at stake here than just one or two trade deals. This is about Australia's sovereignty."

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Facebook and Google both campaigned against the laws, and both threatened to withdraw essential services from Australia if the laws went into effect.

However, Google announced a raft of proactive licensing deals last week, including a global agreement with News Corp.

Facebook restored some government pages later on Thursday, but a number of charitable and non-profit organizations and even district and neighborhood pages remained closed.

The Facebook move had an immediate effect on entry to Australian news sites, according to early data from New York-based analytics firm Chartbeat.

ChartBeat data showed that total traffic to Australian news sites from various platforms was down from the day before the ban by 13% in the country and 30% outside the country.

Likewise, traffic to Australian news sites from Facebook alone has decreased from about 21% to about 2% in Australia, and from about 30% to about 4% outside the country.

This effect was confirmed by Michael Miller, CEO of News Corp Australasia, in his testimony during an unrelated parliamentary hearing, but he said that the number of Australians visiting the company's websites directly had increased.