Australian PM urges Facebook to lift news blockade

Australia’s prime minister on Friday urged Facebook to lift its blockade of Australian users and return to the negotiating table with news publishing businesses.

Scott Morrison also warned that other countries would follow his government’s example in making digital giants pay for journalism.

Mr Morrison described Facebook’s move on Thursday to prevent Australians accessing and sharing news as a threat.

“The idea of shutting down the sorts of sites they did yesterday, as some sort of threat — well, I know how Australians react to that and I thought that was not a good move on their part,” Mr Morrison told reporters.

“They should move quickly past that, come back to the table and we’ll sort it out.”

There was public outrage at how the Facebook blockade was bungled, cutting access — at least temporarily — to pandemic, public health and emergency services.

An article about how fake news would replace credible journalism in Australian feeds carried the headline: “’Fakebook’ shows all it cares about is profit, not people.”

Some non-Australian outlets also appeared affected, with posts disappearing from Facebook pages belonging to Britain’s Daily Telegraph and Sky News. Both share names with news outlets in Australia.

The blockade was a response to the House of Representatives on Wednesday night passing a bill that would make Facebook and Google pay Australian media companies fair compensation for the journalism the platforms link to. The legislation must be passed by the Senate to become law.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has announced a wide-ranging deal with Google covering operations in the US and Britain as well as Australia. Major Australian media organisation Seven West Media also reached a deal earlier in the week. Rival Nine Entertainment is reportedly close to its own pact, and state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corp is in negotiations.

Mr Morrison said he discussed the Facebook dispute with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday, and was also discussing Australia’s proposed law with the leaders of Britain, Canada and France.

“There is a lot of world interest in what Australia is doing,” Mr Morrison said.

“That’s why I invite, as we did with Google, Facebook to constructively engage because they know that what Australia will do here is likely to be followed by many other Western jurisdictions.”

“We talked through their remaining issues & agreed our respective teams would work through them immediately. We’ll talk again over the weekend,” Mr Frydenberg tweeted on Friday.

“I reiterated Australia remains committed to implementing the code,” he added.

Mr Frydenberg maintains that Facebook had been having constructive negotiations with Australian media on pay deals immediately before the surprise blockade.

Facebook said on Thursday the proposed Australian law “fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it”.

Morrison said his government was “happy to listen to them on the technical issues” but remained determined to pass the law.