All companies like ours want is a fair deal for the content we produce

FACEBOOK has been forced into an embarrassing backdown over its ludicrous decision to ban Australians from reading mainstream news on their platform

FACEBOOK has been forced into an embarrassing backdown over its ludicrous decision to ban Australians from reading mainstream news on their platform.

Their epic dummy spit lasted only five days but now we await when news outlets can start posting content to Facebook again.

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Facebook, which is worth more than $500bn, decided to stop Australians from viewing news content because they did not want to pay news companies such as News Corp Australia, publisher of the NT News, for their stories.

The American-based behemoth has now agreed to enter “good faith” negotiations with news companies to pay for their content.

It does make you wonder, however, how “good faith” the negotiations will be considering how appalling Facebook behaved last Thursday when they cut Australians off — essentially with the click of a button.

There will rightly be many Australians who have since shut down their personal pages who will be reluctant to return to the platform.

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Businesses, also, should rethink giving any money to Facebook, given how they have behaved in recent days.

All companies like ours want is a fair deal for the content we produce.

The NT News and other media companies employ people in the Territory who live and work here and contribute to the NT economy.

Facebook does not.