Australians woke up Thursday to find their Facebook pages free of any news, after the social media giant blocked all media content, in a sudden and major escalation of the dispute with the Canberra government, against the backdrop of a bill requiring online platforms to pay media outlets for their content, and the government has described Australian blocking move as "authoritarian".

On Thursday morning, Facebook users in Australia were unable to view the news links published by local or international media, and it became impossible for users abroad to access Australian media publications via the network.

The move quickly sparked criticism from news producers, politicians and human rights defenders, especially after the site also deleted official health pages, emergency safety warnings, and social care networks.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison wrote on his Facebook page, "Facebook's actions to cancel friendship with Australia today, by cutting basic information on health and emergency services, arrogant and disappointing," using the term "unfriending" which refers to someone stopping following someone else's Facebook page. .

Morrison noted that these measures "will only confirm the concerns expressed by an increasing number of countries about the behavior of major technology companies, which they believe are larger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them."

For his part, the Australian Finance Minister, Josh Friedenberg - Thursday - described Facebook's move as "useless and authoritarian," saying it "harms its reputation in Australia."

He stressed that his government remains "strongly determined" to implement the bill aimed at forcing electronic platforms to pay sums of money to media outlets when using their contents.

The Australian House of Representatives passed the bill last week, and it is currently under debate in the Senate.

The Australian minister noted that "today's events confirm to all Australians the dominant position of these giants on our economy and our digital landscape."

This position comes a few hours after the minister confirmed on Twitter that he had had a "constructive" conversation with Facebook Chairman Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook said it faced a difficult choice to block news content after Australian law (Getty Images)

Facebook position

On the other hand, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that official government pages "should not be affected" by the measures taken by the network, promising to return all pages that were "unintentionally affected."

Facebook said in a statement that the law - which Parliament is expected to pass within days - "greatly misunderstands" the relationship between it and publishers, adding that it faced a difficult choice between compliance or blocking news content.

"The bill reflects a very poor understanding of the relationship between our platform and the publishers who use it to share news content," said William Easton, responsible for Facebook in Australia and New Zealand.

He added, "It presents us with a difficult choice: either we try to obey a law that ignores the facts in this relationship, or we stop allowing news content to be published on our services in Australia. We have adopted the second option with a heavy heart."

Scott Morrison: Facebook's actions to cut basic information on health and emergency services are arrogant and disappointing (Getty Images)

Worried about fake news

The director of "Human Rights Watch" in Australia, Ellen Pearson, described this ban, which also affected the page of the organization and other non-governmental organizations, as "an alarming and dangerous turn."

"Cutting off access to vital information for an entire country in the dead of night is unacceptable," Pearson said.

The Australian government and press groups have expressed concern about a possible increase in fake news.

Indeed, these new measures did not cover several Facebook pages accused of promoting conspiracy theories and false information.

In this context, Australian Information Minister Paul Fletcher called on Facebook to consider "carefully" the issue of blocking the pages of organizations that employ professional journalists and have an editorial policy and path to investigating the validity of the news.

Conflict with Google

Facebook’s recent move contradicts Google’s position, which on Wednesday agreed to pay "large sums" in exchange for press content for the "News Corp" group, owned by billionaire Robert Murdoch.

Facebook had formed a united front with Google for years in a campaign against the laws, and the two companies threatened to cancel services in Australia, but Google concluded agreements with several news sites in recent days, and it declined to comment on Facebook's decision.

Australian law requires Facebook and Google to enter into commercial agreements with news sites, or to submit to compulsory arbitration to agree to pay for news content.

The Australian initiative is widely watched around the world, at a time when the media is grappling with a difficult situation in the world of the digital economy, with major technology groups increasingly capturing advertising revenue.

According to the Australian authorities for competition affairs, Google accounts for 53% of advertising expenditures in the country, while Facebook accounts for 28% of it, while other parties in the market - including press groups - share the remaining meager revenues that are not sufficient to finance journalistic work.

The media crisis has been exacerbated by the global economic meltdown due to the Corona pandemic (Covid-19), as several newspapers were closed in Australia and hundreds of journalists lost their jobs due to the crisis.