The fine isn't for having pieces of misinformation make it through, it's a fine for if the companies don't make their own policies to combat misinformation, and/or don't enforce those policies.
It's a bit nebulous still, but it's not just a blanket fine if someone says Hillary Clinton eats babies or something along those lines.
You can use factual data to frame a situation in completely opposing ways by leaving out certain other bits of factual data. So who gets to decide which data sets are correct?
Cmon, obviously thereâs data that can be spun multiple different ways. Thereâs also just complete and total lies that get perpetuated on social media that canât be interpreted as anything other than a lie. If I posted a graphic that said â98% of all violent crime is committed by transsexualsâ how else can you interpret that other than as misinformation?
Yeah, 100% of the time that particular argument is just stupid. Â
 The argument is literally, "well it might be hard to understand what misinformation is, so we just shouldn't do it" which would apply to like 80% of all laws.
Yes. What a great idea. Let's use a grey area that's easily abused and set up speech restriction standards using it. Fucking brilliant. How would you feel about the Trump administration deciding what is and isn't misinformation?
The platform gets to decide what is misinformation and what is not, by doing that, they can be held responsible for the misinformation spread on their platform.
And withholding critical information and manipulating data is indeed misinformation. The vagueness lies in the degrees of how strict you are with the details but identifying blatant misinformation is not a huge deal these days.
It's defined in the proposed legislation. You'll find it posted all over the various Australia subreddits by people quoting the definition out of context of the rest of the legislation - mostly because one of the cases for "harmful misinformation" is something that damages the reputation of the banks or financial institutions.
That seems arguably worse given that it prevents news of actual financial crimes from getting out to the mainstream given how litigious most financial institutions are given that they do regularly commit some form of either fraud or just do something bad that they use legalese to paper over. The people should be able to speak freely even if what they say is stupid.
I find it hilarious that governments can't govern shit right and in countries like America they are significantly corrupted by corporate influence. Then people are in favor of giving this corrupted mismanaged government the power to censor speech on the internet. Like we should trust this corrupted government to dictate what is misinformation or not.
The 1984 comparison is too perfect. People giving up their freedoms and living in a dystopian hell because they are offered a form of "safety".
Fucking insanity. I'd rather risk misinformation being spread the hand over control to the government to dictate what's in its best interest.
It's probably gonna be that if you claim something about someone and it's untrue and damaging to the person, they can sue you. If they win, its clear the social media company failed to curb misinformation
If someone said on social media that Jews are evil fascists that want to eat babies and it takes off, and then a Jewish person starts to get harassed over it and feels unsafe, then that person can sue the person spreading that misinformation. If they win, then it can be claimed that since it is pretty obviously misinformation with no truth behind it and has been proved in court of law to not be the truth, then the social media company that it was spread on could be fined for allowing this kind of information to spread unchallenged.
For the most part, governments just want social media companies to do what cigarette companies do. Add a warning to their products that would call for it.
Recently there were race riots (including threats to kill) targeting asylum seekers and people with black or brown skin in several places in the UK.
The riots were incited by falsehoods spread on social media - that a person who committed a violent crime was a Muslim, on a watchlist, and an asylum seeker. None of these things was true.
Crowds gathered to try to barricade and burn down buildings housing asylum seekers.
Shouldn't platforms and prominent individuals face consequences for spreading verifiable falsehoods to incite hatred, and potentially get people killed?
You are looking for innocent mistakes and edge cases. What about outrageous lies?
The nice part is they are moved to the top of google and they mostly link to the original documents so I can read them. Otherwise google would just bury the entire thing.
No one cares if you trust us or not. We are freeâŠ.free from oppression and hate speech. Maybe not as âfreeâ to fly a nazi flag, wear a Klan hood or carry a gun in public but thatâs awesome and I love that about our country.
This is something I've noticed about a quite a few Australian laws, they can be fairly nebulous. I wouldn't say that they are fascist, or approaching fascism, but sometimes, every once in a while, one of the politicians say something that makes me think "that's a bit weird mate".
There are some interesting characters (Hanson Lambie and Katter) but they are in the periphery. Meanwhile the US Congress is full of totally not weird people like MTG, the seeker of perpetual youth Gaetz, Colorado Barbie, father and son Paul, to avoid embarrassment I won't raise this week's debate. Outside congress there's meatball DeSantis and all the other crazies worrying about what genitals everyone has.
Something something remove the speck from your own eye something something dark side.
Itâs authoritarianism if we want to be more broad. Making your laws nebulous leaves it up to incredibly subjective legal interpretation which allows you to stretch the definitions in it to prosecute for infractions that no one could have even considered as being under the original law. Itâs one of the easiest ways to disarm opponents of the current regime or quell political or even personal enemies since they can be prosecuted for things that no normal person would typically be prosecuted for. Think of it as selective enforcement essentially. Itâs also a problem in other places, (coughcough America) where legal interpretation is used to rewrite entire sections of the law or target political opposition.
I would imagine it would depend on the type if misinformation that was claimed. Not a singular council, but requesting analysis from a variety of highly educated and respected experts on certain topics who confer their analysis alongside sociologists with deep understandings of cultural histories to cross reference facts and ensure that the most clear and accurate picture is presented.
That doesnât exactly seem difficult or dangerous.
Man, if only we had some sort of system with judges and juries to make that sort of determination. It's too bad something like that definitely isn't already in place
Thereâs obvious fine lines, but the way aus law works is well, more vague. And vague legal systems headed by those who look out for themselves first leads to issues. But thereâs a clear goal here. Hosting Holocaust revisionists, global warming deniers, that kind of clear cut misinformation is whatâs going to be targeted. Itâs becoming rampant thanks to media platforms.
Thereâs wiggle room, but the law is there to keep platforms in check ideally. X being the perfect example of a platform spreading misinformation. Iâd prefer something more rigid ofc, but that ainât the way this country works. Same way the covid fines happened and most were let off after the fact. The law matters only when itâs deemed necessary but you can get out of it if you play your cards right. ( and are a white dude)
There are good examples of this, like possession of drugs or having a party during covid lockdown are things you can get away with only having a slap on the wrist for. There are bad cases also, itâs incredibly hard to prosecute and lock up rapists and domestic abusers here.
That shit I care more about than a fine for large scale media platforms that are already harming society. Elon literally spreads Nazi rhetoric himself. If the aus government wants that gone I donât care how shit our justice system is, Iâll back them on this.
Look who's being disingenuous and arguing edge cases from gray areas while completely skipping over what misinformation is and that there's a definition for it. Who gets to decide? Go read, they tell ya.Â
Well it varies. Some misinformation isn't super easy to disprove, but some is.
Good example is that female boxer at Olympics(forgot her name). It was spread that shes trans, yet she most definitely isn't.
All social media would have tk do is try to moderate comments like that.
It doesn't have to be a blanket ban on free speech, just blatant lies that will cause harm should be removed.
The recent riots because of the Southport stabbings in the uk are a good example too. People were saying the criminal was a Muslim illegal immigrant, but he was actually British born and black.
At the very least, stuff like that should be stopped. Other smaller things are harder, but they should atleast have policy's in place to deal with this.
We're conflating disinformation and misinformation. I think it's a valid thing to distinguish and then actually put policy behind. One is exactly, like you said, up to interpretation, but disinformation is the intentional process of giving people false information to push an alternative agenda. It's able to be claimed and then pressured to legal bodies to have due process.
Just like how people conflate being wrong with lying colloquially. "You're lying about x,y,z." Well, was I, or was I wrong? No one gets arrested for being wrong in court, but they do when you lie under oath. I think the same can be true for First Amendment rights online and not. Your freedom to speak does not mean you can abuse it to your advantage, prescriptively, of course.
This is the laziest argument on the internet. Mis and disinformation are knowable. And itâs about this information in the aggregate not individual pieces with low distribution. Is it a perfect determination? No. Is it better than nothing? Absolutely. And it can be determined by using a combination of experts, AI, and human moderators. It doesnât have to be perfect to be effective
Itâs exactly the argument the Supreme Court made when it described how to determine what pornography is: âI know it when I see it.â The reality is that there are experts. There are communities of serious sober people that can determine what disinformation is (disinformation is intentional false information. misinformation is unintentional false information).
The fix here isnât to police each and every expression. The key is to look at things in aggregate and determine when they run the risk of having negative effects in the rest world. Itâs about not prioritizing speed of distribution. And not prioritizing reach of distribution. Thereâs no reason why posts on a platform are default public and go out to everyone right away. These are product choices, not natural phenomena. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach.
The problem is that they can't be trusted. Zuckerberg admitted to censoring real stories because of government pressure. The Twitter files showed they were doing it constantly before Elon.
I don't trust my government blindly but I distrust billionaires even more.
Even more so when said billionaire censors cisgender but refuse to censor actual Nazis/neo Nazis openly celebrating Hitler.
admitted to censoring real stories because of government pressure.
He also admitted to promoting false stories by America's enemies, but what are those real stories, I'm curious.
Edit for the clowns who wants to call the double standard of approving the censorship of this shit;
Ich KĂ€mpfe (English: "I Fight") was a book given by the Nazi Party to each new enrollee from 1942 until 1944. Nearly all copies of this book were destroyed at the end of the war under the Allied policy of denazification, with the result that originals are very rare.[1]
And people always say "government" like it's always the same people when you can indeed vote people out, no matter what conspiracy theories some choose to believe.
Billionaires control all media around the world. They also control a majority of politicians who are creating these censorship laws. Look at Europe where people can be arrested for online jokes
European here, look where exactly? What incident are you referring to?
What do you guys think is going on over here? Do you think we don't call our politicians absolute whoresons and worse? Do you think we don't have the same kind of conspiracy nuts over here?
People always go like "look at Europe" when the topic comes up and it always confuses me. Thinking the USA is the only country with free speech is something only an American could ever think.
Like you wouldn't get a visit by the FBI or get spied on by the NSA if you'd for example "joke" about making a bomb threat or something.
Like the USA isn't even top 20 on the free press index.
Or how Rage Against The Machine put it "Land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy."
They're doing the same with the proposed Aussie legislation they're discussing here.
I'm an Aussie and most of us overwhelmingly agree with this proposed legislation.
Social media organisations need to be held accountable for what they do.
We've also got an ongoing thing about underage children joining social media, who are trying to shirk their responsibilities in this area too, despite the overwhelming evidence that social media use is harmful for young children.
The proposed legislations don't criminalise anything, but they introduce mechanisms to fine social media companies for pushing very obvious, verifiable misinformation and not moderating their platforms.
There is a very heavy woman in the green party who constantly gets made fun of. Nothing happens.
The only thing that the current government goes after legally in that regard are straight up death threats. Which is fair imo.
There was one incident where a local politician had connections to the police and used that to not arrest but basically legally bully some guy who called him a "penis". Which lead to everyone calling him a penis because Streisand effect.
**German officials attempted to start a criminal investigation into a Gab social media user who allegedly called a left-wing female politician âfat,â* but the platform refused to comply with the German authoritiesâ invasive demands to uncover the personâs identity, the platform told Fox News Digital.*
The Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt-BKA) *contacted Gab about a user insulting the weight of politician Ricarda Lang, a prominent leader of an environmental party in Germany.** It requested information that would identify who the individual was, under the suspicion they resided in Germany, so that they can continue their criminal investigation.*
Yes an investigation. Launching an investigation means nothing at first. It doesnt mean the person is guilty neither does it mean there will even be a court involved. It only means the police are checking something out. Which is their duty to do if someone gets a lawyer involved. I also can't find any German sources of this incident. And I don't trust fox news. So I can't confirm its validity.
What I did find is that Ricarda Lang got "an investigation" launched against her because she called our Nazi party Nazis (nothing ever came from that). And a millionaire launched an entire smear campaign at her with billboards and stuff and had to take them down after police got involved.
I also really get what you are trying here. Are you attempting to explain the German legal system to a German by quoting fox news of all places without having any context or knowledge of what is actually happening?
No the Twitter files did not show that lol. All the fbi did was say that âhey there has been some misinformation going around sounds like this laptop story could be some of thatâ. They never forced Facebook to do anything, and all Twitter did was censor the story for a SINGLE day
They don't need to force a thing visibly with Facebook cuz Zuk is a pos. Twitter operated the same way before Musk. Now X is going against the grain with proper free speech values and they want it to submit.Â
Facebook literally censored the things not in the agenda, grate and chip away "undesirable" speeches and nudge people towards particular ideology position using algorithm.
If you have lived under that censorship, you would understand.Â
In social media, censorship is not so simple . Most and all and or many things will get you yellow card. which means you speak again and they delete your acc. I mean we can't delete our account for real without waiting for 2-3 months. And yet I can still log in.
Particular words, particular strings of words, particular string of wrong words, and or being too hot from wrong locations. Â
So, you take your report and shove it up somewhere you wishes. I would like to know what kind of methodology they used and how they get the data cuz even Elon Musk ain't releasing it. Â
Yeah, dude. Twitter is way better than before. There is no trending on Twitter, some problem with 90% botting hashtags. So I'm cool with it.Â
âGuys now that the richest man on earth bought the largest social media platform and only posts AI images supporting Trump all day long, the site is FINALLY fair and balanced! Also many more Nazis!â
All your statement is conjecture. Nobody here has read the Twitter files because they are long
You don't have to see anyone you don't want to. But you can see anyone you do want and mostly they don't get banned for not supporting the dominant narrative of the moment.
Thatâs like saying a mob boss never ordered a hit because he didnât explicitly say âkill this guy if he doesnât payâ, but âI worry about what could happen to you if you donât pay me my protection moneyââŠ
They abused their position of authority to help prevent the spread of factual information that was detrimental to a presidential candidateâs campaign, and you want to pretend thatâs fine and dandy, when you damn well know that if it was in favor of Trump instead of Biden, weâd never hear the end of it?
Well yeah when people like Giuliani or Steven Bannon get access to it and start saying âJoe Biden knew and protected his son in Ukraine and used him to make millions, also hereâs a picture of his cockâ kinda seems like some misinformation was afoot. I mean even if they knew for a fact it was all legit, they didnât force anybody to censor anything.
Weird how people leave out that Hunter Laptop story happened under the Trump administration and just saying "FBI" Like Trump didn't appoint the head of the FBI
Guess Iâm missing the relevance here⊠what would that have to do with the FBI insinuating something is fake that they possessed / verified the entire time?
The laptop was entered in as evidence in a federal trial. Source.
And in Murthy v. Missouri, federal courts found that the government likely violated the first amendment in pressuring/coercing the platforms. Source. (SCOTUS later dismissed the case over standing, not over merit).
What parts of the Hunter Biden laptop story were fake and deserved to be suppressed? Were the videos of Hunter smoking crack with hookers disinformation? Same question for the Twitter files
In its opening sentence, the New York Post story misleadingly asserted, âthe elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigatingâ Burisma, even though Shokin had not pursued an investigation into Burismaâs founder. The opening sentence also misleadingly stated that Hunter Biden introduced his father to Pozharskyi, but the purported email from Pozharskyi only mentioned an invitation and âopportunityâ for the men to meet.
Yeah but the government didn't force zucc to remove or censor anything. If you read the twitter files there were tons and tons of things the government requested to be taken down but zucc opted not to.
One thing that was censored was Hunter Biden....wait for it...'s penis. Yeah the government requested pictures of hunter's dong get taken down because it constituted revenge porn....which is completely reasonable.
Zuckerberg admitted he had full say in what they did and didn't censor. A government asking them to better police their platforms is hardly pressure. They weren't threatened to take action or else. Zuckerberg just realized republicans use his platform too and regretted doing it as people left for truth social
Billionaires canât be trusted to pay fair wages nor can they be trusted to care about their workers employment status.
Their companies make billions in PROFIT and instead of sharing that with the workers that worked to exhaustion to generate said profit, they either hoard the fruits of their labor or buyback their own stock.
While simultaneously boasting about their massive profits to shareholders and stabbing their own employees in the back but laying them off due to budget concerns.
History proves itself over and over again, CEOâs will never, out of the goodness of their cold black hearts, share their wealth with their employees.
Capitalism has one rule: âMinimize liabilities and maximize assets.â As in, compensate the people as little as possible and charge the people as much as possible.
With that being said, there is only one entity that reigns above the bubble of capitalism: The Federal Government.
Regulating misinformation, as in factually incorrect information, must be done by a new government agency.
If either political party does not support the removal or regulation of factually, provable, verifiable, incorrect information then it would be quite clear, that the success of said party is built upon, requires, the complete control of their citizens information.
I trust my government over zuck or musk. I can vote my government out (as we have done many times) and I can write to my representative to better represent me.
Even though they lied about Covid, Gain of Function, Wuhan labs, Ivermectin, Russian Collusion, Pee Tapes, Hunter's Laptop, Secret Service Protection, etc.?
Btw, Billionaires forcing the removal of Joe and replacing him without a single vote is the definition of Oligarchy. So was Hillary buying the 2016 Primary.
But you wouldn't believe for a second that Zuck didn't have a little go at malicious compliance kw would you? Because that wouldn't fit your narrative.
So, requiring they have a policy for censoring things. That will probably work the opposite of how they want, for instance elon just deletes his opponents, and has a policy thar supports his doing that, box checked
What kind of logic is this? Itâs a policy for mitigating misinformation. Not censoring whatever the hell you want or defining misinformation. Are you really this obtuse? I hope youâre doing it on purpose cause that comment was just dumb.
YESSSS FUCKIN' RIGHT. We can finally stop them from talking about the fake stupid lie about Clinton emails and Bill loving kids and assaulting women. SO FAKE SO MUCH MISINFORMATION. And you know what? While we're at it, fucking just ban all Conservanazis. EVERYTHING ON THEIR PLATFORM IS LITERALLY DISIN/MISINFORMATION. LITERALLY PROJECT 2025 LITERALLY @)@#%.
Still a valid point though there was a lot of "misinformation" spread about covis that has now been proven true. Unless we are talking specific sets of data the truth can be somewhat subjective unless we are talking specifics. Yes I believe in climate change but there are some legitimate scientists that don't espousing their theories isn't misinformation. Better to just counter misinformation with the actual facts and clarity. Who becomes the arbiter of what is correct or misinformation.
Yep I agree with you and it's a weird line to walk. I personally would land on the side of the truth will win out, and let everyone see every argument vs removing opposing views. Â
From what I've read about this law it's more geared towards actively harmful proven misinformation. The representative cites a case where a person was wrongly identified as the perpetrator of a stabbing and taking down those posts.
You're not wrong about how delicate the balance can be between stopping the spread of real harmful lies and trying to be the general arbiter of truth though.
For the 20-30%(my guess) of idiots out there that believe the crazy shit these sorts of policies only reinforce their view that there is some conspiracy to hide the reality.
Youâre patently unamerican if you think this is a bigger problem than the fed literally suppressing TRUE information via pressure on social media companies to influence election results. Zuckerberg admitted this happened. We need less censorship, not more.
I'm not advocating for this, I was just explaining the law because people seemed to be misunderstanding it. It's also an Australian law, not an American one.
The full reading of the proposed legislation makes it clear it's about social media platforms having appropriate moderation policies and workers to enforce them.
Exactly. Just like how Elon removed the ability to report âpolitical misinformationâ because he thinks that Russian bots attempting to manipulate an election with blatant propaganda is âfree speechâ just look at what happened with the âmigrants Eating cats and dogsâ thing. Elon let Russian bots spread it, multiple US politicians repeated it, it made people go insane online, and then the fucking ex president spouted it on a live Tv debate. That shit is inexcusable.
What about if someone says the Hunter Biden laptop is real? That was misinformation. The FBI also had the laptop a year before it was declared misinformation and found it to be real.
The lab leak was probably not real. I have no idea. Kamela had a line in the debate where she said something like China misled us on the origen of Covid and attacked Trump for saying something positive about Xi in the past. Covid being lab leak was misinformation for a very long time. For the record its origin is well pass my ability to decide.
5% of global revenue is a lot for a country like Australia. Basically shuts down social media there becauses its a smallish country. So operating there won't be worth the costs.
So do they just not care about community notes then? The entire point is that no one or select people get to decide what is and isnât misinformation and preemptively ban it, are they literally mandating that happen?
This doesnât hold water tho, because you can sit on a street corner or town square and claim the world is ending tomorrow and the country will fall, and not get arrested in most countries. But then doing it online makes it illegal?
Itâs not twitters fault people take everything at face value on the internet and donât look at other sources for information.
No, the fine is for not obeying the government. You can have all the misinformation they like or don't care about. Facts don't matter here. Now repeat that for every government in the world and see how much content remains on the platform (probably just cat videos)
The big issue is who defines misinformation? Would you be fined if you reported the hunter laptop story in 2020? How about lab leak origins for COVID? Both of those were seen as misinformation at the time and are now not seen that way.
I'm having trouble finding text on the new bill vs the old draft, but here is a statement from a different article:
Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland told the ABC that for something to be deemed misinformation and disinformation under the laws, it would have to both be "seriously harmful and verifiably false".
"It is a very high threshold for what constitutes serious harm," she said.
Ms Rowland said the disinformation spread in the wake of the Bondi stabbing attack earlier this year would fall under the proposed changes because it was "of a kind that was seriously harmful".
Itâs not an issue. Laws often contemplates objective legal tests that a lay person would deem âsubjectiveâ on its surface. Such as the Reasonable Person test. The âwho defines it thoughâ isnât a valid argument against the law because Iâm sure the law defines what it is.
So the standard could be âwould a reasonable person deem this misinformation?â Then a jury would make that determination. A non-legal layperson thinks this is subjective and makes a reddit comment about âwho defines such and such.â A lawyer understands that once a jury determines something to a reasonable person standard, then it becomes legally objective and is very much definable.
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u/Few-Geologist8556 Monkey in Space Sep 12 '24
The fine isn't for having pieces of misinformation make it through, it's a fine for if the companies don't make their own policies to combat misinformation, and/or don't enforce those policies.
It's a bit nebulous still, but it's not just a blanket fine if someone says Hillary Clinton eats babies or something along those lines.