EDITORIAL: Misinformation Bill an attack on free speech
The internet is awash with crap.
Some of that crap is relatively easy to verify as nonsense. Think dodgy ads featuring a digitally altered David Koch spruiking cryptocurrency schemes, or internet loons claiming 5G is a vehicle for government mind control.
Then there’s the dark and the dangerous.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.Internet disinformation was partly to blame for weeks of civil unrest in Britain earlier this year. Those riots were sparked by the killings of three little girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in the seaside town of Southport. Their alleged killer was the 17-year-old Welsh born son of Rwandan parents, however a suppression order barred media outlets from reporting his identity. In that information vacuum, rumours circulated online that the suspect was a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK by boat, fuelling widespread anti-immigration riots.
Misinformation and disinformation can have real, serious consequences.
But the Government’s ill-thought out misinformation Bill is not the way to deal with its threat.
The Bill, which has passed the Lower House but will struggle to find support in the Senate, aims to hold tech companies to account for seriously harmful misinformation and disinformation published on their sites.
It would do so by requiring these companies to sign up to industry codes regulating how they deal with misinformation, with heavy penalties for breaches. Those codes could require companies to use fact-checking services to decide what is true and what isn’t.
The problem is that the truth is a slippery concept and the line between truth and falsehood isn’t always as clear cut as we’d like to think.
It would do so by requiring these companies to sign up to industry codes regulating how they deal with misinformation, with heavy penalties for breaches. Those codes could require companies to use fact-checking services to decide what is true and what isn’t.
The problem is that the truth is a slippery concept and the line between truth and falsehood isn’t always as clear cut as we’d like to think.
Appearing at a Senate hearing examining the Bill, constitutional law expert Anne Twomey used the example of information given by public health officials at the start of the COVID pandemic that the coronavirus was not an airborne disease. That was later proven to be false.
But had these laws been in place, it’s possible that anyone who wrote —truthfully — on social media that the disease was airborne had spread “misinformation” which had the potential to cause serious harm in the context of public health.
Of even greater concern is the fact the Bill’s explanatory statement defines “information” to include “opinions, claims, commentary and invective”.
Who is qualified to determine whether an opinion is untrue, and whether that “untrue” opinion is likely to cause serious harm?
It’s important also to note that “serious harm” includes harm to the “integrity of an electoral or referendum process in Australia”.
That means there is a danger that these laws are open to exploitation by silencing and delegitimising alternative views about just about any political issue. It is a dangerous path which puts the fundamental democratic principles of freedom of speech and expression in jeopardy.
