Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
The Government is not afraid of misinformation, they are afraid you will speak the Truth
Add your submission by August 20th
Misinformation is easy to correct when you own a billion dollar news agency, most academics, institutions, expert committees and 25% of the economy. The really hard thing, even with all that power and money is to defend an absurd lie and stop people pointing it out. Like for example if you want to spend a trillion dollars of taxpayer money using power stations, cars and steak sandwiches to change the global weather. For that, you need the Ministry of Truth to force the falsity on the serfs.
The best way to deal with misinformation is to speak better information.
Let the court of public opinion decide. There is something profoundly arrogant about the assumption that 26 million brains are too stupid to figure out the truth when left to their collective free debate.
The proposed Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) misinformation bill is truly the draft that Mao or the Politburo would have admired. Effectively if you are government “approved” (institutional, academic or official news) you are free to say whatever you like, but if you are the untermenschen, you are not — even if you ultimately speak the truth.
Digital media platforms will need to self-censor the vague and unknowable comments that may be misleading and may cause harm or they face monster fines like $6m or 5% of revenue (which for Twitter is something like $150m). The mushy, ill-defined and open nature of this is exactly the point. Which publisher will be able to afford to hire the QC lawyers and run test-trials to figure out in advance if a comment breaches the code? It’s so much easier just to take the safer option and shhh, skip those provocative thoughts.
Why bureaucrats can’t be left to censor free speech under Labor’s ACMA bill proposal
By David Coleman, Opposition communications spokesman. The Australian
Misinformation is defined very broadly. It is information that is “false, misleading or deceptive” and is “reasonably likely” to “cause or contribute to serious harm”. The bill then uses an extremely wide definition of harm, which includes things such as harm to the environment, harm to the economy or a section of the economy, or “disruption of public order or society in Australia”.
The Government IS “the truth”:
The bill is very poorly constructed and includes many obvious red flags. Under Labor’s bill, if the government says something, then it is not misinformation. Authorised content from any level of government cannot be misinformation. That same protection does not apply to non-government parties or ordinary Australians commenting on political matters. This is indefensible.
Academics are exempt because there’s no need to control them with ACMA, they can be sacked, intimidated, or defunded already anyhow (see Peter Ridd):
Statements made by academics are exempt, but not statements made by non-academics on exactly the same topics. So an outsider with an unfashionable view could find their contribution has been deleted as misinformation. Given the seismic contributions of unfashionable outsiders throughout history, this shows an extraordinary lack of wisdom.
Statements made as part of “professional news content” are exempt, but those statements are not exempt in other contexts. So if a journalist made a comment on their personal Facebook page, or appeared on an independent podcast, their statements could be misinformation. And if a statement made in “professional news content” is repeated outside of that environment, it would not be exempt from the law.
So if you thought you could quote Professor Peter Ridd on the replication crisis in science, or fabricated photos in reef research, think again. You may be harming the Spotted Left Wing Parrot fish.
If a Prime Minister were to say they were “the single source of truth”, say, it could be published once in a newspaper but if the punters were to repeat it ad nauseum mockingly on social media, in strictly accurate quotes, that might become misinformation? I mean, the repetition might harm the children’s sense of civic duty, after all? I don’t know, but that’s the point of the spaghetti mess in legalese. Try reading it. You are not supposed to know.
You can say anything you want from under the boot…
These apply to all Australians, not just publishers!
ACMA’S coercive powers under the bill are very concerning. Those powers apply not only to digital platforms but to all Australians. ACMA may pursue any person if it believes they have information about “misinformation or disinformation on a digital service” and that it requires the information to perform its functions. ACMA can force the person to appear before it to answer questions about misinformation or disinformation.
Journalists in professional news organizations are exempt, but not citizen journalists
Hypothetically, if any systematic corruption or intimidation (or delusional fashion) were to sweep through our main media outlets (like the idea of chopping healthy body parts off teenagers), an outsider media platform would be the one to point that out, yet they would be subject to “misinformation” codes and draconian fines.
Satire is excluded, but what if the government doesn’t find it funny?
Who decides what satire is? Whoever they are, they be the King of Conversations online in Australia:
The bill excludes statements made in good faith for the purposes of entertainment, parody or satire. But it does not exclude statements made in good faith for the purpose of political debate. So a comedian commenting on politics would be protected from having their content removed, but a non-satirical citizen offering their honest views on political matters would not be protected.
Blog Comments not allowed?
If these laws came into being, would this blog have to close all comments? Would this blog even exist?
The Ministry of Truth
James Hol on The Liberty Itch
… many are under the mistaken assumption that this will only apply to social media giants. In fact, it will apply to every single website that provides “news content” and has an “interactive feature”.
If you think you can avoid the Ministry of Truth by simply starting your own social media platform or providing content on your own website, you’d be advised to have no interest in a comments section or posting video content, otherwise that website will also be captured by these draconian laws. Indeed, this Liberty Itch masthead will be at threat of fines in the millions of dollars should this Bill become law.
While the Bill gives lip service to our constitutionally implied freedom of political communication, it attempts to circumvent it by creating a fascistic partnership between ACMA and private entities. Instead of ACMA enforcing speech, it makes digital service providers do its dirty work – at threat of significant fines.
However, ACMA can impose industry-wide standards and codes if digital service providers go rogue and dishonour their fascistic agreements. Hoping for a safe haven at Elon Musk’s Twitter (now called X), might be more pipe dream than reality.
Would I have to register as a news outlet, set up my own university, or revert to permanent satire or salad-coded language (did you take your booster carrot today?).
It appears this bill is designed to capture all the online free speech that is not already controlled by Big Government or Big Money. The new Printing Press arrived to give a voice to the People, and it must be stopped.
Please send in those submissions!
As David Maddison, Penguinite, MP, Andrew McRae, Konrad and others suggest:
Don’t forget to put your submissions in opposing the latest proposed Australian Government censorship legislation.
“New ACMA powers to combat misinformation and disinformation”.
They don’t have to be long. But it closes on August 20th.
Read Konrad’s submission here.
The bill, the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Act 2023.