Whistleblowers have alleged Meta may have breached Australia’s foreign interference laws by deliberately blocking Australian government Facebook pages and websites as a negotiating tactic during the debate over the news media bargaining legislation.
US-based legal organisation Whistleblower Aid filed a disclosure with the US Department of Justice and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in early May on behalf of former Facebook employees alleging that Facebook had deliberately over-blocked pages as a means of negotiating a better outcome in the negotiations over legislation to force Meta to pay Australian media companies for news content.
In February 2021, Australian news sites, along with non-news sites including charities and government pages such as health department and emergency services pages, were blocked from access and people were unable to access or share content from those pages as Meta stepped up its opposition to the news media bargaining legislation.
Meta has strongly denied the allegations, insisting the block of non-news sites was accidental.
According to the 67-page submission reported earlier this month by tech news site CNET, Whistleblower Aid, acting on behalf of the whistleblowers, has argued to Congress that the act could violate Australia’s 2018 foreign interference legislation, “which criminalises sabotage to ‘public infrastructures’”.
Whistleblower Aid argues the government Facebook pages could be considered public infrastructure under the definition that a government page “provides or relates to providing the public with utilities or services”.
People can be jailed for up to 20 years for breaching the law.
A spokesperson for Meta said the company had “no comment to add” when presented with the specific allegations raised in the submission.
The document notes that the Australian government Facebook page was blocked in the time where the Covid-19 immunisation program was to begin rolling out on 22 February 2021.
“The Facebook takedown directly harmed the government’s ability to conduct important public health efforts. Facebook could have put the government page back online at any time, but it waited until it had achieved its objective.”
The organisation also alleges US laws were also breached around computer fraud and abuse, extortion, criminal conspiracy and making material misrepresentations to investors.
The document alleges that Facebook had been planning to block pages since the second half of 2020, setting up a special ACCC response team made up of engineers and product staff who were required to sign nondisclosure agreements during the planning process.
The submission also claims Meta marked documents produced for the plan as legal privilege “even though they did not concern legal issues, nor were they shared with a lawyer”, and during the takedown instructions were issued to not put anything in writing about the “intent” of the takedown.
“Multiple Facebook employees on separate occasions (including in a group meeting) verbally articulated that they had heard or acknowledged a preference from senior corporate leadership that staff should not put anything about the ‘intent’ of the takedown ‘in writing’ and/or write down as little as possible,” the document states.
The organisation said those individuals also avoided articulating what the intent actually was.
The documents also contain internal communications from three Facebook employees who, during the shutdown, attempted to propose solutions to fix the over-blocking, but had their suggestions ignored or neutralised by people on the ACCC team.
In one correspondence, a staff member listed the affected government and charity pages and said Facebook should “be proactive, not reactive” in restoring the pages due to the reputational damage Facebook was suffering in Australia at the time. The employee even proposed a solution but was ignored by those on the ACCC team, the submission alleges.
The organisation claims those employees who raised concerns were left off congratulatory emails from senior executives including CEO Mark Zuckerberg when Facebook struck a deal not to be designated a digital platform under the news media bargaining code.
The move has so far protected Facebook from being forced into negotiations with news media companies, but Facebook, as well as Google, have since signed dozens of agreements to pay media companies for news content, including Guardian Australia.
Former ACCC chair Rod Sims said on Monday Facebook should be designated under the code for refusing to negotiate with SBS News and the Conversation.
If designated, Facebook would be forced to negotiate with SBS and the Conversation or risk fines of up to 10% of their Australian revenue.
