Facebook reached agreements with three Australian media editors on Friday to pay them for the publication of news, a day after the Parliament of that country approved a law that obliges large technology companies to negotiate this type of payments to local media .
The publishing groups that have reached agreements with the social network are Schwartz Media (publisher of “Saturday Paper” and “Monthly magazine”), Solstice Media (owners of “New Daily” and “City Mag”) and Private Media (editor of “Crikey “), according to the Australian press.
These agreements will be formalized in the next two months and, for the moment, no information regarding the exact details or the amounts that Facebook will pay to publishers has emerged.
The Menlo Park firm (California, USA) limited itself to indicating in a statement that these agreements “will bring a new batch of quality journalism, part of which was previously paid, to Facebook.”
For her part, the CEO of Schwartz Media, Rebecca Costello, pointed out that her company has been collaborating with the social network for a long time and that she looks forward to seeing how this agreement helps them to “continue producing the leading independent journalism in Australia.”
The firm headed by Mark Zuckerberg also lifted the blockade it imposed last week on the publication of the news in Australia on Friday.
Since early morning, some 13 million Facebook users in Australia can once again access media accounts, such as the public ABC and SBS, as well as private channels 9 and 7 and the newspapers “Sydney Morning Herald” or “The Age”, among other means, and share their news normally.
During the blockade, which has lasted about 8 days, the media pages appeared without content, while any attempt to share a journalistic link generated a notice where the platform explained its reasons for the measure.
Facebook was complaining about a series of articles in the then bill, which was aimed at forcing technology companies to reach payment agreements with the media for the content they create.
International, Australia, Facebook
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