Facebook and Australia are at war. Though the country’s Parliament has yet to pass a proposed law that would require tech giants to pay for sharing others’ content, Facebook has already retaliated by cutting off Australian users’ ability to see or share news content; it also instituted a global ban on sharing content from Australian publishers. Claiming it had little choice, Facebook said that “the proposed law fundamentally fails to understand how our services work.” The consequences have been widespread: Australian charities, health care workers, domestic violence helplines, emergency response services—along with newspapers and magazines—have found their Facebook pages rendered useless and their content unshareable. The country’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, said that his government “will not be intimidated.”

This isn’t the first time, even in recent memory, that Facebook has defied a country’s laws or its leadership. In October, it told the Turkish government that it wouldn’t follow a law requiring the company to appoint a local representative (Facebook later Read the Full Article