Facebook executives ‘hid misconduct’ amid news ban

Senior Facebook executives forced staff to sign non-disclosure agreements and lied to hide their misconduct, according to explosive whistleblower documents.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Recent disclosures detail a deliberate pattern of deception from Facebook executives. Picture: AFP

Facebook executives deliberately shielded documents showing they wanted to cause havoc to influence media bargaining laws by encouraging staff to falsely label them “attorney-client privileged” despite the files not involving legal issues or being sent to lawyers, whistleblowers claim.

Documents provided to the US congress allege the social media company took the unprecedented step of requiring all employees in a team created to deal with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission to sign strict nondisclosure agreements.

The competition regulator was leading the push to force Facebook and Google to pay for content published by News Corp (publisher of The Weekend Australian), Nine Entertainment, Seven West Media and others.

The ACCC’s 2019 digital platforms inquiry concluded Google and Facebook had a “privileged position” because they were “critical and unavoidable partners” for news publishers in Australia.

In February last year, a week before the parliament vote on the media bargaining laws, Facebook said it would remove news from its platform. However, the pages that were removed included hospitals, charities, emergency services and even the government.

The Wall Street Journal this month reported that the same whistleblowers were alleging that this was a deliberate strategy to pressure the government into concessions.

In documents obtained by The Weekend Australian, lawyers acting for the whistleblowers write: “Multiple staff … middle management and executives at various times articulated or acknowledged that the phrase (attorney-client privileged) was routinely misapplied to documents, when they were not in fact privileged, but for the purpose of attempting to limit their distribution.”

The submission to congress is based on the accounts of “multiple whistleblowers” who approached Whistleblower Aid – a non-profit that assisted an earlier disclosure from Frances Haugen, it said.

“Our clients … hold or held positions inside Facebook that provided them with direct knowledge of the events and systems described here. The fact that multiple clients, who did not know each other, each independently contacted us and raised almost identical concerns supports the reasonableness of their beliefs that misconduct occurred.”

They were anonymous “for fear of retaliation and expected damage to their careers”.

The disclosures detail a deliberate pattern of deception from Facebook executives, who publicly claimed their take-down of the emergency service, hospital and charity pages was accidental.

Andrew Bakaj, the lawyer representing the whistleblowers, told The Weekend Australian the widespread removal of pages that were not linked to news publishers “directly put lives on the line”.

The disclosures show Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg describing the take-down as “something we’d been preparing for” that achieved what might be “the best possible outcome”.

“Thanks to everyone here for your hard work,” he said.

Facebook’s parent company Meta, in a statement on Friday, said the nondisclosure agreements were required by the government “to facilitate industry and internal discussion about the proposed legislation”.

“Meta employees could only participate in internal discussions if they signed a nondisclosure agreement with the Australian government,” it reads. “It is simply not correct that staff were directed to incorrectly label documents as privileged, or that we improperly claimed privilege to resist legal obligations to produce documents. This is both wrong and misunderstands how privilege works. We routinely provide training to all staff on the appropriate use of privilege.”

Some groups, including digital rights lobby group Reset Australia, argue that, despite millions of dollars now flowing through to news organisations, Facebook won crucial concessions during its news blackout, and that the reversal of its news blackout shows how significant those concessions were to the company.

Those changes to the legislation require the government to provide advance notice if Facebook is being considered for designation and the company can delay arbitration with publishers by adding a mandatory mediation stage after negotiations.

On Friday, Josh Frydenberg said the passage of the bargaining code “was hard fought”.

“We stood firm when confronted by Facebook’s threats and coercive actions,” the Treasurer said. “As I said at the time we wouldn’t be bullied no matter how big, no matter how powerful, no matter how valuable the digital platform was, and we weren’t.”

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg: ‘We wouldn’t be bullied’. Picture: PMO via NCA NewsWire

The whistleblowers are calling for criminal and civil proceedings against Facebook. “Our clients reasonably believe the foregoing is sufficient to open criminal and civil investigations into Meta,” the filings with congress read.

Julia Powles, the director of the University of Western Australia’s Minderoo Tech and Policy Lab, said Facebook’s special operations team and executives went to extraordinary lengths to develop and hide their plans, which appear intended to coerce and intimate Australian politicians into changing a law the company disliked.

“This level of deception and dishonesty galvanised not just one employee within the team, but more than one to risk their careers and sound the alarm,” she said.

“Their bravery should steel public officials in ensuring that both the company and individuals are thoroughly investigated for fraud.”