ACT Senator David Pocock has raised strong concerns about the Combating Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, and has announced that he will oppose the government’s proposed legislation, unless serious changes are made.
The bill passed the House or Representatives, but now that is facing the Senate, Pocock says questioned the bill’s reliance on social media companies to identify and regulate misinformation, pointing out potential risks to free speech and democratic rights.
“I’ve said from the start that I have serious concerns about this bill, but like with all legislation, I’m committed to engaging in good faith to learn more so I can make a decision based on the evidence and the feedback I receive,” said Pocock.
“I’ve listened to the experts and to people in the ACT, and I’ll be opposing the combating misinformation disinformation bill unless major changes are made to the legislation, because as it stands, I don’t believe it takes the right approach to dealing with misinformation.
“Freedom of speech and the freedom to protest are critical parts of our democracy. And in Australia, we don’t have an overarching Human Rights Act that entrenches these rights, so we need to tread very carefully whenever we make changes that may impact on them, and we’ve very worryingly seen Labor and Liberal governments crack down on people’s right to protest at a state level.”
Pocock acknowledged that while misinformation and disinformation are issues that need to be dealt with, we shouldn’t rely on social media platforms to decide what qualifies as truthful or accurate information.
“There’s no doubt that mis and disinformation is causing harm, but people are also entitled to their opinion, whatever it may be, and it seems that the issue is not people with 100 or 1000 followers online saying things, but more with social media algorithms that then boost that content to others,” said Pocock.
“So, I find it very strange that the government wants to trust these giant corporations who have, at best, very questionable reputations with deciding what is or isn’t, mis and disinformation. We’ll be in a situation where we likely have algorithms boosting stuff based on engagement, and then another algorithm sifting through and deciding what of that is and isn’t disinformation.”
Pocock argues that the main issue behind misinformation and disinformation are algorithms and large numbers of bots online.
“The thing that kept being raised in the centre committee process is that one of the biggest issues in propagating and spreading mis and disinformation is bots, non-human actors,” he said.
“What we established through the committee process is that bots have no freedom of expression. They’ve got no human rights. And there’s widespread agreement that social media companies should have an obligation to remove all bots that are impersonating humans, all legitimate bots that answer questions or maybe unfurl tweets should be clearly labelled as non-human so people know that.
“Unfortunately, that’s not the approach the government has taken. They’ve gone with what seems like a pretty unworkable system where social media companies decide what is and isn’t mis or disinformation.
“We need to do better and actually tackle the root causes of the spread of mis and disinformation, non-human actors or bots and then algorithms that are holding attention and therefore making money ahead of good faith debate and social cohesion.”
The misinformation bill is directed at social media and online platforms such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok, requiring them to ensure transparency by publishing their policies, risk assessments, and complaints mechanisms for addressing misinformation and disinformation.
Read more about the misinformation bill here.
Misinformation is inaccurate information shared without any intent to deceive. It is often shared by people who believe the false information to be true.
Disinformation is deliberately false information created and shared with the intent to mislead.
