PM undeterred by Facebook move
SYDNEY: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday vowed to press ahead with laws to force Facebook Inc to pay news outlets for content, saying he had received support from world leaders after the social media giant blacked out all media.
Facebook stripped the pages of domestic and foreign news outlets for Australians and blocked users of its platform from sharing any news content on Thursday, saying it had been left with no choice given the new content laws.
The move, which also erased several state government and emergency department accounts, as well as nonprofit charity sites, caused widespread outrage.
Morrison, who blasted Facebook on its own platform for ‘‘unfriending’’ Australia, yesterday said the leaders of Britain, Canada, France and India had shown support.
‘‘There is a lot of world interest in what Australia is doing,’’ Morrison said.
‘‘That is why I invite . . . Facebook to constructively engage because they know that what Australia will do here is likely to be followed by many other Western jurisdictions.’’
Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said late on
Thursday his country would adopt the Australian approach as it crafted its own legislation in coming months.
The Australian law, which will force Facebook and Google to reach commercial deals with Australian publishers or face compulsory arbitration, has already been cleared by the federal lower House and is expected to be passed by the Senate within the next week.
Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said he had spoken to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg for a second time following the news blackout and they would talk again over the weekend.
Facebook’s move had an immediate impact on traffic to Australian news sites, according to early data from New Yorkbased analytics firm Chartbeat.
Total traffic to the Australian news sites from various platforms fell from the day before the ban by about 13% within the country and by about 30% outside the country, the Chartbeat data showed.
Similarly, traffic to the Australian news sites from Facebook alone plummeted from about 21% to about 2% in Australia, and from about 30% to about 4% overseas.