Opinion

Facebook goes nuclear in Australia

Peter Bale
Thu, 18 Feb 2021

As it went past a billion users it was often said Facebook would be the biggest country in the world were it a nation. On Thursday, Facebook (population 2.8 billion) showed just how big power works by unilaterally closing its platform to news in Australia (25 million).Google, by contrast, buckled to intense political pressure from incumbent news publishers led by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and agreed to pay for news.Both were in their own ways pre-empting legislation to enforce payments for news. Each is trying to get ahead of bein...

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Facebook goes nuclear in Australia

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