In the early hours of Thursday morning for most Australians, Facebook pressed the big red button.
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As it had previously warned, the social media giant delivered on its threats and banned Australian users and media outlets from publishing, sharing or viewing news links on the site.
It's a big change many hoped would not happen but it's become a reality Australians will have to deal with for the foreseeable future.
Why can't I see news posts on Facebook?
Starting with the obvious, news posts are no longer visible in Australia because Facebook has hit the nuclear switch on them.
On Thursday, Facebook Australia's managing director William Easton said the social media site had been left with no choice but to pull the plug after the government's media bargaining code passed Parliament.
Mr Easton said Facebook had hoped the government would work toward collaboration rather than forcing the social media site to fork out dollars to media outlets for hosting their links.
"Unfortunately this legislation does not do that. Instead it seeks to penalise Facebook for content it didn't take or ask for," Mr Easton wrote.
"While the government has made some changes, the proposed law fundamentally fails to understand how our services work.
"This legislation sets a precedent where the government decides who enters into these news content agreements, and ultimately, how much the party that already receives value from the free service gets paid."
For regular users, the changes mean Australians cannot view or share Australian or international news content on Facebook as well as content from Australian and international news pages.
For the media outlets, it means posts have been removed, for now at least, and there are restrictions on sharing any further links on the page.
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What else is being affected?
While the ban was only intended to affect news media outlets, it seems a number of government agencies have been caught as collateral.
There have been reports that the Facebook posts for Bureau of Meteorology, ACT Health and Victoria Police have all been removed.
The posts of other crucial services, such as Fire and Rescue NSW, 1800 Respect and a number of unions, are also not appearing for some users.
A Facebook spokesperson said on Thursday it hadn't intended for government pages to get caught up in the bans.
"Government pages should not be impacted," the spokesperson said.
"As the law does not provide clear guidance on the definition of news content, we have taken a broad definition in order to respect the law as drafted.
"However, we will reverse any pages that are inadvertently affected."
Can you get around the ban?
While Facebook hasn't detailed what tools it's using to block news posts, there doesn't appear to be a clear workaround for the more tech savvy in the country.
Monash University cybersecurity expert Associate Professor Carsten Rudolph said it wasn't as simple as using a VPN and setting your country to one other than Australia.
"These types of blocks cannot be circumvented via a VPN or other similar solutions, as Facebook does not rely on IP address localisation," Professor Rudolph said.
"The platform has sufficient information about each of its users and it cannot be used without being logged in."
News posts are still visible if a Facebook user is not logged in or accesses pages in a browser's incognito mode.
Some internet dwellers have resorted to more creative methods, such as posting unrelated images and using a news link in the image's description.
Where to from here?
It's an interesting move by Facebook, who has been publicly championing journalism and news initiatives for the past few years.
The timing is also interesting given the social media site has said it's dedicated to stamping out rampant misinformation shared. Without countering false claims with factual reporting, it's unclear how the site intends to do this.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said he had a "constructive discussion" with Facebook chief executive Marc Zuckerberg on Thursday morning and was working on a path forward.
By lunchtime, Mr Frydenberg's comments were a little less hopeful in light of the number of government pages also blocked under the changes.
The social media site's comments earlier said the bill did not provide a clear enough definition of what constituted as news.
"We don't accept [Facebook's] interpretation of the definition of news. It's very clear in the legislation it doesn't apply to government information," he said.
"Many Australians rely on Facebook for their information, information that may be very important, credible information about government services.
"It does show you how integral they are to the provision of news."
The path forward from here is anyone's guess at this stage.
In the meantime, the changes don't mean the news is no longer available. It just means you'll have to head directly to reputable media outlet homepages to read it rather than relying on Facebook's newsfeed algorithm to serve it up.