Labor's Treasury spokesperson Jim Chalmers says Facebook's decision to ban the sharing of news content will negatively affect people's ability to access critical health news during the coronavirus pandemic.
“This will have consequences for people who are trying to access health news during a pandemic,” he told the media on Thursday morning.
“It will have consequences for all those people who rely on Facebook to get their news, credible news from credible sources," he said.
"This is a mess of the government's making. It is up to the government to tell us what has gone on here and what they are doing to fix it," Mr Chalmers added.
Opposition Communications spokeperson Minister Michelle Rowland told SBS News she was concerned about SBS language pages being blocked.
"The fact that SBS for example has invested considerable effort in ensuring that in language accurate information is made available in relation to COVID, it is very disappointing to see that this has happened and it is damaging to Australian consumers," she said.
Meanwhile Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said that Facebook's actions were "reprehensible".
"We need to deal with the challenge which is there and what the response is. The Government has a responsibility to inform people about what the next measures will be... Josh Frydenberg was out there talking about, you know, his happy phone calls with Mark (Zuckerberg) and having a chat and it was all okay. Doesn't look okay to me this morning," Mr Albanese said.
Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg put out a Tweet on Thursday morning saying he had had a "constructive" discussion with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
"He raised a few remaining issues with the government's news media bargaining code and we agreed to continue our conversation to try to find a pathway forward," Mr Frydenberg said.
Several users pointed out that key Indigenous media organisations had also been caught up in the Facebook ban, and highlighted the importance of the organisations for getting coronavirus information, emergency warnings and other important news out to the community.
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher says the government would not back down on its media bargaining code despite the move by Facebook to ban the sharing or posting of news content in Australia.
"If you do business in Australia you need to deal with the law of the land in Australia," Mr Fletcher told ABC Radio National.
"Essentially Facebook are saying to Australians what you see on our platforms is not fact-checked, not responsible journalism," he said.
"At a time when there are already questions about the credibility on Facebook, they need to think about this," he added.
Facebook announced and swiftly moved to enact a total ban on Australian news outlets posting content to their websites on Thursday morning.
It said the move was in response to the government's efforts to legislate media bargaining laws that would force tech giants like Facebook and Google to pay news outlets for the content they share.
Facebook had previously threatened to ban its users from sharing news content in Australia.
In a statement SBS said the decision to ban news would create a greater risk of people consuming misinformation.
"In particular, SBS is extremely disappointed that Facebook will no longer share critical information about COVID-19 and the vaccine rollout that SBS delivers in English and over 60 other languages. For many, Facebook is their primary source of information and removing trusted news sources like SBS puts people at greater risk of consuming misinformation," the statement read.
"We urge Facebook to reconsider this move and work constructively with SBS and other news providers to ensure ongoing access to news and information for the Australian community,".
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