Author adminPosted on Categories Human rights, Liberty 4 Comments on The federal government’s social media big brother bill
“It is not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize must also be silenced….Public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken pubic support….When the doubt or fear expressed concerns not the success of a particular enterprise but of the whole social plan, it must be treated even more as sabotage.”
― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
“The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.”
― Friedrich Hayek
“It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.”
― Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
“Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek
The Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 (“The Bill“) if passed will allow the government to monitor social media content it disapproves of and to conscript social media companies to do their dirty work of curtailing such content through the Australian Communications and Media Authority (“ACMA”).
As such, the Bill represents a dangerous threat to freedom of online discourse.
Continue reading “The federal government’s social media big brother bill”
Author adminPosted on Categories Defamation 3 Comments on The perils of social media for twits
The laws of defamation apply to social media as much as they apply anywhere else:
A FORMER high school student has been ordered to pay $105,000 to a teacher for writing defamatory remarks about her on social media in what is believed to be Australia’s first Twitter defamation case to go to trial.
Former Orange High School student Andrew Farley, 20, made “false allegations” about music teacher Christine Mickle on Twitter and Facebook in 2012, a year after he had left school.
Mr Farley, who had never been taught by Ms Mickle, seemed to bear a grudge against the 58-year-old based on a belief that she had something to do with his father, also a teacher, leaving the school, District Court Judge Michael Elkaim said in his ruling.
“There is absolutely no evidence to substantiate that belief,” Judge Elkaim said. “The effect of the publication on the plaintiff was devastating.’’
Anyone who frequents Twitter (or other social media) on a regular basis would know that false and defamatory assertions are often made about people. In some ways it’s a surprise that it’s taken this long for such a case to result in an award of damages in Australia.
Another twitter defamation case that went to court is that of Liberal pollsters Mark Textor and Lyndon Crosby against former Labor MP Mike Kelly for a tweet Kelly published about push polling.
When people go on social media to rant, they would be well advised to be careful that they do not open themselves to liability for defamation. A right to rant is not the same as a right to defame.
