Facebook's Australia news blackout: A shock four years in the making

The fight between the world's largest social media company and the 13th-largest economy is the result of a bill, scheduled for debate next week in Australia's Senate

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was as shocked as anyone when he learned that Facebook Inc had blocked news content from its website in his country at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday.

He had been in direct contact with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and, he thought, was making progress toward an accommodation over proposed rules that would force the tech titan to pay publishers to link to their news.

Yet this was a shock four years in the making - a potential global turning point for regulation of big social media companies that began with Australia's complex, provincial politics in 2017.

The fight between the