Facebook is teaming up with News Corp. Australia

According to the latest news, Facebook is teaming up with News Corp. Weeks after Australia passed a law requiring tech companies to pay for news content.

Significantly, the announcement of the three-year partnership was on March 15. Under the rules, content from much of Rupert Murdoch’s local media empire will be featuring on Facebook News. It has to be mentioned that the terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Furthermore, the deal adds to a stream of new partnerships News Corp has signed in Australia in the last weeks.

Sky News Australia is a broadcaster in ownership of a local News Corp subsidiary. According to News Corp, it has a separate agreement with Facebook. This agreement builds on an existing arrangement.

In February, the conglomerate, which includes much of Australian media and some U.K. outlets, plus the Wall Street Journal and New York Post in the United States, also revealed an agreement with Google.

The partnership enables News Corp’s American, British, and Australian publications to feature on Google’s News Showcase platform. Moreover, it is likely to include developing a subscription platform, sharing ad revenue, and investing in audio as well as video journalism.

Google refused to share the terms of that deal, but News Corp has declared that it would receive significant payments.

Facebook decided to halt news content in Australia in February

Remarkably, News Corp is already collaborating with Facebook in the U.S. Its publications featuring on the social network.

However, the company had been pushing for new rules in Australia. In the country, the debate had been fierce about a media code that requires Big Tech companies to compensate publishers for news-sharing on their platforms.

The debate came to a head in February, just days before the passing of the law. That was when Facebook began to halt news content in Australia in expectation of the law, forcing the pages of media organizations and other significant services to go dark. It eventually restored news content in the country after the government agreed on making some modifications to the legislation.

News Corp had been one of the fiercest supporters of the law. The company was forced to cut jobs and shut down dozens of newspapers in Australia in 2020. The blow from the COVID-19 pandemic had been too great to withstand.