It seems to me Loz that you are rather leaving us with the impression that Facebook has been hard done by. You have given us the FB line, but made no attempt to critically evaluate whether it is true or not.

I very much suspect that at best it is little more than corporate rationalization of their overwhelming market power....which they do not seem to mind flexing in the crudest possible and arbitrary fashion. The overreach is palpably obvious to the extent that they have taken out everything of any news value at all, including emergency services for Chrissake.

Google and Facebook make money on content they do not produce. I think more countries should follow Australia's lead. No different than infringing upon copyrights.

Who cares, it's facebook after all, it's not like sensible people get their news from there anyway.

I really hope that this results in a major shift in how people see Facebook and the other social media giants: these companies are acting in authoritarian ways and killing free speech. Facebook's position that "For Facebook, the business gain from news is minimal" is ridiculous considering Facebook's business actually is harvesting data from users--whether users are visiting news sites or not.

I hope the ultimate consequences for facebook that manifest themselves from this are severe.....

Spud nailed it. The "news" people share on Facebook is nothing more than opinionated gossip in most cases. For real news go to NPR or Reuters.

You mean our governments need to actually govern and provide public services? And not rely on private corporations with capitalist values? Shocker...

As noted by others, FB response is is utter BS, "the business gain from news is minimal"...lol. But again this is predictable and why we have governments and regulations...or at least we used to have regulations before we let special interested groups convince regulators that a 'digital publishing company' somehow should not be regulated like a 'publishing company'...because the "inter-webs are like tubes"...

@guzmanchinky: yes, it would be great if more people did this... AP as well.

FB News Feed keep showing people "kind of (custom/personalized) news they like" probably a lot to do w/ endless protests in France & Hong Kong & USA & elsewhere (by keep increasing political/social/religious polarization)!
Maybe all countries better ask FB to stop their News Feed too?
& maybe no social media companies allowed to serve news?

I can only take FB in doses every week or two. A lot of the content is fluff and silly. Anyone who relies on the platform for news is a gullible peon. It has way too much power of influence, and more countries should take the initiative of the Ozzies.