This article from Vox is fairly balanced in its assessment of the Facebook/Australia kerfuffle. There are pros and cons to the way Facebook approached this. Some of the media coverage made it sound like Facebook blocked the internet, and were standing between the raw news sources, and their users.
All material was still available from their raw sources, and as one person in the article mentions:

"I would be much more comfortable if all Aussies got their news direct from the source,” he said. “I think this would be best for quality journalism and the strength of our democracy."

The fine gentleman definitely has a point. Too bad that doesn't seem to be the main message carried in most news outlets.

If anything, I think this issue might have helped illustrate the problem that arises when you treat a privately run company as a public utility, and then getting miffed when they begin to make decisions based on profit. What were people expecting would happen?

“Photo by Juan Carlos Osorio @juancosoriophotography / On December 17, 2020, we had the first snowstorm of the winter in New York City.…”