https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-deliberately-caused-havoc-in-australia-to-influence-new-law-whistleblowers-say-11651768302
Facebook Deliberately Caused Havoc in Australia to Influence New Law,
Whistleblowers Say – WSJ
Facebook Deliberately Caused Havoc in Australia to Influence New Law,
Whistleblowers Say
Last year when Facebook blocked news in Australia in response to potential
legislation making platforms pay publishers for content, it also took down the pages of
Australian hospitals, emergency services and charities.
It publicly called the resulting chaos “inadvertent.”
Internally, the pre-emptive strike was hailed as a strategic masterstroke.
Facebook documents and testimony filed to U.S. and Australian authorities by
whistleblowers allege that the social-media giant deliberately created an overly broad and
sloppy process to take down pages—allowing swaths of the Australian government and health
services to be caught in its web just as the country was launching Covid vaccinations.
The goal, according to the whistleblowers and documents, was to exert maximum
negotiating leverage over the Australian Parliament, which was voting on the first law in
the world that would require platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay news outlets for
content.
…
After five days that caused disorder throughout the country, Australia’s Parliament
amended the proposed law to the degree that, a year after its passage, its most onerous
provisions haven’t been applied to Facebook or its parent company, Meta Platforms Inc.
“We landed exactly where we wanted to,” wrote Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of
partnerships, who pressed for the company’s aggressive stance, in a congratulatory email
to her team minutes after the Australian Senate voted to approve the watered-down bill at
the end of February 2021.
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg
chimed in with congratulations as well, with Ms. Sandberg praising the “thoughtfulness of
the strategy” and “precision of execution.”
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