019 - The misinformation misnomer

why censoring the internet is the dumbest move yet.

Do you trust yourself to know what is good vs what is bad?

If you do, there is absolutely no reason to allow somebody else the power to decide what you can and what you can’t see.

Even if you wouldn’t go so far as saying you trust yourself to know what is good vs what is bad; do you trust political creatures and commercial creatures more than you trust yourself? Even though you know that political creatures make political decisions and commercial creatures make commercial decisions?

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Mis/disinformation laws are, among other things, infantilising. They are predicated on the illusion that most people are too stupid to form their own opinions based on a free market of ideas, and as a result, it is necessary for an elite, intelligent class to filter the information on their behalf. Anybody who supports this idea is;

1. completely ignorant of history (this has never, in thousands of years of attempts, been effective, nor borne of genuinely good intent); and

2. themselves arrogant enough to think that they know better than those they disagree with, at all times.

Those supportive of such laws need to be seriously questioned as to what specific outcome they believe such laws will achieve, how specifically they define “misinformation” or “disinformation”, and what evidence they are relying on to assume such laws will achieve their desired intent.

The recent draft misinformation bill was an absolute dog’s breakfast because the above questions are very difficult to answer without simply admitting (even if implicitly) that that you are simply trying to control the flow of information to achieve your own desired outcomes. Those desired outcomes are always amorphous expressions of “safety” or “equality”, in circumstances where danger is a fact of nature and existence and “equality” literally does not exist, because the universe we live in does not operate unilaterally.

The Bill defined misinformation as content that is ‘false, misleading or deceptive’. Taking a scientific lens, this is a misnomer, because there is no such thing as definitively true or false in science; only hypothesis and adaptation. So, what a politician declares as ‘false’ at one moment in time, is very likely to be seen as true by a segment of the population, because that’s how the progression of ideas and theories works.

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Bondi and the Bishop

If you want to glean the intention of a body politic, examine their actions in times of crisis.

If you apply a historical lens, it is not unreasonable to retain a healthy scepticism with respect to crisis, and crises. There are ample historical examples of manufactured crises used as cover for the implementation of otherwise controversial policies and laws. The use of crisis for the advancement of Government power is itself enough to render a certain level of scepticism healthy and rational. If someone is benefitting from something, it is reasonable to suspect that they may have had a hand in causing it.

But even leaving that aside and assuming that crises organically occur and develop, which of course, some do, the veracity and velocity with which the Governmental push for censorship has proceeded in the wake of the Bondi and Bishop stabbings has been incredible.

Immediately, and persistently, politicians have used the opportunity to decry the state of our internet and the publishing of “misinformation” and “violence”.

This is not surprising in the wake of three turbulent years in which the official Government narrative about a global crisis was persistently and regularly proven to be without basis. Problematically, it was the internet that allowed a subversive (and in hindsight, accurate) narrative to survive and even thrive.

“The vaccines don’t stop transmission” is one of the most explicit examples. In 2021, Andrews, Biden, Johnson and other politicians were quick to decry this claim as conspiracy theory. But the ‘conspiracy theorists’ who shared this information online were merely people who had actually read the official Pfizer assessment report and knew those very reports said that it “is presently not known if the vaccine protects against asymptomatic infection, or its impact on viral transmission,” as well as the duration of the protection provided. Despite such an indisputable source of information; the information did not suit the Government’s strategy for the crisis, and their stated reason of ‘keeping us safe’, so those who espoused this information, despite being absolutely correct, were labelled and dismissed as ‘anti-science’ and ‘dangerous’.

With this example in mind, should we allow the Australian Government to unilaterally control what is and what isn’t allowed to be posted on the internet?

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The ‘e-Safety Commissioner’ vs Elon Musk

We are witnessing a great battle unfold before us. The internet, the primary means by which humans share ideas in 2024, is increasingly being subjected to regulation and legal limitation.

In Australia, the Online Safety Act has given the e-Safety Commissioner sweeping powers to issue huge civil and criminal penalties to social media companies who don’t remove content that breaches its stated limits. Recently, posts relating to gender identity and the Bondi stabbing have been flagged, the first for being classed as ‘adult cyber abuse’, and the latter for being too violent. As usual; there is nuance to the debate. Nobody would argue that child sexual abuse material should not be removed, but as is often the case, the challenge comes in drawing the line on the power that allows that removal. Vague and indefinable labels such as “misinformation” and “safety” should not be the basis upon which Governments are allowed to filter and control online content. Instead, social media companies should simply be forced to review content posted on their website to ensure that content does not breach the criminal laws already in place in each jurisdiction. This would allow the removal of content involving the aforementioned example, and other criminal conduct, whilst avoiding giving Government the power to simply order removal of material that threatens it.

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The Truth Cannot be Silenced

Truth does exist. But the nature of being a human being, and not being God, is that we only ever hold a perspective on that truth, as opposed to a certainty of it. And if we are open to growth and enlightenment we must be willing to accept that we might be wrong, and that somebody else might be closer to right than we are.

Nonetheless, truth does exist. It is the tether that binds us to this reality. It is the Law that governs nature around us as well as our own nature as human beings. It is the rising of the sun in the morning and the setting of the sun at night. It is the springing into life, growth, death and rebirth of the plants and the humans and the bacteria and the fungi. It is the cycle of the seasons and the advance and retreat of the ocean tide.

We are tied to that Truth. It is in our DNA. It is the dust in our bones and the feeling in our gut. It is Natural to us.

As a result, however diluted, distorted and manipulated the internet becomes, there is no doubt that all but the most comfortably numb of us will be able to feel it and to see it. The more fake it is, the more aversive it will be to human beings, because we are not fucking idiots. So, allowing censorship and ‘misinformation’ laws to thrive is not a death-knell to human beings; it is a death-knell to the internet, which will quickly become obsolete if it feels and looks merely like a Government propaganda device.

If such a death does come to pass, there will be a rebirth, as is Law. We will find other ways to connect and communicate, even more inventive and industrious. No Government can stop us from doing so. But what they can do is further dilute their own legitimacy and integrity by revealing themselves as the desperate and power hungry fools that they are.

So be it.