1. Twitter Files Extra: The Covid Censorship Requests of Australia's Department of Home Affairs (DHA). The #TwitterFiles confirm a Monday report in "The Australian," showing the Australian government worked overtime to monitor Covid-related speech
2. In the #TwitterFiles, Racket found 18 DHA emails, collectively requesting 222 tweets be removed. Jokes & true information were included in censorship requests, which came from the “Social Cohesion Division” of the DHA’s “Extremism Insights and Communication” office.
3. Or was that the "Extremsim" office? (As indicated in the email signature of one staffer) A group that can’t spell-check became the “fact-checking” authority for an entire nation (and beyond).
4. DHA seemed to deem itself sovereign over the entire Internet, targeting non-Australians under the spurious logic that they were “circulating a claim in Australia’s digital information environment.” Some claims were also true or at least contested -
5. It’s not possible to establish what public health competencies existed within a team dedicated to “extremism” and “social cohesion,” that appear to have avoided making use of Government scientists and relied instead on Yahoo! and USA Today.
6. Even a humorous commentary on masks was deemed too much for the fun police. In one case, a mere reply to a tweet claiming “masks are useless” was considered to have contradicted “official information,” making it “potentially harmful”
7. The DHA used taxpayer money to target accounts of just 20 followers. DHA asked that one poster, who claimed to be a doctor, be actioned for discussing the use of steroids, which has since become common Covid-19 hospital protocol.
8. The DHA went beyond even pretending to police mis- and disinformation. In one case, they argued a post should be removed because a user claimed the government — specifically the Minister for Health — had used “emotionally manipulative language.”
9. The Australian stereotype of mocking self-important authorities went AWOL in the pandemic. The questioning that did occur was memory holed by the spell-checkers-turned-fact-checkers at the Department of Home Affairs “Extremsim” team. Full read: racket.news/p/twitter-file…
With thanks to @mtaibbi and the Racket team.
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