This appeared last week:
Facebook caught ‘extorting’ Aussie government to soften laws
May 6, 2022 – 11.21am
Facebook deliberately caused chaos for essential services in Australia - including fire services during bushfire season and suicide hotlines during the pandemic - to strong-arm the Morrison government into coming to a favourable deal over the media bargaining code, a US whistleblower has revealed.
A report in the Wall Street Journal overnight features internal Facebook documents showing how a ban of thousands of non-news Australian Facebook pages in February 2021 was deliberate even though Facebook publicly claimed it was an unfortunate error. Internally, the move was praised as “genius” and led Mark Zuckerberg to say the negotiations achieved “the best possible outcome in Australia.”
In light of the new revelations, former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission boss Rod Sims said the decision not to “designate” Facebook under the media bargaining laws should be revisited by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
The revelations will embarrass the government, which has taken credit for reining in the power of big tech platforms, with Facebook and Google both since signing deals with some publishers - including The Australian Financial Review’s publisher Nine Entertainment - for the provision of news content.
However, after Facebook took the “nuclear option” of banning some Australian pages, the government quickly agreed to change its plans and not “designate” Facebook or Google under the legislation - thereby essentially allowing them to choose which publishers they would negotiate deals with.
Prior to the change, the laws would have specifically named Facebook and Google, making them negotiate with all news publishers. Facebook has since refused to deal with some significant news organisations like SBS and The Conversation.
In April smaller publishers, including Broadsheet, Australian Jewish News and Australian Chinese Daily, froze the publication of news on their platforms for 24 hours, urging readers to email Mr Frydenberg about the lack of accountability from Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, to negotiate with independent publishers.
The Wall Street Journal article showed Facebook documents and testimony filed to authorities by whistleblowers that make it clear that Facebook had planned to cause chaos, at a time when the government was attempting to get information out about COVID-19 vaccination plans.
They also showed that Facebook employees were ignored when they raised concerns with management that services such as the Children’s Cancer Institute, Doctors Without Borders and fire and rescue services, were taken down without notice.
“The code we are responding to is extremely broad, so guidance from the policy and legal team has been to be over inclusive and refine as we get more information,” the product manager in charge of the blocks said in internal communication.
Facebook’s ban was a major shock at the time and caused headlines around the world. It was implemented without warning in the middle of the night, causing mass confusion and concern among the myriad organisations that had grown to rely on it to communicate with customers and the community.
After the government amended its legislation and decided not to designate Facebook and Google, the leaked documents showed an orgy of self-congratulation kicked off inside Facebook.
“It wasn’t their incompetence that saw those pages shut down, it was intentional, calculated malice. All to win a handful of concessions.”
— Executive director of Reset Australia Chris Cooper
Its head of global news partnerships, Campbell Brown, sent an email within minutes of the announcement saying it had “Landed exactly where we wanted to.”
“That was only possible because this team was genius enough to pull it off in zero time,” Ms Campbell wrote.
“Thank you so much for the round the clock it took to make this happen. I LOVE working with this team!!!”
The importance of the win for the whole company was shown as Facebook’s high-profile chief operating officer, Cheryl Sandberg, quickly chimed in to add her congratulations.
“The last couple of weeks have been very intense around our AU news decision - a decision we did not make lightly. Things have been evolving quickly and through it all this group has not missed a step,” Ms Sandberg wrote.
“The thoughtfulness of the strategy, precision of execution, and ability to stay nimble as things evolved sets a new high-standard.”
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg then added his agreement, saying the result was something the company had been preparing for, but that the preceding couple of weeks had been “really intense.”
“We were able to execute quickly and take a principled approach for our community around the world, while achieving what might be the best possible outcome in Australia,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote.
Mr Sims said he was surprised by the level of self-congratulation and celebration in Facebook’s internal communication because he believed the government had achieved a significant hit against the company by forcing it to do deals with publishers.
“I thought at the time they had shot themselves in the foot. By taking down all those websites, they just got everybody annoyed and there was this backlash against them that made it easier (for Josh Frydenberg) not to give into what Facebook wanted,” Mr Sims said.
“All that mattered to us - the Treasurer, the Treasury and the ACCC - was that deals got done. If Facebook were willing to do deals to avoid the threat of designation rather than the threat of arbitration, that was absolutely fine by us. We didn’t judge that any of the changes made were material, and at the end of the day deals got done. From our point of view, we achieved what we wanted to.”
However Mr Sims said at the time he had taken Facebook at its word that the blocking of non-news websites was accidental, and that the fresh revelations highlighted a need for a tougher stance in designating the company to force it to negotiate with all publishers.
By the time of the Facebook block Mr Sims said he had stopped meeting with Facebook as the Treasurer had taken over the negotiations,
“So they never lied to my face. But if what the whistleblower is saying is true, then Facebook were clearly putting lives at risk, deliberately, which is pretty amazing, and does not reflect well on Facebook,” he said.
“It’s a judgement call for the government to designate them now, but certainly (the revelations) are a relevant consideration, because it speaks to how they do things and how they make their judgements ... It’s a Treasury issue now. They’re the ones doing the review.”
Lots more here:
Bluntly this sort of behaviour by a transnational tech giant is totally unacceptable and the consequences need to be really significant it what is discussed here is proven to be true!
It is clear the company is a transnational bully and I am pleased I am not a user. A fabulous effort from the Wall Street Journal to uncover such malfeasance!
No $2000 fine for this sort of stuff – 10 to 15% of annual global turnover would be fair!
David.
2 comments:
No fan of Meta, but the cause of this debacle was a poorly defined (bad) law aimed at appeasing Australian media conglomerates.
I must have missed it. Tell me again how nuclear submarines and such will protect us from the likes of Facebook and Google?
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