Facebook to Restore News in Australia after Lawmakers Change Bill

Facebook will restore news content to its platform in Australia after the Government decided to alter its News Media Bargaining Code.
In an update, Facebook’s William Easton, Managing Director of Australia and New Zealand, said that the organization is “satisfied that the Australian government has agreed to a number of changes and guarantees that address our core concerns.” News content will reappear to the platform “in the coming days,” Easton said.

Facebook and Google have been at loggerheads with the Australian government about an imminent law that will require them to pay publishers for the content shared on their platforms. Facebook took the outrageous measure a week ago of blocking news from being shared on its platform by Australian users and publishers.

In a declaration, Facebook’s vice president of Global News Partnerships Campbell Brown said the Australian Government “has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation.” She added that it means Facebook can “support the publishers we choose to, including small and local publishers.”

While Facebook took the extreme step of blocking all news in the nation in response to the law, Google has been busy broken deals with the nation’s news publishers to remuneration them as part of its News Showcase product. Google is also making deals with global publishers to cover other publications around the world. Initially, Google had also threatened to remove services from Australia.