Facebook will block Australian users and media companies on account of sharing links.
It will ban the users and media companies who will share links to news companies. Facebook has taken this step on the grounds of landmark regulatory measures.
Today, in the Australian House of Representatives, this bill is passed. It is also believed that this bill will get enough votes to pass through Senate. The bill is also planning to target Google on this ground.
Google planned to leave the country last year, and Google started curbing deals with various Australian media organizations. As it appears, Facebook will not follow any lawsuit for all this.
In a blog post, Facebook claims that this law is in consideration after several thoughts. The fundamental relationship between users publishing the news content and the platform is deteriorating day by day.
William Easton released this blog post. He is the managing director of Facebook Australia and New Zealand. There are only two options available for Facebook.
The first was to comply with the law and stop the usage of Facebook in Australia.
The other one was to block the users who were using the platform for sharing news links. Facebook chose the second option as that would bring peaceful working of the platform in Australia.
How will the new policy of Facebook affect various users?
These policies will severely affect various aspects of Facebook and communities. In the post by Easton, he jots down four points that how will these policies affect.
- Australian Publishers: As the policy will commence, the publishers will not have any right to publish anything on the platform. Admins of the page will still have access to all other tools present on the website. Facebook won’t curb the usage of featured like data tools and Crowd Tangle.
- International Publishers: People from different countries can still share news links or media links. The only catch related to this policy for Australia is that Australians won’t access it. International users can not even share the link with any Australian publisher.
- Australian Users: They won’t get access for viewing or sharing Australian or International news material. On the other hand, they won’t be able to access those articles on the platform.
- International users: There is a restriction from viewing or sharing any Australian news content on this social media platform. They won’t get access to sharing any material from an Australian news agency.
Bottom line
As of now, it is relying on a combination of technologies to determine these contents. Moreover, the algorithm has not yet been designed, but the processes are still going on. This technology will be able to restrict the contents rising from the Australian news companies. They also claim that the policies’ changes won’t affect any other products and services in Australia.
Facebook will block Australian users from sharing news links in response to new bill https://t.co/p30PSaIRAT pic.twitter.com/sxyyWqkO7e
— The Verge (@verge) February 18, 2021
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