Facebook has reached an agreement with the Australian government and said it’ll restore news links and pages on its platform in the coming days.
This comes days after the social network barred all users and publishers in the country from posting or viewing news links, as new Australian laws required platforms like Facebook to pay publishers to display their content. Apart from news sites, the ban also affected government information pages.
While the company didn’t give details on what steps it’s taking, but it said it has reached an agreement with the government on making changes to the news code:
After further discussions, we are satisfied that the Australian government has agreed to a number of changes and guarantees that address our core concerns about allowing commercial deals that recognize the value our platform provides to publishers relative to the value we receive from them.
Last week, the Australian government refused to make amendments to its code that forced platforms such as Facebook and Google to pay news sites for displaying links to articles.
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While Facebook decided to ban news links from its platform altogether, Google cut a deal with multiple news networks including Nine Entertainment and News Corp to pay for news.
Facebook already plans to launch its own news product in Australia after introducing it in the US and UK.
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