Google on Wednesday struck a deal with Australia’s Murdoch family-owned media conglomerate News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers—a sign that the tech giant may be willing to negotiate deals with Australian news publishers to avoid being subject to the government’s tough new law requiring them to pay for news content and links, lawyers say.

But later on Wednesday, Facebook took a dramatically different tack, announcing that because of the new law it will block news from Australian publishers from appearing on its site for all Facebook users, regardless of where they are based. It will also prevent people inside Australia from accessing news stories on its platform, the company said.