Facebook-Australia standoff may have turned a corner The proposed news bargaining code remains in suspense as Australia's Treasury department brings Facebook and publishers back to the table. Meg Ryan on February 19, 2021 at 1:38 pm More ICYMI: Facebook unfriended Australia this week after the government there proposed a legal code that would allow Australian news publishers to charge tech companies to use their content in search results and news feeds. Facebook responded by blocking users there from viewing or sharing news content on its platform. In a blog post February 17, William Easton, Facebook’s managing director for the Australia & New Zealand region, took a “this hurts you more than it hurts us” attitude to the affair, enumerating the restrictions Facebook intends to put in place as well as their consequences to both publishers and users of the platform. To sum up: “People and news [organizations] in Australia are now restricted from posting news links and sharing or viewing Australian and international news content on Facebook,” Easton wrote.