Australia slams Facebook's surprise news blackout

In Australia, Facebook Inc on Thursday blocked all media content in a surprise and dramatic escalation of a dispute with the government over paying for content. The move was swiftly criticised by news producers, politicians and human rights advocates, particularly as it became clear that official health pages, emergency safety warnings and welfare networks had all been scrubbed from the site along with news.

"Facebook was wrong, Facebook's actions were unnecessary, they were heavy-handed, and they will damage its reputation here in Australia," Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told a televised news conference in Sydney.  Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg gave no warning of the news shutdown when the pair spoke over the weekend about looming laws that will force both Facebook and search engine giant Google to pay local publishers for content, he said.

Facebook's drastic move represents a split from Alphabet Inc-owned Google after they initially joined together to campaign against the laws. Both had threatened to cancel services in Australia, but Google has instead sealed preemptive deals with several outlets in recent days. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp was the latest to announce a deal in which it will receive "significant payments" from Google in return for providing content for the search engine's News Showcase account.

Facebook said in its statement that the law, which is expected to be passed by parliament within days, "fundamentally misunderstands" the relationship between itself and publishers and it faced a stark choice of attempting to comply or banning news content. The Australian law would require Facebook and Google to reach commercial deals with news outlets whose links drive traffic to their platforms, or be subjected to forced arbitration to agree a price. By mid-afternoon, many government-backed Facebook pages were restored but several charity pages and all media sites remained dark, including those of international outlets like the New York Times, the BBC and News Corp's Wall Street Journal.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said Facebook had sent the message to Australians that "you will not find content on our platform which comes from an organisation which employs professional journalists, which has editorial policies, which has fact-checking processes".Health Minister Greg Hunt said Facebook pages of numerous community health projects had been shuttered and "the fact that the kids cancer project could be affected, is, frankly a disgrace".