Why Did Facebook Ban News in Australia? Does It Affect India?Social Media giants face heat in India TODAY 2021.

 Why Did Facebook Ban News in Australia? Does It Affect India?Social Media giants face heat in India.
welcome back everybody australia's government is slamming facebook's decision to blockusersin the country from all news content on its platform parliament is expected to pass a new media bill that would require platforms like google and facebook to pay news outlets for displaying and linking to their content facebook launched a preemptive strike against this proposed billyesterday blocking all news content that included news sites as well as some government accountsin cluding those that provide updates on the pandemic and bushfire threats facebook said it took a broad definition of news to respect the  law as it's drafted but said it would reverse any pages that were inadvertently impacted i think they've since said that that was a mistake to block some of those government websites australian officials are speaking out against this move calling I tarrogant heavy-handed and unnecessary this decision comes in stark contrast to google which announced earlier yesterday  that it agreed to a revenue sharing deal  with australian media company news corp  which owns the wall street journal and  the new york post and of course many  other  publications but andrew this has been  something that's been brewing for a  while  news corp has insisted for a long time  that it should get paid  by these companies that are linking to  its news and profiting off of it and if  you look at the digital ad sales  81 out of every hundred dollars that's  spent so 81 percent of the ad dollars in  australia  go to either facebook or google and um  the government has said that this is its  way of stepping up and helping some of  the struggling publishers  against these technology giants but this  is going to be a battle that's watched  very closely because you can imagine  that it can get picked up in other  countries as well  and and i don't know if you saw  microsoft has been very public  about advocating for this rule now they  are obviously in much of a different  business for most of the businesses but linkedin and others are advertising  businesses  and so it'd be very interesting to see  whether this comes uh right here on  shore  but um you're absolutely right it's it's  it's the big issue in in the media land shepard smith here  thanks moving on for now canada and australia  have teamed up  to make tech giants pay media companies  for their content  the canadian prime minister justin  trudeau and his australian counterpart scott morrison have agreed to coordinate their efforts against the tech companies like facebook google and others  a statement from the canadian prime minister prime minister reeds and i'm  quoting now  the prime minister's noted the growing  cooperation between canada and australia  on the regulation of online platforms  they  agreed to continue coordinating efforts to address online harm  and ensure the revenues of web giants  are shared more  fairly with creators and the media  this conversation takes place at a time  when tensions have been on the rise  between australia and facebook this  conversation took place at the start of  the week and follows facebook blocking australian users from accessing news content on its platform  in response to a regulatory bill being  considered in the country's parliament however since then the social media  giant has announced that it will be  removing the ban  after the move sparked outrage in  australia and across the world.

The australian legislation the first of  its kind in the world  is vehemently opposed by tech titans  thanks to provisions which would govern  the online financial relationship  between these companies and the media  canada the european union and others  have sought to  regulate major tech sector players as  well especially  google amazon facebook apple including via francis 2019 tech tax  the organization for economic  cooperation and development has led the  efforts to establish  such attacks at the international level  as well  we are now available in your country download the app  now get all the news on the move. australian government which wants to force the company to pay online publishers now the social media giant has restricted every user in the country both companies and individuals from sharing news articles nbc news senior media reporter dylan byers joins us now so dylan first of all set the stage tell us more about this new law that australia is establishing and why facebook is so against it sure you know basically what australia is trying to do here is something that a lot of countries have been trying to do which is basically how to figure out a way to stop what they see as facebook and google basic basically cannibalizing the publishing business uh the reason facebook and so what they want to do with this law i should say with this new bargaining code is basically set up a system whereby companies like facebook and google are required to pay publishers a certain amount of money the reason that facebook takes issue with this is not because they are fundamentally opposed to paying for news it's because they don't like the letter of the law and if you actually get into the weeds of the law as terrible as this looks for facebook you know it looks as though facebook is basically uh deprived every australian of their ability to access news on facebook if you look at the letter of the law there are fundamental flaws to it there are problems to it uh that basically leave facebook vulnerable and could set a precedent whereby it would beits business would be vulnerable globally should other countries follow suit so how is the australian government responding to what facebook's now doing the australian government is effectively saying that they're hoping they can continue the dialogue they're obviously disappointed with that but they're hoping that they continue the dialogue and i anticipate that we haven't seen the end of this i anticipate that facebook and australia will eventually come to some sort ofagreement the problem is that the agreement that australia laid out was one you know when i say facebook was left vulnerable what i mean it would introduce a policy whereby facebook would say okay we'll pay publishers you know x amount and then the publishers would come in and say well we want y amount and there would be an independent arbiter who would get to conclude how much that money that was and so you would have a situation where publishers were effectively asking for the moon you repeat that globally and all of a sudden publishers are get to effectively just take money from facebook as they want and quickly dylan this issue doesn't just affect facebook take google for example which is tackling this in a very different way tell us about that yeah so google went sort of for the easier route here which is they effectively said that they would start paying australian publishers and even in the case of the biggestaustralian publisher news corps which is owned by rupert murdoch they said they would start paying uh globally so that includes the wall street journal in the us um and all of the uk publications uh it it's basically they're basically saving face they're basically saying we're the good guys let's just let's just move move along with this that differs from the facebook policy is saying you know what we don't like this deal and we want you to understand why we don't like this deal so we're going to force the conversation all right interesting issue dylan byers thanks for staying on it we appreciate.