Who gets to decide what is true?
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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It will work like this :
The Department of Communication, or anyone else will make a complaint to ACMA, and they will then make a ruling on it and pass it to the Dept of Communication.
Regardless of the ruling, the minister for Communication will then issue fines if he/she considers that it is "misinformation".
The recipient can ask for a court ruling, but the court can only rule on whether the minister has complied with the law, not whether it is misinformation.
BTW, the ABC has started with a lie ; the law will apply not only to social media, but also search engines, websites and BBSes.
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The ACMA would also be able to request the industry to develop a "code of practice" covering measures to combat misinformation. Violating the code could result in penalties up to $2.75 million dollars or 2 per cent of global turnover — whichever is greater.
And lastly, the ACMA would be empowered to create and enforce its own industry standard. Penalties for breaching the standards could see companies paying up to $6.8 million or 5 per cent of their global turnover.
Read the actual draft bill here
This is actually pretty reasonable (with regard to the corporate players). All it says is the industry has to develop a code of best practice and try to follow it, and keep records of what they're doing to follow the industry code when ACMA come asking. ACMA may make a standard if the industry fail to create a code, or if the code is insufficient.
ACMA wont be dealing in individual cases here. They're trying to put the onus on the industry to do all the work. Apart from possibly annual reporting, ACMA are only going to take action if somewhere becomes a cesspool of misinformation.
What is worrying is that this will apply to Lemmy too. @lodion Thoughts? We'll probably fly under the radar as we're (currently) fairly inconsequential. But will this still be worth it to you if you have to keep to a code of practice, records, etc that he big players get to write.
I don't see how it wouldn't apply to Lemmy, since the exposure draft expressly includes 'content aggregation services.'
What's not clear is who would be liable for potential breaches. All the liability seems to fall on the 'digital platform provider' meaning ' a person who provides a digital platform service.' That's easy to determine for a centralised corporate entity like Reddit or Twitter, but who is providing Lemmy? Is it the person who owns the server? It doesn't seem broad enough to include mods.
Definitely apply to Lemmy. But Lemmy isn’t a website itself. It’s more like a protocol. So each server owner will be responsible. I didn’t think to look and too late at night for me now, but I wonder how the law would work with federation. Is Aussie.zone only responsible for the local communities or is each site responsible for their All streams. I suppose that’s a benefit of being able to defederate. And the mainline Lemmy communities seem really good in this regard.
I’d more worry about keeping to the industry code of practice and the record keeping aspects and being in breach that way.
Excellent question!
https://www.acma.gov.au/ would have the power to go after an organisation for publishing it, so effectively them.
I don't have a problem with this in principle, I would just want there to be some caveats in it.
Conspiracy theories spreading on Facebook are a problem that Facebook needs to step up and help address, but that doesn't mean I think they should be held liable every time a cooker posts nonsense.
The most important question of all. If you look at all the massive corruption scandals that FriendlyJordies has exposed on youtube over the last 5 years, it's not hard to see that this will be immediately misused to silence the voices of people like him who are out there shining light on government corruption and political wrongdoing.
It's effectively a ministry of truth on our own shores: they decide what is true and what is untrue on any given day. I realise we've had massive issues here being infiltrated by hard-right whackjob 'not news' services spreading rubbish, but any time you try to legislate an arbitrator of 'truth', you are just opening the door to thought control and potentially hiding dirty deeds that should be brought to light.
I am not in favour of this at all. I'd rather deal with my relatives becoming Qanon'd than have the government decide on consensus reality. They can't even understand an issue as simple as vaping.
If I make a post on here saying "the sky is purple", am I spreading disinformation?
Contrived example obviously but this seems like very far reaching legislation.
For the purposes of this Schedule, dissemination of content using a digital service is misinformation on the digital service if:
(a) the content contains information that is false, misleading or deceptive; and
(b)the content is not excluded content for misinformation purposes; and
(c) the content is provided on the digital service to one or more end-users in Australia; and
(d) the provision of the content on the digital service is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.
Draft bill located here
I think the last one is key.
Also the bill doesn't empower the government to make individual rulings on misinformation. It says sites have to follow an industry code of practice to have systems in place to keep on top of misinformation.
Think of it as a way to avoid another Cronulla, or any of the pizza gate/Qanon shit happening here. i.e when news is breaking, sure let it through in the fog of war. But don't let people post for years that the election was stolen by the deep state kiddy fiddler alliance.
Well played, reptilians.
Yeah I figure there is a bit of leeway when it comes to misinformation. It's when it becomes serious and can cause harm, like yeah Qanon, vaccines cause autism, that sort of stuff.
I wonder if anything to do with religion gets classified under the excluded content clause (b)
Nope. It lists the excluded content on page 5. Can’t copy on my phone right now but basically just excludes good faith entertainment parody and satire; accredited educational bodies, professional news bodies and government bodies.
No mention of religion or belief in the entire bill.
You’d get a pass on interpretation but you won’t get a pass on making shit up that harms a religious or marginalised group. It defines harm too on page 6.
I bet the politicians have excluded themselves, because God knows they spout so much misinformation that they'd all be constantly in court.
Yep. In the draft bill, Anything published by any level of government or anything published by political parties about electoral matters or referendums is excluded. So they’re free to push misinformation to their hearts content.
Professional news content is also excluded. Though to be fair is probably included under other acma rules.
Right. So the government is free to do a propaganda without consequence, but I can't? Wild.
Well that's interesting. Murdoch's Fox News claimed it wasn't a news organisation in a court case.
So Sky News is gonna have to decide if it's a news organisation or potentially be up for misinformation....
They already have Parliamentary Privilege.
the sky is purple
This is a warning not to spread further misinformation, the sky is clearly green.
According to the draft bill, misinformation is defined as unintentionally false, misleading or deceptive content.
It also defines disinformation as misinformation intentionally disseminated to cause serious harm.
Even in it's draft state, the bill is diferentiating between the spurious and actively harmful stuff like "if you inject bleach you can cure covid. I'm a doctor, trust me bro."
Cool, they've found a way to extract money out of the Murdoch press? I'm all for it!
the new powers would not apply to professional news content
That sucks. The government could be raking it in from Sky News and The Australian.
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