Australia and Facebook held high-level talks on Friday following a global outrage by the social media giant blacking out news for its Australian users, as Canberra insisted it would not back down on a new law that the tech firm Will force the journalist to pay for the material.
Since Thursday, Facebook has blanked out the pages of media outlets for Australian users and barred them from sharing any news content, rather than introducing the proposed legislation.
Treasurer Josh Friedenberg said he spoke with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday to find a way out of the demonstration, and talks would continue over the weekend.
“We talked over the rest of their issues and agreed that our respective teams would work through them immediately,” Friedenberg said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison also urged Facebook to “move quickly past” what he called threatening behavior and “get back on the table”.
He said his government’s world-first legislation was drawing interest from leaders around the world to force Facebook and Google to pay Australian media for news content published on their platforms.
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“People are watching what Australia is doing,” he said, noting that he had already discussed the situation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Justin Trudeau of Canada.
The law called the News Media and Digital Platform Compulsory Bargaining Code was approved this week by the lower house of parliament and will be debated by the Senate from Monday, which is expected to adopt the law by the end of the week.
Facebook has defended its dramatic response to the law, stating that the law is “fundamentally misunderstood” the platform’s relationship with media organizations and that it is in addition to prohibiting news content from its services in Australia Is not an option.
According to data analytics company Chartbeat, since the ban came into force, overseas traffic has dropped significantly by users visiting domestic and overseas Australian news sites.
It has also been suggested that users have not yet left Facebook in response to the ban, with no apparent increase in Google search traffic being reported.
News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller spoke for a separate Senate investigation in Canberra, saying that the full impact of Facebook’s decision had not yet been felt by the publishers.
Yesterday the referral traffic from the platform had disappeared, he said, adding “direct traffic to our websites was in double digits”.
Miller encouraged the social media giant to have direct interactions with media outlets.
“The door is still open for Facebook.”
Facebook’s widespread ban has led to widespread criticism for visiting several important government pages — inadvertently, including emergency services, health departments, and the National Weather Service — with the most restored in hours after coming into effect.
Despite earlier threats to pull its services over legislation in Australia, Google softened its stance and instead made several deals with big media companies, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
