“At all times the Party is in possession of absolute truth […] Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth”
— George Orwell, “1984”
What is truth? That’s something that philosophers have argued over for millennia — and we’re still no further to settling it. But, apart from some weirdo solipsists, pretty much everyone agrees that there is an objective reality. It’s figuring out what it is that’s the hard part.
Pretty much everyone also agrees that the last people anyone would trust to decide what is “truth”, though, are politicians, bureaucrats or the media. None of those groups is trusted by the public. In fact, when it comes to trustworthiness, we’d sooner trust used car salesmen than the government or its bureaucratic lickspittles.
Yet, these are the very people who are trying to appoint themselves as the final arbiters of truth.
The Morrison Government will introduce legislation this year to combat harmful disinformation and misinformation online.
Does this mean they’ll outlaw the legacy media and their own armies of spin doctors? After all, these are the very people who’ve repeatedly lied to our faces and spewed out reams of self-contradictory garbage that has caused even more harm than the virus from China.
Don’t bet on it.
Like all such dangerous laws, the changes are couched in Orwellian doublespeak.
The legislation will provide the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) with new regulatory powers to hold big tech companies to account for harmful content on their platforms.
Aww, doesn’t that sound nice and cuddly? But what does it actually mean in practice?
ACMA will be given reserve powers to register and enforce industry codes or make industry standards. This will encourage platforms to be ambitious in addressing the harms of disinformation and misinformation, while providing ACMA with the ability to hold platforms to account should their voluntary efforts prove inadequate or untimely.
A Misinformation and Disinformation Action Group will be established, bringing together key stakeholders across government and the private sector to collaborate and share information on emerging issues and best practice responses.
The Hon Paul Fletcher MP
Firstly, Facebook, Twitter and the like will be encouraged to be even more censorious than they already are.
Secondly, a government-appointed committee will be the all-powerful arbiters of “truth”.
What this means is the ACMA will have the power to force Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the like to remove media outlets like us at AFIPN and others such as Rebel News and the Real Rukshan. But what if it doesn’t stop there, can they force our hosting providers to take our websites offline too?
The government sell it as a good thing, a law to combat what they call harmful disinformation and misinformation online, but this is far from good.
Australian Free Independent Press Network
This is no different to the government regulator that the Gillard government tried to impose in 2013.
Even back in 1999, lawyer and journalist Paul Chadwick warned that “all roads from a so-called independent statutory tribunal lead back through a parliament to a cabinet room”.
In case the left is inclined to support a government overseer of “misinformation”, they need only ask themselves: what would it look like if a Scott Morrison, a Christopher Luxon, or a Donald Trump got to decide what is “true” and what isn’t?
For their part, the right need only ask: what would it look like for a Jacinda Ardern, a Justin Trudeau or a Joe Biden to rule what is “true” and what is “misinformation”?
Wait — we already know the answer to that one.