Last week Facebook made a dramatic U-turn, announcing that it will restore news to its Australian users, says the BBC. Facebook had blocked news after a dispute over a law that “would force it and Google to pay news publishers for content”. While the government claims that the rules will set up a “fairer negotiation process” between the tech giants and news companies over the value of news content, Google and Facebook insist they are unfair, since “it gets little commercial gain from news content”.
The reversal isn’t a complete defeat for Facebook, says the Financial Times. The Australian government has agreed to make changes “that grant Facebook more leeway to negotiate with publishers”. The concessions will give it more “bargaining power” in its talks with News Corp, “the world’s most powerful publisher”. While Facebook has been negotiating with News Corp since December 2017, talks had broken down over what Facebook had considered an “exorbitant price” for the group’s news content.
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