Thread by @actualAlexJames

Understanding the Misinformation and Disinformation bill.
A Thread 🧵

Albanese and many politicians have been dealt a major defeat, and one of their reasons behind why they have lost seems to be because of misinformation and disinformation. It looks like as if they have been working on a plan B all along to get a win out of their defeat. That win for them would be in regulating online content in Australia.

At the moment, Australia does not have complete freedom of speech and no bill of rights. So therefore, to have our speech, particularly our digital speech regulated, would make it clear that this is no longer a free speech country. The government will ultimately be the ones to decide, no matter how many in-between organizations they have, what is determined as misinformation or disinformation. Yet as stated in the bill, which I’ll show excerpts from in the thread below, misinformation and disinformation will not apply to Australian governments, foreign governments in some instances, and professional media organizations.

The submissions for this bill ended in September last month. The submission period was in the heat of the voice campaigning. Now I would call this a very unreasonable time to hold submissions for the bill, as everyone was completely distracted. A better time to hold the submissions should have been end of this year or early next year.

It seems that the government knows very well what it is doing and why it is doing it. And with labor control in basically every part of the country, it falls heavily onto the shoulders of labor politicians to be the ones to bring this bill into fruition.

This means that you, regardless of your party affiliation, should contact your local politician and voice very clearly your disgust for the destruction of what’s left of Australian free speech. Regardless of if they will be the ones voting on the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023 or not. As it is not misinfo or dis-info that is the problem itself, but instead, how that is defined and especially, how that could be defined in future.

For instance, any debate on Australian history, if truth telling ministries are fully enshrined, could lead you into posting misinfo if you post opposing ideas or facts that are no longer recognized.

Even worse, is that if another COVID-19 situation happens again in Australia, you might not be able to post vaccine death statistics compared to COVID-19 death statistics and then extrapolate on that. Or maybe, you may not be able to post information that implies that COVID-19 was actually the flu, as shown by a chart that shows flu numbers at near zero levels at the peak of the pandemic. These things could potentially be considered misinformation or disinformation.

Some online debates and posting about climate change could also begin to become trouble territory. It would be interesting to see if saying that an increase in carbon emissions leads to an increase in forest growth, meaning more oxygen production and natural carbon consumption, would be considered misinfo or dis-info. I’m not even saying that all these things are 100% true or not, that’s not the point, but what I am saying is that if its not true then the best way to combat it is to allow debate and discussion on it, not silence, delete or prevent it from being posted.

As silencing topics is the same as fixing prices on products. It creates a black-market and the topic will grow in isolation and adapt to that isolation. A topic that is hidden now can continue to grow in the underground and potentially become real misinfo or dis-info if not publicly addressed.

And so, to summarize, this is clearly a very dangerous bill, with very serious and harmful consequences. The people, when allowed to explore easily for themselves, topics that are potentially misinfo or dis-info, are perfectly capable of discerning what is truth, what is the closest thing we have to truth, and what is false or mostly false.

The key to combatting misinformation and disinformation is the freedom to access any information one so chooses too, and then to respond to that information freely and unhindered, regardless of whether it is true or false.

If you are listening to the audio track of this article on my website, click the hyperlink to go to the thread so you can see the bill highlights.

Alex James.
#NoMisDisBill

1. Content is mentioned a lot throughout the bill, and this content can mean text, data, speech, images, music and/or a combination of these.

2. “disruption of public order or society in Australia” “harm to the health of Australians” “harm to the Australian environment” these are bad things, but the concern to me is what these mean in the eyes of the government or future governments.

3. Here is the main part of the bill, the misinfo and dis-info terminology explained. It is worth a careful read.

4. Excluded for misinformation purposes are jokes, professional news, state education including if the state education is made by a foreign government and any government content incl. local gov. which I assume means councils.

5. Now I take particular concern with the fact that foreign governments are exempt from being considered as misinformation If they are of “equivalent standards” to Australian educational institutions. Why is this necessary?

6. The ACMA may obtain information and documents from digital platform providers and “other persons” (digital platform provider section on pg. 19).

7. The ACMA may publish content relating to current trends of misinfo and dis-info on their website.

This bill is something I will never support. Contact your local politicians and let them know you will not be voting for anyone who supports this bill. Not everything is mentioned in this thread, download the PDF for more.

#NoMisDisBill
All my articles are in the highlights tab or you can listen to them on my website, link in my bio.