Facebook blocked people in Australia from posting new stories on its site. A drastic rise in the war over whether tech giants should pay publishers for their stories or not can be seen.

On the other hand, Google took the opposite move. The company struck deals with Australia’s major publishing companies. The deal came to avoid the most stringent parts of a new law in the country, walking back its own threat from last month to shut down its search engine in Australia.

Posts from Australian publishers from anywhere in the world will be blocked by Facebook, and users in Australia are deprived from seeing any news content, even from Non-Australian publishers. The move caught up some government websites that posted information about emergencies, fires, and weather.

The reaction in Australia was strong. Australian Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said, “Facebook needs to think very carefully about what this means for its reputation and standing. They’re effectively saying ‘on our platform there will not be any information from organizations that employ paid journalists.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison criticized the tech giant for blocking pages that contained vital public information. Morrison said, “Facebook’s actions to unfriend Australia today, cutting off essential information services on health and emergency services, were as arrogant as they were disappointing. These actions will only confirm the concerns that an increasing number of countries are expressing about the behavior of Big Tech companies who think they are bigger than governments and that the rules should not apply to them.”