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Who gets to control the misinformation?

We are being told that Australia needs a law to minimise harmful effects of misinformation and disinformation.

Maybe you think that sounds like a good idea.

Trouble is, a lot of bad things happen because they seemed like a good idea at the time, and I have a feeling this proposed law could turn out to be one of them.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is the body that has proposed the law and that will administer it, if it is passed by the Government. It will be charged with monitoring and minimising certain types of harm that could be caused by misinformation and disinformation. Just as a reminder, misinformation is being defined as false or misleading information. Disinformation is material of the same character but deliberately created and spread with a purpose in mind.

We only need to think about that for a minute to realise that we are more or less permanently immersed in a soup of misinformation and disinformation. An appreciable amount of material presented by news media (both traditional and “new”) is highly contestable and often deliberately misleading. Advertising, marketing and merchandising make an art form of misleading potential customers. Politicians misinform and disinform as a matter of course, as do public servants and government departments. Governments of practically all the world’s nations employ secret agents to spread false information about their enemies in order to shape public opinion and manufacture consent for policies and actions that would otherwise be unacceptable. Readers may recall the US invasion of Iraq was justified on the basis of deliberately falsified “evidence” of the existence in Iraq of “weapons of mass destruction”. It is estimated that at least a million people died as a result of that invasion. And Iraq is only one example among a great many others that could be cited.

Half-truths and lies

For the most part, we are obliged to endure this non-stop torrent of half-truths and lies, with our own critical faculties the only reliable defence. And unfortunately, our critical faculties are under siege from so much falsity that, at times, the truth of many matters is practically impossible for us to determine.

Of course the rise of social media has intensified the issue. Clever, emotive memes and targeted propaganda can achieve results in social control (and “control” may include the deliberate cultivation of dissent, confusion and conflict) that old-time media barons would have been unable to deliver to their paymasters and patrons. Hence the focus – initially at least – of the proposed law on the major digital platforms. I have to wonder, of course, whether that’s just a Trojan horse and whether, once safely enacted and embedded, the law’s field of influence may be widened. It’s not hard to imagine, for example, a web-hosting company being pressured to “de-platform” a blogger who became annoying enough to notice.

The proposed law is intended, it is said, to prevent certain types of harm. These are defined as:

  • harm to the operation or integrity of an electoral or referendum process in Australia;
  • harm to public health in Australia including the efficacy of preventative health measures;
  • vilification of a group in Australian society;
  • intentionally inflicted physical injury to an individual in Australia;
  • imminent damage to critical infrastructure or disruption of emergency services in Australia;
  • imminent harm to the Australian economy.

On the face of it these types of harm certainly sound like things worth preventing. We have seen – for example – how billionaire Clive Palmer’s political slush fund has been used to influence elections. Most of us have received texts from dubious sources on the very eve of elections promoting deliberate falsehoods – that Labor was planning to introduce a death tax, for instance. Certainly, most of us would agree that preventing deliberate lies in election campaigns would be a good thing, if hard to police.

The public health aspect is clearly coloured by the Covid experience, where many people objected to being pressured into vaccination, on pain of not being able to be employed or to travel. No doubt many of the objections they promulgated were dubious but, on the other hand, there was a perfectly reasonable case for concern about novel vaccines that had not been subjected to the same testing that previous iterations had received. The vicious profiteering of the pharmaceutical companies also gave grounds for deep dissatisfaction. On the issue of Covid information on social media I might cite the case of my wife, who decided to share on social media in the early days of the pandemic a simple pattern for homemade face-masks. This was at a time when medical-grade masks were virtually unobtainable by ordinary people. Amazingly, health authorities declared that masks were not only useless but actually counter-productive, because people would transmit viral particles by repeatedly touching and adjusting their masks. I have a recollection of the ABC’s revered health commentator Dr Norman Swan making this argument on air. The social media platform took down my wife’s post about homemade masks and warned her that the information she tried to share was not in the public interest. Not many weeks later the health authorities did a complete U-turn, rediscovering the fact that masks – even homemade cloth ones – could help reduce the spread of viral particles. In this case, health authorities and social media platforms actively suppressed correct and useful information, promulgating misinformation in its stead.

The question is, as always, who gets to say what is true and what is false, and should disagreement be outlawed?

Defining antisemitism

The issue of vilification of a group in Australian society seems straightforward, but in the context of the red-hot debate over Israel’s military operations in occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon and surrounds, it may be more complicated than it looks. We are told that emotions over these operations have driven an increase in “antisemitism”. The Australian government even appointed an antisemitism envoy (a move which obliged it some months later to appoint an anti-Islamophobia envoy). At present, globally, the issue of antisemitism has become very important for at least two reasons. The first reason is the need to ensure that Jewish people in general are not made to feel unsafe because other people may be angry at the actions of the Israeli government and some of the more extremist sections of Israeli society. The second reason, closely related to the first, is the need to ensure that definitions of antisemitism are reasonable in practice.

Many people have argued that charges of antisemitism should not be used to prevent any criticism of the actions of the government of Israel or of aspects of the goals and actions of the Zionist movement. Unfortunately, this is occurring already and there may be a danger that the proposed new disinformation law might help embed this form of censorship. (I could be on the wrong track here, but I think it’s worth discussing.)

As an example, a lawsuit was recently brought by three Jewish students of New York University, alleging various antisemitic statements and actions by students and faculty members. At least some of the alleged antisemitic statements would not generally be seen by most people to be critical of Jewish people but are, instead, critical of the actions and policies of the Israeli government and supportive of the human and political rights of Palestinian people. This debate has also been playing out in the UK and Australia where expressing dismay at the fate of the residents of Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon may be wilfully misinterpreted by some – whose agenda appears to be to suppress debate – as a call for the destruction of Israel. Which it patently is not. Even pointing out that occupied people have a right to resist (enshrined in UN resolutions and the Geneva Convention) is being cast by some as antisemitism.

The New York University case was settled with a financial payout and an undertaking to adopt a particular definition of antisemitism that appears to be very much favoured by some lobby groups. The university has also recently added “Zionism” to the list of protected traits covered by its anti-discrimination guidelines, with supporters of this move arguing that “Zionism” is being used as a “code word” for antisemitism.

The antisemitism definition in question is one designed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The definition states: Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities. This definition is refined by the addition of a number of examples, which the university has also agreed to take on board.

These examples include:

  • Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
  • Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
  • Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
  • Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
  • Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

The trouble with all this is that these examples can actually be used to cast a very wide net, shutting down debate or comment in a variety of ways. Would an article like this be permitted to circulate under the proposed regime, for example? The difficulty is recognised by the authors of an alternative definition of antisemitism, the so-called Jerusalem Declaration, which strives to suppress genuine antisemitism while also wanting to “protect a space for an open debate about the vexed question of the future of Israel/Palestine”. 

I hope that if the proposed law is enacted, and if the question of enshrining a definition of antisemitism arises, a definition like that contained in the Jerusalem Declaration is preferred to that of the IHRA.

Fixated persons

As for the next “harm” listed in the proposed legislation, “intentionally inflicted physical injury to an individual in Australia”, I hope this is not interpreted in a way that would include instances like that of former NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro, on whose behalf the state police force’s ludicrous “Fixated Persons Unit” was mobilised with the effect of suppressing media criticism.

Even I can’t see any downside to wanting to suppress misinformation that threatens “imminent damage to critical infrastructure or disruption of emergency services in Australia”, but I find the last heading, “imminent harm to the Australian economy” full of dangerous potential. Straightaway I wonder how long it would be before pressure would be brought to bear to shut down discussion of legitimate protests on the basis that they are hurting the economy? Recently the NSW Premier, Chris Minns, suggested that protesters should have to pay the cost of policing their demonstrations – a mad idea that would instantly lead to even more over-policing of protests and the rapid suppression of public dissent. How keen would Minns be on the alternative course of asking ACMA to quash discussion of questionable government or industrial activities on the basis that those activities are too economically important to have their foundations undermined by critics and protesters? Looking at you, King Coal. Already the state can declare a development application as “critical state infrastructure” to avoid proper evaluation. If it’s critical infrastructure then surely it’s too important to be harmed by “misinformation”, which the authorities themselves get to define.

And perhaps it would only be a matter of time, if the law were to be enacted, before new species of harm were added to the list. Harm to national security would be a prime candidate, surely? With World War 3 apparently in the offing, I see a fertile field for additional suppression just waiting for some well-armed enforcers.

Maybe I’m too suspicious and too pessimistic. Maybe ACMA, equipped with this new law, would work wonders on our behalf by clamping down on harmful misinformation on large digital platforms. Then again, I’ve always found you can’t go far wrong in predicting bureaucratic over-reach, especially when that over-reach stands to benefit corporate and government agendas.



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