https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210222/23213246298/facebook-caves-to-australia-will-restore-links-after-government-gives-it-more-time-to-negotiate-paying-news-links.shtml

Facebook is restoring news links in Australia after the government agreed to amend the proposed link tax law. We'll explain the details down below, but at the very least, this shows part of the reason Facebook did what it did, when it did. The end result still sucks, and I wish Facebook had stood its ground here because this portends a significant closing off of the open internet.

Many of the people who were annoyed over my support of Facebook's decision last week to block all news links in Australia kept saying "but the law hasn't passed yet -- why would they do this now?" Except... that ignored the reality of the situation. Facebook had announced last summer that it would remove links to all news if the law wasn't changed. And the Australian Parliament mocked Facebook and refused to make any changes to the law -- which was set to pass this week.