Australians woke up early this morning, and Facebook news feeds no longer see news content. Facebook's sudden move was intended to resist Australia's legislation to force technology companies to pay to the news media. However, Canberra criticized the "overhand" and "wrong" decision.
Australian Finance Minister Josh Frydenberg said that Facebook had not notified in advance that it would revoke the permission of Australian users to post news links or view the Facebook pages of global news media.
Australian Finance Minister: There is no need to block, Facebook is too heavy
Friedenberg said: "Facebook is wrong. This action is unnecessary. They are too heavy and will ruin their goodwill in Australia."
Facebook's sudden move is aimed at resisting the bill introduced by the Canberra authorities to force community giants to pay for Australian news content on the platform.
The Australian Parliament is expected to pass the bill in the near future. Facebook stated that the bill “fundamentally misunderstood” the relationship between social networking sites and publishers, and said that Facebook faces a choice between complying with regulations and blocking news.
Friedenberg said that the Australian government is still committed to implementing the new law. The bill successfully passed through the House of Representatives last night and has now been sent to the Senate.
Google is more flexible, signing contracts with the media
Google, a search engine owned by the US Alphabet company, initially joined forces with Facebook to fight the Australian Act, but now Facebook has taken a dramatic step that means it has parted ways with Google.
The two technology giants originally threatened to cancel services in Australia, but Google has signed priority agreements with several media companies in recent days.
According to the statement, Google has agreed to pay "large fees" to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's News Corp to obtain relevant content.
The two parties said in a joint statement on the 17th that this agreement is an "epoch-making multi-year partnership." Google will include the content provided by News Corporation as part of the newly launched news platform Google News Showcase.
This three-year agreement also includes the development of a subscription platform, sharing advertising revenue, and "meaningful investment in the development of innovative audio-visual news" on Google's audio-visual sharing website YouTube.
Media that joined the Google News Showcase, including News Corporation, the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, and New York Post; UK "The Times" (The Times), "Sunday Times" (The Sunday Times), "The Sun" (The Sun); Australia "The Australian" (The Australian), etc.