Andrew Forrest’s election plea: ‘Force Meta to operate from Australia’

Andrew Forrest says whoever wins the election must force Meta to run its Australian operations via a local entity to stop it bypassing local laws and facilitating organised crime.

Billionaire Andrew Forrest says whoever wins the federal election needs to force Facebook owner Meta to base its Australian operations via a local entity to stop it bypassing the country’s laws and facilitating organised crime.

The resources boss is suing Meta in California after it failed to take down hundreds of thousands of scam advertisements featuring his likeness that have fleeced Australians of their life savings.

Dr Forrest is suing Meta in California because it has attempted to use a 30-year-old US law that grants online companies immunity from what is posted on their sites and platforms.

He has argued that Meta has “knowingly advertising the content of criminals” via this loophole, which he is now desperately trying to close, “no matter the cost”.

“Australian sovereignty should be the most important factor when considering how to regulate foreign tech platforms that millions of Australians access,” Dr Forrest told The Australian.

“Australia should be able to enforce our laws for all companies that do business in Australia, and Australian users should have access to our courts if they suffer from big tech’s behaviour.

“I don’t think this is a political debate – it’s something all parties should agree on. Whoever forms government should act immediately to require digital platforms to operate through an Australian legal entity and be subject to Australian regulations and our legal system.”

Dr Forrest said it was “completely unacceptable” that “innocent Australians who have lost thousands of dollars” currently have no way to seek compensation from Meta.

“Australians should be in control of what happens in Australia – it’s as simple as that.”

A Meta spokeswoman declined to say what was on its policy wish list from the next Australian government.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is lobbying the Trump administration to settle an antitrust case.

In US Federal Court documents, Dr Forrest describes Meta’s position as “jurisdictional arbitrage”, drawing a parallel with the way the company shifts money from ad sales out of high-tax countries such as Australia to corporate tax haven Ireland.

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission found Meta generated $4.7bn and $5.1bn in Australian advertising revenue from Facebook and Instagram, respectively, in FY21-22.

Dr Forrest wrote to Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg a decade ago, asking him to remove the scam advertisements but received no reply.

As a result of the lack of action, one Australian woman fell victim to a scam featuring Mr Forrest’s likeness and lost $670,000. Another man clicked on a link in a fraudulent Facebook add and was swindled out of $77,254, and a 72-year-old Western Australian known as “FZ” lost $250,000 – which he has not been able to recover.

Billionaire Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest has been the victim of five new scam ads published on Meta’s platforms every single day.

Australian writers also want the Australian government to support a legal battle against Meta, which is accused of using Australian books to train AI without seeking permission or offering payment.

Meta has been using books from the LibGen website, which is a pirate site, and last week published a search tool, which enables writers around the world to see which of their books have been stolen and published onto LibGen.

More than 50,000 writers have since signed a petition designed to force Meta to pay them for using their work to train AI. In a statement, Meta said the “fair use of copyrighted material is vital” to the development of AI, and it does not intend to pay authors for the works it has used.

Meta has also been facing regulatory pressure in the US, with Mr Zuckerberg lobbying Donald Trump and White House officials to strike a settlement that would prevent the $US1.35 trillion company facing an antitrust trial later this month.

The case from the Federal Trade Commission centres on accusations that Meta bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush its competition. While Congress established the FTC an independent agency, Mr Trump has moved to assert control of it and other independent bodies.

It follows Meta, via the Computer & Communications Industry Association, complaining to Mr Trump about Australia’s news media bargaining code, which compels social media platforms to compensate media companies for the content they use.

The CCIA accused Australia of unfairly targeting US tech companies by forcing them to subsidise “local news businesses”, which costs them collectively $US140m a year.

Former Australian Competition & Consumer Commission chair Rod Sims – the architect of Australia’s news media bargaining code – said the government needed to give greater powers to Australian regulators to rein in Meta and other tech titans.

“We in our society have to think about companies getting so big that they can control governments and manipulate them in their own self-interest,” Mr Sims said.

“I’m hoping that the government will give the ACCC the powers to set frameworks within which the platforms should operate, both for Competition and Consumer purposes,” Mr Sims said.

“That’s what happens in the UK, and there is something similar in the European Union. So these things are moving slowly, deliberately, sensibly, so they’re not kneejerk, but they’re giving the regulator the powers to deal with these things in a really considered way.”

Originally published as Andrew Forrest’s election plea: ‘Force Meta to operate from Australia’