IPFS News Link • Misinformation
The Misinformation Bill will harm Australians and protect bad governments
• https://joannenova.com.au, By Jo NovaMisinformation is easy to correct when you own a billion dollar news agency, most academics, institutions, expert committees and 25% of the economy. The really hard thing, even with all that power and money is to defend an absurd lie and stop people pointing it out, which is surely the main purpose of the Misinformation Bill amendments. The government can already correct any misinformation that really matters, so these amendments curtail our freedom of speech for no benefit at all.
Guilty until proven innocent?
The amendments turn free speech on its head — instead of having the implicit right to criticize the government, everyone now needs to prove to some judge that their views are "reasonably" satire, or reasonable dissemination for an "academic, scientific or religious" purpose, and that their "motive" is honest and their behaviour is "authentic".
When it comes to reasonableness in a democracy the highest court should be the court of public opinion, but how can the people decide if they are not allowed to hear it?
How is it even a democracy still if the government is allowed to take our money to force feed us the governments view on the ABC and in every captured university (dependent on government funds), but the people cannot even reply through sheer unfunded creative wit?
This legislation puts a very unfree cloud over all groups, forums, blogs, and social media.
The fines (and all legal fees today) are so obscenely, disproportionately harmful to Australians that few will risk going to court, instead the platforms will be preemptively second guessing what a judge might say is reasonable, and people with serious social media accounts will be second guessing the second-guesses of their platform controllers in fear that they might be thrown off, and lose years of work if they guess wrongly.


