Facebook has reportedly gone nuclear in its now long-running battle against the Australian government over news content in general. Australia is now considering legislation that would then require Facebook to actually pay in order to link Australian news stories. In response to this, Facebook has then announced a wide-ranging banning users on links towards Australian news content.
Facebook bans ALL Australian news posts
To clarify, the ban announced by Facebook means Australian users won't be able to make posts that would link to news articles. This applies to Australian media or even internationally. Meanwhile, users that are outside of Australia won't be able to post links directed to Australian news sources. The ban has reportedly already started and was discovered when arsTechnica, the source of this story, tried to post a particular link to the esteemed The Sydney Morning Herald over on Facebook.
Facebook also noted that Australian news publishers will now also be blocked from actually sharing or even posting content to their own Facebook pages. Posts coming from news publishers outside of Australia won't reportedly be available for those users in Australia. Under the particular Australian law, both Facebook and Google would actually be required to undergo negotiation "in good faith" along with Australian news sites in order to get licenses to link their particular content. Something that the platforms currently do absolutely for free.
Big Tech to pay for traffic
Nondiscrimination rules would reportedly require Facebook and Google to treat sites the very same way whether they would have to pay a site for said links or not. If the negotiations broke down, the disputes would then be settled by a baseball-style arbitration wherein each side would put down an offer on the said table and the neutral party would then decide which particular offer is said to be more reasonable.
In short, both Google and Facebook would be required to actually pay Australian news sites whenever they send them traffic. The internet titans are also not allowed to generally stop linking towards Australian news sites in order to avoid paying them.
Read Also:
Australia 'fundamentally misunderstands' Facebook's relationship
In a recent blog post, Facebook actually argued that this whole proposal generally "fundamentally misunderstands" the particular relationship between the platform and the said publishers who use it in order to share their news content. Facebook also argues that these news sites actually benefit from the traffic coming from Facebook far more than what Facebook benefits by linking to the said news sites.
Facebook noted that just last year, it had actually sent a whopping 5.1 billion free referrals towards Australian publishers. Traffic that the company estimates is worth around $407 million AUD or about $315 million USD. Facebook has been trying to distinguish itself away from Google, the other particularly popular technology giant that is targeted by the said proposed Australian law. Google is now paying for news in Australia according to The New York Times.
Related Articles:
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
