AUSTRALIANS will become second-class online citizens in a sneaky move by Facebook designed to rob them of new privacy rights.

The beleaguered social media giant, which suffered the biggest data scandal in its history this year, will be forced to deliver new privacy tools today, when European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force.

But Facebook will use a loophole to ensure Australians do not receive the same rights as their European counterparts, moving them from Facebook’s Irish arm to the United States, where privacy laws are more lax.

media_camera Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Picture: AFP

The move is likely to affect 1.5 billion Facebook users, including others in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

University of Sydney Business School professor Vince Mitchell said the move would have a detrimental effect on Australian social media users, who would be short-changed by Facebook’s decision.

“After this move goes ahead, Australians’ rights will be diminished,” he said.

“By taking them out (of the jurisdiction), they are effectively saying Australians will not be protected by the rights given to Europeans.”

Mr Mitchell said Facebook had likely moved Australian users to avoid potential billion-dollar penalties for privacy breaches, as the European laws allowed for fines of up to four per cent of a company’s global annual revenue for breaches.

But the move would also mean Australians couldn’t request investigations into how their information was being used, or seek compensation for the misuse of their personal information.

media_camera A laptop showing the Facebook logo is held alongside a Cambridge Analytica sign. Picture: AFP

“For an Australian, if something did go wrong and they wanted to claim a breach of GDPR policy, they couldn’t make a claim,” he said.

“Their rights to compensation and their rights to ask for an investigation of breaches, they disappear.”

Questions have also been raised about the legality of moving Facebook users out of Europe to avoid the laws, with former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Maurice Marie Louise Verhofstadt asking chief executive Mark Zuckerberg whether he was “telling the truth” about applying the new privacy laws.

media_camera Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is under fire over privacy concerns. Picture: AFP

“Since the outbreak of Cambridge Analytica, you have massively transferred European data of non-European citizens out of Europe,” Mr Verhofstadt said in a heated question-and-answer session this week. “I have to tell you that is against the regulation, against GDPR, and against existing directive(s) in Europe.”

While Mr Zuckerberg did not address the comment, he told a French audience yesterday that Facebook would roll out the same privacy tools to all Facebook users “in the coming weeks,” though they would come without the same protections.

“There are strong new rules that we’ve needed to put a bunch of work into to make sure we comply,” he said.

The European laws include the right to have your information erased or moved to another provider, to download all information a company has collected about you, and the need for “explicit consent” before companies collect the most sensitive types of data, including religious beliefs, health details, and sexual orientation.