Guardian Australia, in a story jointly with AAP, quoted a Facebook spokesperson as saying there would be no problem for users to post stories on the site if they so wished.

“They can continue to benefit from our free tools and products, which they can voluntarily use, should they want to,” the spokesperson said.

“We hope the government sees the many benefits our free services provide to publishers and we’ll continue to engage with them on this topic.”

Meta shut down the news tabs in the UK, France and Germany last year.

Prior to the News Media Code being put in place in 2021, there was a lot of virtuous talk about digital firms owing a debt to media companies because news snippets from the latter were being used by the former.

But Facebook showed that it had the upper hand, cutting off news feeds altogether until the government agreed to its terms.

Google took a much quieter approach, both in Australia in 2021, and also in Canada late last year, after the country introduced rules similar to those in Australia.

Facebook again went nuclear in Canada, cutting off access to news feeds in August 2023 and not restoring them after Toronto refused to play ball.

Since the Facebook announcement on 29 February, News Corporation, closely followed by Nine Entertainment, has proffered dark hints that the American social media giant could be subject to fines running into the millions, and even billions, if it refused to negotiate fresh deals.

The flow of invective slowed down a bit as the deadline approached.

Facebook has never bothered to pay heed to any government apart from the one in Washington DC; it has snubbed the UK and also Canada.

Canada's Online News Act took effect from the beginning of the year and Facebook has not backed down even an iota.

Australian politicians have been making brave noises about extracting cash from Facebook, driven no doubt by the media companies which they would like to keep onside.

Neither Facebook nor Google has given in to government pressure in any country; in Spain, when the government took the our-way-or-the-highway approach with Google, the search firm left the country.

Google had a setup in China from 2006 to 2010, but left thereafter, alleging that the government had broken into its networks. In 2018, a bid by Google to re-enter China with a censored search service was exposed and dropped soon thereafter.

Facebook has also attempted to enter China, but the Beijing authorities have not shown any inclination to relax the conditions it has for the firm to do business in the country.