The social media company is limiting Australians from viewing, posting or sharing news content on its platform, government officials and nonprofit organizations got caught in the crossfire, something Facebook later asserted was a mistake. This comes in response to the proposed law that would require tech giants like Facebook and Google to pay for news content.
Most of the affected pages have since been resuscitate, seems like any other non-media organization that is been affected will be granted access to their accounts, the spokesperson said:
“Government and non-news Pages should not be impacted by today’s announcement. The actions we’re taking are focused on restricting publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content.
As the law does not provide a clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted. However, we will reverse any Pages that are inadvertently impacted.”
Google and Facebook have been in disagreement with the Australian government ever since the country started working on the law that would make payments to new organizations compulsory.
The social media company formerly said that it wouldn’t be able to offer news as a product anymore, so this move doesn’t come as a surprise anymore, Google told the Australian senate at a hearing that if the proposal becomes law it would have no choice but to stop making Google available in the country