According to whistleblowers, Facebook employed an overly aggressive blocking mechanism to take down the sites of Australian emergency services last year as a negotiation strategy.
Following a dispute over compensating news sources, the social media platform decided to restrict all Australian news outlets.
During fire season and Australia’s vaccination rollout, however, fire services and state health agencies were also shut down.
Facebook claims that banning other pages was an honest oversight.
Former workers, supported by the whistleblower aid organisation, claim that the business “over-blocked” Australian pages at a crucial period to gain power on the Australian government.
The high-profile feud began in February of last year, when senators were debating a landmark measure that would have required social media companies to pay news organisations for information they utilised on their sites.
Facebook pulled down all news pages in Australia the day following the first vote, even those that had nothing to do with news.
The embargo was lifted when the government reached an agreement with the internet giant.
According to documents released to the Wall Street Journal by whistleblowers, the business did not use its long-standing database of news organisations, instead developing a new “crude” algorithm that classified any page with 60% journalistic content as a news provider.
Internal planning records also purportedly revealed that the takedown was prepared ahead of time in order to be ready before an appeals procedure for errors, which whistleblowers claimed was not typical.
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