The social media platform will restore news pages in Australia after talks between Facebook and the government . The two sides agreed to changes to a planned media code that the company said would allow it to maintain greater control over what appears on its platform.
The announcement comes after months of heated debate between the US tech company and Canberra in Australia, which is working on legislation that would force tech platforms to pay publishers for news content.
The initial version of the legislation would have allowed media outlets to negotiate, either individually or collectively, with Facebook and Google and introduce binding “arbitration” if the two sides could not reach an agreement.
On Tuesday, the Australian government said it would amend the codeto include a provision that “must take into account whether a digital platform has made a significant contribution to the viability of the Australian news industry through reaching commercial agreements with news media businesses.”
Arbitration, meanwhile, will now only be used as a "last resort" after a period of mediation.
“ The government has made it clear that we will retain the ability to decide whether appears news on Facebook, so we are not automatically subject to forced negotiation ,” Campbell Brown , Facebook’s vice president of global news partnerships, said in a statement
He said the deal “will allow us to support the publishers we choose, including small and local publishers,” adding that the company “will restore news on Facebook in Australia in the coming days.”
Last week, Facebook banned Australians from finding or sharing news on service . The decision — which appears to be the most restrictive move the company has ever taken against content publishers — forced pages from media organizations and even some unrelated essential services to shut down.
Facebook's decision to restore news came as the Australian Senate debated the latest iteration of the media law.
“It has always been our intention to support journalism in Australia and around the world, and we will continue to invest in news globally and resist efforts by media groups to promote regulatory frameworks that fail to take into account the real exchange of value between publishers and platforms like Facebook,” Brown said.
Google, meanwhile, had already tried to get ahead of the new legislation by announcing partnerships with some of the country's biggest media organisations, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (NWS) and Seven West Media. Facebook revealed its own deal with Seven on Tuesday.
