The law requires that they not distinguish between news orgs that sign up to the new legislation and those that don't[1], which strongly incentivises them to err on the side of blocking too much rather than blocking too little.

[1] https://twitter.com/Pollytics/status/1362279552160948225

This fake outrage the Prime Minister told people to feel is a bit embarrassing.

The 'Facebook' pages were down for a few hours. Who cares.

People are so easy to control, that's what is concerning. It's good propaganda like this is off Facebook. As we can see the population is easily played.

I think it does, for two reasons.

Firstly — it shows value that Facebook was providing.

Secondly — that’s what the law says. Those sites include “content that reports, investigates or explains current issues or events of interest to Australians”, and so, as per the law, are news.

If the discussion were ‘Facebook stopped people from sharing Guardian articles on Facebook because they don’t want to pay for them’, there’s no obvious ‘villain’ in the discussion.

If it’s ‘Facebook isn’t allowed to let me link to the NSW government’s public health orders without agreeing to give News Corp money’ it’s a bit more obvious where the issue lies.

There’s no reason why Facebook would pretend the law is more reasonable than it is.

Fb blocked their own Page! Yes it seems they were too eager

They blocked the damn fire service pages... during bushfire season. I hope there is some law that is breaking so they can tear Facebook a new one, it's massively irresponsible and outright dangerous

Do they need to be on facebook?

Serious question, it seems an odd thing to say that's dangerous. If facebook is now part of the emergency services, I'd say that was dangerous anyway.

Private platforms are not public utilities. It's horrible that people have to come to treat it this way especially government.

Perhaps this is a nice incentive for the fire service to get their own website?

Facebook is a private company and can do what it likes.