Facebook to Allow Australian News Back on Platform After Government Concedes Profit-Sharing Fight

Facebook will reverse its ban on Australian news sources after reaching an agreement with Australian lawmakers, the company announced Tuesday.

“We have come to an agreement that will allow us to support the publishers we choose to, including small and local publishers,” said Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president of news partnerships. “We’re restoring news on Facebook in Australia in the coming days.”

Last week, the company banned Australian publishers and prohibited users from sharing links to their stories in response to a proposal that would have allowed news outlets to collectively bargain with Facebook and ultimately require the company to pay them. The media industry has been aggrieved in recent years by diminishing ad revenue, and has attributed the problem partially to consumers finding news on platforms including Facebook and Google rather than visiting news websites directly.

Facebook said in an earlier statement that the law failed to recognize the “fundamental nature of the relationship between our platform and publishers” and argued, “Contrary to what some have suggested, Facebook does not steal news content. Publishers choose to share their stories on Facebook.”

In Tuesday’s announcement, Facebook said a revised version of the proposed law meant the company wouldn’t be subjected to collective bargaining.

“Going forward, the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation,” Brown said. “It’s always been our intention to support journalism in Australia and around the world, and we’ll continue to invest in news globally and resist efforts by media conglomerates to advance regulatory frameworks that do not take account of the true value exchange between publishers and platforms like Facebook.”

Some of Facebook’s peers in the tech industry are taking the other side of the debate, which may represent a challenge for the company in countries elsewhere. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corps announced last week that it had reached a three-year deal with Google that involved an ad revenue-sharing agreement, and on Monday, Microsoft said it would support a law in the European Union similar to the one proposed in Australia.

Watch above via CNBC.