The prime minister of Australia today warned that other countries will soon follow its example with laws to make Facebook pay for journalism.
Scott Morrison also called on the social media giant to restore news links to users of its platform in Australia. They were cut off this week in response to a proposed law to make Facebook and Google pay Australian media companies fair compensation for the journalism they link to.
Mr Morrison told reporters: “There is a lot of world interest in what Australia is doing. 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.”
He urged Facebook to lift the blockade of Australian users and return to the negotiating table with news publishing businesses. “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 said.
Western Australia’s premier, Mark McGowan, said Facebook was “behaving like a North Korean dictator” after state MPs’ pages were wiped out.
Australia’s House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would force Facebook and Google to agree content deals. Google responded by reaching agreements with Australian media companies such as News Corp.
Facebook yesterday said the proposed law “fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and publishers who use it”.
Mr Morrison said his government was “happy to listen to them on the technical issues” but was determined to pass the law, which must also be agreed by the Senate.
Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s Vice-President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told LBC on Friday the decision to ban news links “not entered into lightly”.
She said: “We have been in conversations with the Australian government for a number of years but they have brought in legislation that sets a precedent where governments can decide who enters into a news content agreement and ultimately how much a publisher gets paid.
“The UK has taken a very different approach, and that’s allowed us to launch something that we call Facebook News just last month, which is a really substantial investment into UK journalism.
“We’ve had hundreds of publishers – big ones, small ones, across the country – come on to join the tab, a dedicated place for news, to help them find new audiences and make money from it. So we’re really excited that the UK is leading the world, I would say, in the area of putting quality news out to wider audiences through our platforms.”
