An Australian Senator has slammed the government there for agreeing to weaken a new law that would see Facebook have to pay for news content, after the social media site blocked all news, as well as government and emergency service updates in a blatant effort to cause chaos ahead of the vote on the new legislation.

Speaking in parliament, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young of the Green Party declared “The government has buckled here.”

“You’ve blinked, you weakened the power the minister has because Facebook bullied you. This is a face-saving exercise by the Treasurer,” she further announced.

Hanson-Young told the government “We will expect answers in this place as to who has been screwed over by Facebook and Google until you understand that it is your job to look after all players.”

The government changed the bill by inserting a clause that will exempt any social media platform that is deemed to make a ‘significant contribution’ to news.

Critics have charged that this is a blatant loophole inserted in the law to appease Facebook after its actions last week.

Senator Rex Patrick noted that the vagueness of the clause will allow big tech to get away with not paying for content, and will punish smaller media companies.

“We will still in effect have a huge imbalance in power between Facebook, Google and the small players. It undermines the whole bill,” Patrick urged.

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union also slammed the government’s actions stating that “It shouldn’t be up to Facebook and Google to cherry pick and groom publishers it deems acceptable for side deals. Any code should be mandatory, uniform, predictable, and fair; not at the whim of technology executives.”

The loophole will allow Facebook to offer different fees to different news organisations for content, and leave out whoever they deem to be unworthy of appearing on the platform, thus defeating the entire point of levelling the playing field.

Google had previously threatened to pull its search engine from Australia altogether, but backed down after negotiating with the Australian government and beginning to agree deals with news companies.

The UK, Canada, EU and US are all considering similar new rules for publishing content, so the Australia case is vital to set an international precedent.

Global media executives have previously warned that big tech is secretively developing and changing algorithms for news distribution without giving the industry any indication whatsoever of what they are doing.

Without regulation, companies like Google and Facebook are able to develop monopolies on news content at the expense of those creating it.

The Prime Minister of Australia accused Facebook of believing it is ‘bigger than the government’ after the tech company blocked all news from its social media platform in the country before parliament debates whether it should be forced to pay for content produced by third party media outlets.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison blasted Facebook and declared that big tech ‘think…that the rules should not apply to them’.

Reports indicate that as well as blocking news, Facebook in Australia has prevented the sharing of some government information, including emergency services updates on Covid, fires, and help for victims of domestic violence.

Morrison noted that “Facebook’s actions to unfriend Australia today, cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing.”

“They may be changing the world, but that doesn’t mean they run it,” the PM urged, adding “We will not be intimidated by BigTech seeking to pressure our Parliament.”

Speaking in Parliament, Health Minister Greg Hunt Described Facebook’s actions as “an assault on a sovereign nation and an assault on peoples’ freedom.”

“Facebook has taken steps which are unprecedented and reprehensible, unacceptable in a democracy such as this and an abuse of their power,” he said. 

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher claimed that Facebook is desperately attempting to coerce the government into backing down on the new law.

“The code is not yet in the law, so it raises an obvious question, why are they doing this now?” Fletcher noted.

Agriculture Minister David Littleproud declared “The Australian people and its government will not be bullied by some big tech company that is putting people’s lives at risk and putting profits ahead of people.”

Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce compared Mark Zuckerberg to Kim Jong-un, proclaiming “This is a North Korean policy agency being pursued by Facebook.”

Lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy, has been banned from Facebook owned Instagram just days after he penned a comprehensive account of Bill Gates’ attempt to monopolise and dominate global food production and public health programs.

Kennedy had 800,000 subscribers on the platform, which has said that he was banned for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the #coronavirus or #vaccines.”

It also emerged that just hours before the account was taken down, The Washington Post lobbied Facebook to take action against Kennedy, after he posted a section of a video from the “Planet Lockdown” movie.

The film was made by Catherine Austin Fitts, and seeks to expose connections between Big Tech and the federal government and how they are engineering a system of planetary control.

Sections of the movie present arguments that the COVID vaccination push is being controlled by an elite cabal, and that the vaccines are part of a push toward synthetic biology, which can be patented, and has been claimed to cause infertility.

Kennedy has been outspoken on his opinions regarding vaccines for some time.

While Kennedy still remains on Facebook and Twitter, both have pledged to crack down on information relating to claims about vaccines that do not align with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other governmental health authorities’.