Australian beauty retailer Mecca Brands is embroiled in controversy after a current employee launched a whistleblower website inviting staff to share accounts of alleged bullying, favouritism and poor management. Hana McDonald, a store host who has worked for the company for nearly nine years, set up "inside-mecca.net" as what she describes as an independent research and advocacy project, and the row escalated when Mecca appeared to identify her as the anonymous author of a related Reddit post and asked her to take the material down.

McDonald's site invites current and former staff to complete a questionnaire covering culture, workload, career progression, mental health and retaliation, and includes a timeline of past controversies involving the company, including legal action and disciplinary matters with the corporate regulator ASIC. After she posted a link on the subreddit r/Australianmakeup, where it gathered 259 comments and 278 likes, the post was removed within 48 hours; she suspects Mecca's involvement. She was then contacted by the company's HR department, who referenced the Reddit post despite it being posted anonymously under a username based on her dog's name, something she called "creepy" given she had never disclosed the name to her employer. Mecca, which employs more than 8,000 people across over 100 stores in Australia and New Zealand, had already faced criticism weeks earlier over layoffs that went viral on TikTok.