Facebook could block sharing of news stories in Australia

With each passing day, the World Wide Web is becoming an outdated name.

Facebook warned Monday that it would block users and news organizations in Australia from sharing local and international news stories on its social network and Instagram if the country passed a proposed code of conduct aimed at curbing the power of Facebook and Google.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the country’s top competition authority, is drafting a bill for Parliament that would require both companies to negotiate with media publishers and pay them for content that appears on their sites.

Google also hinted that it might have to cut off its services in Australia in an open letter to users on Aug. 17. Google said the government’s draft legislation would give large media companies “special treatment” so they could make unreasonable demands that would make it difficult to keep Google search and YouTube videos free. Google, which owns YouTube, didn’t indicate how it would respond, but said its free services would be “at risk.”

The situation in Australia, while still playing out, demonstrates how government measures to diminish the influence of technology companies are creating digital fences between countries. While China has imposed restrictions on companies operating there for years, the United States has shown a recent willingness to exercise exclusionary tactics on popular services from Chinese internet companies.

The proposed changes in Australia could also contribute to the spread of disinformation, since news from legitimate news sources would be harder to find.

Facebook said publishers and users in Australia trying to share news on its site would be greeted with a notification saying they were no longer able to do so and pointing to the legislation.

“The proposed law is unprecedented in its reach and seeks to regulate every aspect of how tech companies do business with news publishers,” Will Easton, managing director of Facebook in Australia and New Zealand, said in a company blog post Monday evening.

Easton added that it would force Facebook to pay news organizations for content that the publishers voluntarily placed on its services.