The government reveals that they really don't fear hate speech on Social Media platforms - it's the truth they are terrified of!

ACMA to introduce legislation fining social media platforms millions of dollars for spreading what ACMA calls mis and dis-information-what I call inconvenient truths.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Yesterday, I posted about the eSaftey Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, bemoaning the fact that Twitter under Elon Musk was supposedly allowing hate speech on the platform though in reality, hate speech, the sharing of child pornography and online threats have gone down markedly since he took over.

Today, another article was released that pulls the veil off of the REAL reason for these moves by two government bodies.

ACMA, the Australian Communications and Media Authority - a true paper tiger when it comes to enforcing truth in reporting or truth in advertising rules over medical and government vaccination or drug lies - states they will be introducing new legislation to stop the spread of ‘mis and dis-information on social media’.

Social media giants to face multimillion-dollar fines for spreading fake news

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland will on Sunday release draft legislation to give the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) powers to hold digital platforms to account for spreading harmful fake news.

“Mis- and disinformation sows division within the community, undermines trust and can threaten public health and safety,” Rowland said.

…The maximum penalty for systemic breaches of a registered code would be $2.75 million or 2 per cent of global turnover – whichever is higher.

It will be interesting to see Rowland try to enforce these fines on companies based overseas. That will be a neat trick! But Labor Governments do love to push their weight around, don’t they?

Under the proposed laws, the ACMA would also be able to obtain information and documents from digital platforms relating to misinformation and disinformation on their services. But the government says the ACMA would not have a role in determining what is true or false.

Now this is confusing. By “obtaining information and documents from the digital platforms”, it makes me think this means ACMA will be able to find out who has made certain posts, even if they are not posting with a real name. And if ACMA will not be determining what is true or false, who will? Will it be the paid shills at ATAGI, the Department of Health, the TGA and those other bought enforcers?

The draft legislation will go out for public consultation from Sunday, which Rowland said would give companies and the public the chance to have their say.

Rowland said the laws aimed to “strike the right balance between protection from harmful mis- and disinformation online and freedom of speech”.

“I encourage all stakeholders to make a submission and look forward to introducing the bill into parliament later this year, following the consultation process,” she said.

There is no such thing as a balance of free speech. Speech is either free or it isn’t. If the government can control what you can hear and say, learn and know, they can no longer make even a slight pretence of being a democracy.

Another issue that the government is trying to control is that of The Voice to Parliament.

In Australia, there has been growing concern about the proliferation of misinformation and hate speech over the Voice to parliament referendum

At a recent rally, Jason Myles, former UAP Candidate from QLD, brought the paperwork from the last referendum Australia had - that for a Republic. There were 32 pages of information sent to every single household by the federal government with information about the referendum - 16 of them for the Republic and 16 of them against.

Now, we have a new referendum which is only informing people of one side and now, it appears that the government is putting their thumb on the scale even harder by trying to censor social media discussion on this issue.

We need to make our voices heard!

It does not appear that the public consultation information is online as of yet, but you can read more about ACMA’s role and their newly-granted powers to censor on this page and elsewhere on their website.

As soon as I have the details on the terms of reference and the information for making a submission, I will share it in a separate post. If anyone else has it and can help me out by sharing in the comments below, I would be really grateful. A submission can be no more than one paragraph stating why you support freedom of speech and oppose censorship and trust me, tens of thousands of submissions saying just that can make a huge difference to this further overreach by another dictator in government.