Free Speech Concerns with Social Media Laws

 

Credlin: 'The Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill', (pdf), will give ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) the power to determine what's true and what's false online.

In other words, if you as an individual or someone working for a company say ... Anything on social media — whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or on a blog — that ACMA deems to be in breech of the provisions of the bill ... you are likely to face heavy civil and criminal penalties, including fines of up to half a million dollars.

Now the key here is what 'misinformation' and 'disinformation' means and who gets to determine it.

According to the draft it's defined as: 'content that contains information that is false, misleading or deceptive' or 'content which is likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.'

And they define 'harm' as: 'hatred against a group in Australian society on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or physical or mental disability.' It also includes harm to the environment.

Now if you've thought we've been barking up the wrong tree with reducing emmissions, let's say, and you've put that out there on your Facebook page, well there's every likelihood it could cost you money or you'll end up in gaol.

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If you quote the Bible, let's say, like Israel Fallau did, well you could find yourself in trouble because there does not appear to be a religious free-speech exemption.

You might argue, as I do, that the rights of women and girls, on a single sex gasis, like Moira Deeming did, should be protected. well you might find the police knocking on your door if you put that on your Twitter post. And I kid you not, it's that bad! And it seems to have come from nowhere.

Now I covered last year's federal election and I didn't see a promise like this from Labor, didn't see the opposition leader, and now Prime Minister, arguing this, out there for voters to see transparently. So here we are with this bill, now out as an exposure draft.

Joing me to help get the head around all of it, is the principle of Macedoni Legal, Sam Macedoni and the director of research at The Institute of public affairs Morgan Begg.

Gents welcome to the program.

Credlin: Morgan ... in your own words, what's the detail here in the Government's proposal and why are they trying to move on the issue of free speech online.

Begg: Thank you Peta. So broadly what the government is proposing to do is to grant extraordinary new powers to unelected elected bureaucrats, to create and impose ruleson big Tech platforms, to remove what the bureaucrats consider to be content which is misinformation.

Now, why is the government doing this? Well it's because there's just too many people in Canberra nowadays, who not believe in the fundamental Australian values of democracy. We understand as Australians that there are a variety of views and perspectives that can be had about an issue, and the best way to deal with that is for people to have their say and to hear those perspectives and decide which perspective they like best. That's democracy.

But too many people in Canberra now see that as a problem. They believe that they have a claim on the truth, and they believe that things that aren't truthful — meaning other opinions — need to be disappeared. So, this is a significantly concerning development from the government.

Credlin: Sam Macedoni, are you aware of any laws like this in any other jurisdiction around the world.

Macedoni: No, not really. This uh is certainly a first. I guess other countries have tried to do much the same in controlling social media and what goes on there. It's not something I think that is going to carry a lot of weight because most of these social media companies are based in Silicon Valley or overseas somewhere, and unless it's in your own country you don't have a real lot of power to stop them, or to get them to do what you think is right. But basically wht the Government is doing here, I think is probably the best thing ... is that they're asking the social media people themselves to fix their own set of standards as to how they can prevent this misinformation causing harm to people or distracting from free speech and the like. They're trying to get the social media companies themselves to set their own rules and guidelines, so that they don't have to actually jump in and do it for them.

If that works, then I think everything should be okay. However, if it doesn't work and the government steps in and indicates what they think is misinformation or what they think is disinformation, then we're in a lot of trouble, because you might not think it's misinformation. If they do, you're up for a lot of a lot of pain.

Credlin: Yeah. I have to disagree with you there though, because we've seen plenty of examples where if we leave it to the tech companies to set the bar, they set it very very low against Free Speech. We saw that absolutely in Covid the period of debate about vaccines or lockdowns or any of those issues. So we we had a limiting, Sam, of free speech. And we certainly had the degrading ... the ability of Australians was degraded to debate things that their government as doing ... Parliaments were closed ... the online environment was their only recourse. So we had that woman in Ballarat — you'll know that well Morgan Begg — who was ah ... her home was raided because of appeals she put online.

I want to pich out something that the Australian E-safety Commissioner, Julie Inman-Grant, as she has the power to already compel these companies to explain why they're doing particular things online. This is something she told the World Economic Forum, not so long ago, have a listen:

Inman-Grant [clip]: We are finding ourselves in a place where we're, we have increasing polarization everywhere and everything feels binary when it doesn't need to be. So I think we're going to have to think about a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online, you know, from freedom of speech to the freedom to you know, to be free from online violence.

Credlin: There you go a recalibration she calls it Morgan, about Free Speech. What do you think?

Macedoni: Well look, I think it's a ... it's probably right, but keep in mind that if we allow the social media companies to put some standards in place and they are not going to be as, as tight as what our federal government would do, it really means that we're not going to have that effect that we're thinking of in in freedom of speech and things like that.

I'm hoping that they will come up with something sensible that will still allow people to express their opinions and to have a say about what they think is right and what they think is wrong without being branded misinformation. Because if we allow ACMA to do it, or the government to do it, we're in real big trouble. Because they will say that certain things are misinformation that we certainly would not agree with and then it would be a stranglehold on our freedom of speech.

Credlin: Morgan, what's your response?

Begg: Well, just responding to the comments by the commissioner. Rather than the bureaucrats rethinking free speech, perhaps, we as a country could rethink the kinds of people that become bureaucrats, and maybe we could start by not appointing people to attend the World Economic Forum.

But more to the point, what the commissioner said is perfectly emblematic of the new attitude in Canberra. You know, they don't respect freedom of speech; they don't respect the place of free speech in a liberal democratic society; and when I say it's a Canberra attitude, it's bipartisan.

The IPA has been doing the research on this proposal since it was birthed by the Morrison government prior to the 2022 election. It was a bad idea when it was introduced by the liberal Minister and it's a bad idea now that it's been introduced by a labor minister.

Credlin: Welcome back. Thank you Sam Macedonia. Great to have you on the program.

 

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