Australia VS Facebook: What you need to know

Picture courtesy : Deccan Herald

The ongoing tension between tech giant Facebook and Australian government seem to be worsening by the day. The issue revolves around the ‘News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code Bill 2020’ proposed by the government which forces Facebook and Google to compensate local news and media firms for utilizing their content on the platform. The opposition Labour Party threw its support behind the bill giving another blow to tech giants and further bolstering the possibility of this bill becoming a law soon. Google has started talks for signing a deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News corp, however, Facebook retaliated by blocking news links from its platform.

On February 18th Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had a conversations with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi about the proposed bill and sources say that Modi is keen on adopting something similar in India as well. With 320 million users in India, this can be a big bump for Facebook. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also showed his support towards the bill.