In late July we alerted you to the planned Misinformation and Disinformation laws. The laws will require social media platforms (Facebook, etc.) to determine what is ‘true’ and to warn people for posting ‘untruths’ and then ‘cancelling’ them.
Here’s the government’s information sheet on the law.
We mentioned that we, Self-Employed Australia, have had experience with such ‘truth’ suppression. A member put up on their Facebook page a post we made commenting on the outcome of our Supreme Court action over hotel quarantine. Facebook had its ‘truth police’ sanction the member. We’ve now completed a detailed analysis of that experience.
The full detail is available on Ken’s Substack post here: ‘The Truth Police are here’.
It’s a detailed analysis of how Facebook imposes its ‘truth’ on the public and suppresses dissenting ‘truths’. We go into the detail because it gives an insight from a real experience to which anyone could be subjected.
The essence is that Facebook took an objection to the exposure of this statement by a judge in the ruling on SEA’s court action. The judge said:
“If SEA is not granted an extension of time the individuals referred to in the First Request will be freed from the not insignificant stress of potentially being subjected to prosecution for serious criminal offences… the 20 individuals identified in the First Request may suffer considerable prejudice if SEA is granted an extension of time…”[emphasis added]
That is, the opinion could be reasonably formed that the judge was commenting that if a person subject to potential prosecution was under stress, then that was a reason not to proceed.
Facebook sought to close down and suppress that comment in our view, and we explain in detail how Facebook’s outsourced ‘truth police’ approached this. Rather than determining what Facebook says is ‘fact’, our analysis is that they were in fact expressing an opinion on SEA’s opinion on the Court’s judgement. That’s okay if opinion is presented as opinion. It’s a different matter altogether, however, to present opinion as ‘fact’.
We say that it’s fine if Facebook wants to determine what is true for its platform. It owns the platform. It can do what it likes. But it is something entirely different for parliament to pass a law that all social media platforms must do as Facebook has done.
The compulsory silencing of opinion on the basis of political ‘fact’ determination by appointed ‘truth police’ heralds an era of oppression of the people. We have seen this far too often in the history of human activity. The consequences are always ugly, sometimes horrifyingly so.
When Albert Einstein published his new theories around 1905 he challenged the established ‘truth’ of Newton’s laws of physics. Einstein was attacked by the scientific establishment at the time who were wedded to, and career-dependent on, Newton’s laws. Many sought to stop him. However, Einstein’s theory ultimately became the new ‘truth’.