Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is under pressure to force Facebook to negotiate with all publishers under its media negotiation laws, after leaked documents showed it intentionally caused chaos in Australia by shutting down pages of many charities as a ploy to coerce the Morrison government. to reach a favourable agreement.
A Wall Street Journal report reignited controversy starting in February 2021, when Facebook drastically disconnected service pages, adding chimney departments, medical experts, and suicide hotlines as the government struggled to counter the pandemic of incorrect information about the COVID vaccine.
Mark Zuckerberg praised his team for convincing Josh Frydenberg to settle for the “best end results imaginable in Australia” for Facebook. Alex Ellinghausen/AP
Although Facebook has publicly claimed that this was an unfortunate mistake, the documents show that internally, the resolution was hailed as a “genius” and led Mark Zuckerberg to say that the negotiations resulted in the “best final results imaginable in Australia,” when the government replaced his brain at a key point and has not “designated” him under the law.
This meant that Facebook and Google wouldn’t be forced to negotiate with all publishers if they showed they were accepting invoices with some. Former head of Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission, Rod Sims, who led the reform campaign, said the resolution will now be reviewed through the treasurer.
At the time of Facebook’s blocking, Sims said he stopped meeting with Facebook and the treasurer resumed negotiations.
“So they never lied to my face. But if what the whistleblower says is true, then Facebook obviously deliberately puts lives at risk, which is quite surprising and doesn’t reflect Facebook well,” he said.
“It’s a call for judgment for the government to name them now, yet [the revelations] are an applicable consideration, because they show how they do things and how they make their judgments. . . It’s a Treasury consultation now. They are the ones who do the review.
The revelations will embarrass the government, which takes credit for restricting the strength of first-generation platforms, with Facebook and Google since they signed deals with some publishers — adding Nine Entertainment, the publisher of the Australian Financial Review — for the provision of news content.
Since the change of designation, Facebook has refused to deal with some primary news organizations, SBS and The Conversation.
In April, small publishers Broadsheet, Australian Jewish News and Australian Chinese Daily froze news on their platforms for 24 hours, urging readers to email M. Frydenberg on the lack of obligation of Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, to negotiate with independent publishers.
Frydenberg reached out for comment, but did not respond to questions about the consequences for Facebook or reconsideration of his appointment under the laws, which are under review through the Treasury. Instead, he praised the government’s efforts to address Facebook’s threats and enforcement actions, in a written response.
“As I said at the time, we will be harassed, no matter how big, how powerful or valuable the virtual platform is, and we weren’t,” Mr. Frydenberg said.
“The result is that Australia has now passed a leading law ensuring that virtual platforms pay media organisations for generating original content. “
The Wall Street Journal article showed Facebook documents and testimony submitted to the government through whistleblowers that make it clear that Facebook had planned to sow chaos, at a time when the government is seeking to release data on COVID-19 vaccination plans.
They also showed that Facebook workers were ignored when they raised considerations with control that, like the Childhood Cancer Institute, Doctors Without Borders, and home and rescue were cut off without warning.
“The code we’re responding to is broad, so the recommendation of the legal and policy team has been to be too inclusive and refine as we get more information,” the product manager said in the rate of blockages in internal communication.
Facebook’s ban was a major surprise at the time and made headlines around the world. It was implemented without caution in the middle of the night, leading to great confusion and fear among the large number of organizations that had come to rely on it to talk to consumers and the community. .
After the government replaced its law and failed to appoint Facebook and Google, leaked documents showed that internal complacency began at Facebook.
It wasn’t their incompetence that closed those pages, it was intentional and calculated malice. All to win a handful of concessions.
— Chris Cooper, CEO of Reset Australia
His head of global news associations, Campbell Brown, sent an email minutes after the announcement that he had “landed precisely where we were looking for him. “
Former ACCC President Rod Sims still believes the law is a smart end result because of Facebook’s publishing deals from the top. Alex Ellinghausen.
“This was only imaginable because this team was wonderful enough to succeed in a short time,” he wrote.
“Thank you so much for the time it took to make this happen. I LOVE running with this!”
The importance of the victory for the entire company was demonstrated when Facebook’s chief operating officer, Cheryl Sandberg, temporarily stepped in to raise her congratulations.
“The last two weeks have been very intense around our resolution related to the AU news, a resolution we have not taken lightly. Things have evolved and, through it all, this organization has not lost a step,” Sandberg wrote.
“Strategy thinking, precision of execution, and the ability to remain agile as things evolved set a new higher standard. “
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg then added his deal, saying the result was all the company had in store, but that the past two weeks had been “really intense. “
William Easton, Facebook’s executive leader and vice president in Australia and New Zealand, alleges the pages were blocked.
“We were able to temporarily run and bring a principled technique to our network around the world, while achieving what may be the most productive end results imaginable in Australia,” he wrote.
Sims said he was surprised by the point of the self-congratulation and birthday party in Facebook’s internal communication, as he believed the government had controlled to deal a significant blow to the company by forcing it to strike deals with publishers.
“I think at that moment they shot themselves in the foot. By cutting all those websites, they just took them all away and there was a backlash against them that made it less difficult [for Josh Frydenberg] not to give in to what Facebook wanted, Mr. Sims.
“All we cared about, the treasurer, the Treasury and the ACCC, was that the deals were made. If Facebook was willing to make deals to avoid the risk of designation than the risk of arbitrage, that was fine for us.
“We do not judge that the adjustments made were significant and, in the end, agreements were reached. From our point of view, we achieved what we wanted.
However, Sims said at the time that he took Facebook’s word that blocking non-news websites is accidental and that the new revelations highlighted the need for a firmer stance in appointing the company to force it to negotiate with all publishers.
The Australian head of Facebook, Will Easton, asked what he knew about the general blocking of public services, whether he thought Facebook was dealing with the government of a smart religion, what he personally did to get the pages temporarily restored and whether he would resign if he did. Now he learned that he had been deceived by the head office about the bans.
Facebook’s head of policy communications for Australia and New Zealand, Gina Murphy, responded that the company would not comment on the americans’ role in the process and provided a comment from Mr. Easton that he supported Facebook’s earlier claims that it had deleted certain pages by mistake. and acted with intelligent faith.
Easton said the Wall Street Journal documents showed Facebook obviously intended to exempt government pages.
However, the report also showed that Facebook may have simply used a modified database of existing news publishers, called the News Page Index, but instead developed a “raw algorithmic news classifier” that blocked a page if it accounted for 60% of a page’s post. be classified as news.
“We shared many considerations about the proposed legislation and worked on smart religion with the Australian government to find a solution, removing data from the last resolution we were looking to make,” Mr Easton said.
“Teams from across the company, joining in Australia, have been racing to look for answers to the law and correct errors in our application. We publicly describe our mistake and apologize for inadvertently removing government and non-profit pages.
“When we were unable to [exempt blocked pages] as planned due to a technical error, we apologized and worked to fix it. Any suggestion to the contrary is categorical and manifestly false.
On Friday morning, online advocacy organisation Reset Australia said the revelations highlighted the need for a radical overhaul of the regulation of big tech.
He said Facebook had seven months to prepare for its news ban and had made the calculated resolution to disable the main channel of communication for fire departments, wildfire season, public hospitals in the event of a pandemic, applicants in the middle of an election and even suicide. . hotlines.
“It wasn’t their incompetence that caused those pages to close, but intentional and calculated malice. All this to win a handful of concessions on practical and smooth regulation,” said Reset Australia chief executive Chris Cooper.
“In fact, they have crossed a red line and no longer deserve the advantages of our trust. It’s time for both sides to engage in the strict systemic regulations we want to make our virtual world safe. “
“Facebook is never going to negotiate smartly with the government. They chose to jeopardize public protection as a negotiating tactic. They threatened the protection of the network to extort policy changes. It is nothing less than a direct attack on our democratic process. “
In a new report, Reset called for a “more streamlined regulatory technique,” which would come with: expanding the electronic security law to include social and network risks; updating voluntary and co-regulatory codes with previous obligations; expand the Privacy Act to cover meta-knowledge as well as knowledge; and in all likelihood the creation of a “single mediator” in the ACCC to “ensure knowledge and security in client matters”.
“In addition to strengthening existing regulation, regulators want to have resources and enforce it. This includes the ability to make full use of existing regulations as well as any proposed new legislation,” Reset said in its report.
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