[ad_1]
Australians woke up today with an empty news feed on Facebook as the company blocked all news content, in a sudden and dramatic escalation of its confrontation with the country’s government. regarding payment of content.
The move was met with criticism, especially as official health services, emergency warnings and welfare networks had been removed along with news content.
“Facebook made a mistake, your actions were unnecessary and will damage your reputation here in Australia. ” said Economy Minister Josh Freidenberg.
According to him, Mark Zuckerberg had not warned of such a move when the two spoke at the weekend about the legislation that will force the Facebook and Google to pay local news networks for the content produced.
According to Reuters, the two men spoke Thursday morning and had “constructive” conversations, according to Freidenberg, who spoke of different interpretations.
Facebook’s movement marks its differentiation from Google, after years of collusion against this legislation. Both had threatened to cancel services in Australia, but Google has finally chosen to make individual deals with the media.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp was the last to announce such an agreement, from which it would receive “significant payments” from Google for providing content to the renowned search engine’s News Searchcase account.
Your legislation Australia foresees that Facebook and Google reach commercial agreements with news outlets that have links to their platforms or pay a certain amount.
Facebook claims in its announcement that the law, which Parliament is expected to pass in the next few days, “fundamentally misconstrues” the relationship between social media and the media and how you faced the choice to comply or ban news content.
According to the social media giant, news accounts for only 4% of what users see on Facebook, but for Australians, Facebook’s role in broadcasting news is growing.
A 2020 study from the University of Canberra found that 21% of Australians used social media as their main source of information, 3% more than the previous year. The same research found that 29% of videos shown on the Internet are uploaded to Facebook.
Facebook’s move resulted whitewash the media pages but also to remove posts from users sharing news, and it took place three days before Australia started the national vaccination program to stop it COVID-19.
By afternoon, according to Reuters, several government Facebook pages had resurfaced, but charity pages and all media outlets remained empty, including the New York Times, the BBC, News Corp’s Wall Street Journal, and Reuters.
