SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australians woke to empty news feeds on their Facebook Inc pages on Thursday after the social media giant blocked all media content in a surprise and dramatic escalation of a dispute with the government over paying for content. Both had threatened to cancel services in Australia, but Google has instead sealed preemptive deals with several outlets in recent days. The same study said 29% of Australian news video content is consumed on Facebook. A Facebook representative in Australia did not reply to a request for comment on the situation. A later Facebook statement said the ban should not affect government pages but “as the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition”.

Source: Egypt Independent February 18, 2021 08:15 UTC