Facebook faces year of reckoning after showdown in Australia

Facebook’s abrupt move to cut off news sharing in Australia – jeopardising credible sources of information about the coronavirus during a crucial time in vaccine rollout – was widely criticised. — Bloomberg

Facebook Inc’s brief but tempestuous standoff with the Australian government over a world-first pay-for-news law is only the start of a string of regulatory battles that the world’s biggest social network faces in 2021.

Mark Zuckerberg started the year on the offensive, blocking news across Rupert Murdoch’s home turf of Australia to fend off demands that Facebook pay media companies for content shared on its platform.