Labour and SNP politicians on the Committee currently scrutinising the Online Safety Bill laid an amendment to include “health-related misinformation and disinformation” as a recognised form of lawful but “harmful” speech, ratcheting up the censorship yet further. Mark Johnson has written about the illiberal move for UnHerd.
Civil libertarians often talk about a phenomenon known as the ‘ratcheting effect’. This is the idea that when it comes to the erosion of our liberties, the trajectory tends to head in one direction; in favour of state power at the expense of our rights and freedoms.
It is the reason why we draw red lines that should not be crossed. If you breach the principle of non-interference in people’s rights with a relatively minor incursion, what is to stop that minor incursion from escalating to something more significant in the future?
Yet with the Online Safety Bill, a censor’s charter which has been so long in the making the ratcheting effect is happening in real time. Last week, SNP and Labour politicians on the Committee currently scrutinising the Bill laid an amendment to include “health-related misinformation and disinformation’ as a recognised form of lawful but ‘harmful’” speech. This threatens to open a Pandora’s box of censorship.
The terms ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ have grown to become part of the political lexicon in recent years. The concepts of being incorrect or misleading have been left behind for alternative terms, with loaded connotations. Yet they are malleable terms, often deployed in ways to discredit or silence another individual’s argument in the course of public debate.
Stoked by these fears, we have seen Big Tech increasingly taking on the role of online speech police in recent years. During the coronavirus era, this reached new extremes. At the beginning of the pandemic, Facebook took the step of removing content which promoted face masks as a tool to combat the spread of COVID-19.
Yet within a short space of time, the medical consensus on masks changed. But rather than acknowledge that it was wrong, Facebook flipped its position and censored in the other direction. A high-profile example saw Facebook label, discredit and suppress an article in the Spectator, written by the Oxford academic Carl Heneghan, disputing the efficacy of masks. What grounds or competency Silicon Valley’s fact-checkers had to overrule reasoned arguments by a Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine remains to be seen.
This approach is a direct threat to the epistemic process, so central to the free and open development of knowledge and ideas in liberal democracies. The fact that not even academics can escape this kind of truth arbitration speaks volumes.
Worth reading in full.
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Gosh – A bit like the senitent animals bill – this is sooo important.
When there are myriad other areas where bills are urgently required the government is wasting parliamentary time on this. Drop the Bill asap and concentrate on things that matter to the real people of this country.
Look out, it’ll be sentient computers next!
Aliens too, by the sound of it…
I was already never going to vote for Labour ever again. Nail in the coffin.
If I ever vote again, IF. If I ever vote again it will be for an Independent or the Reform Party. It is quite clear the Con, Lab, Lib triumvirate is now owned by Globocrap so voting for any of these cowards is a wasted vote. The reality, let’s be honest is that our parliamentary system is bust beyond repair. As I keep repeating any help we might hope for will not arrive via the ballot box.
It won’t matter who is elected in 2024, assuming elections go ahead, the Globocrap agenda will continue unless there is MASSIVE pushback.
I’m never going to vote Labour even more now though.
Labour, the party of big business screwing over the common man (or common huperoffwinterkind).
”Misinformation”, gaining ground since 2018, is the Orwellian catch-all term for information that is substantially correct but deemed unsuitable for public consumption. Of course, it imputes a bad motive to anyone trying to purvey truth. It looks as if Labour are trying to help the Prime Minister out with a project in the planning since before Covid in 2019 and early 2020
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3099/rr-5
https://www.ageofautism.com/2020/02/uk-law-commissioner-threatens-criminal-action-against-vaccine-critics.html
Obviously, the Labour rabble offer no alternative to all the bad things going on in government at the moment, it is simply worse of the same.
This was also part of the agenda of the ‘Center for Countering Digital Hate’ a company which was originally registered to Keir Starmer’s campaign manager Morgan Mcsweeney. The Center pursues a policy of re-branding any views they don’t like as “hate”.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11633127/filing-history
The idea of excluding all vaccine criticism from social media was proposed by Seth Berkley of GAVI, the vaccine cartel organisation, in Spectator-on-line in June 2018 and the idea of defining it as hate crime was floated by Heidi Larson of the Vaccine Confidence Project in February 2019 shortly after the WHO classified the “vaccine hesitant” as a threat to world health.
https://www.ageofautism.com/2019/02/heidi-larson-calls-for-vaccine-criticism-to-be-prosecuted-as-hate-crime.html
A list of Vaccine Confidence Project’s partners and founders:
https://www.vaccineconfidence.org/partners-funders
THE MONEY FOR THIS COMES FROM SAME PLACES WHICHEVER THE PARTY
The Online Safety Bill IS a hate crime
They want to outlaw discussion of everything which needs to be discussed.
Boy, you nailed it in one short sentence!
Mainstream politics as we now know it needs to be culled. And quickly. The only peaceful power the people have is at the ballot box, and that needs to be used to send a signal to these elitist morons that there is discontent and trouble brewing amongst the public. No vote or a vote for an independent is the only vote to cast. My concern – more of a certainty than a ‘concern’ actually – is that protest at the ballot box is too little too late.
The problem is that the options to elect are equally odious.
There is no credible choice which has integrity.
Something to do though. Spoil a vote if the only options are genocide collaborators.
“Health misinformation” in practice refers to information that constitutes a threat to the ideology that health problems can only be resolved effectively with pharmaceutical drugs (under patent) and technology. The idea that other competing treatments and approaches can be effective substitutes is the “misinformation” to be acted on.
That is what Labour and the SNP are basically promoting. I hope they feel proud of themselves.
“That is what Labour and the SNP are basically promoting. I hope they feel proud of themselves.”
Most of them wouldn’t care and wouldn’t understand – just gimme the money.
Devi “100% safe” Sridhar’s nasty nats.
Of course they have. They don’t believe in freedom of speech – it’s incompatible with their policies.
Labour wouldn’t have opposed updating electoral boundaries to reflect population changes if they believed in free speech.
George Orwell was right. If you want to control people, first control the language.
New Normal – “Normal” is something that has long been the norm and is accepted as the norm. The key point is that the “old” normal no longer applies. This change in thinking provided authority figures the license to enact “reforms” that would not have been widely accepted in the past. In the old normal, a citizen might not have complied with authoritarian mandates, but in the New Normal, most will…
Vaccine — Previously a vaccine was an injection that provided “immunity” or prevented diseases, as well as the spread of diseases. Today, at least as it involves the COVID “vaccines,” vaccines simply (and allegedly) reduce the probability someone will develop a severe case of this disease or die from this disease.
Safe — An activity that is not dangerous or does not cause harm. It’s now no longer “safe” to read or hear words that you don’t like or agree with.
Effective — Certainly today “effective” does not mean COVID vaccines prevent infection or virus spread.
Harm — Something that injures, perhaps even kills, or causes someone pain or discomfort. The key change here is that “harm” can now be caused by speech.
Misinformation or Disinformation — In its simplest terms, this would be information that is provably false.
In our “New Normal,” misinformation or disinformation is simply any information that challenges the veracity of pronouncements made by authorized experts or authorities. That is, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s leading public health authority, cannot be charged with producing “disinformation,” but skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can and should be.
Science and “The science” — A theory largely accepted by the scientific community and public.
“Science” used to be the process of testing a hypothesis and was almost never “settled.” In the past, a skeptic who examined or challenged the conclusions of peers was himself engaging in science. Today, “The Science” is what the authorized scientists and officials at public health bureaucracies say it is.
Anti-vaxxer — Technically, this would be a person who opposes all vaccines. In Newspeak, it means anyone who is against mandatory COVID vaccines … If you oppose mandatory COVID vaccines for whatever reason, you are a “science denier” or “anti-science…” and, as such can and should be punished or censored because you could be causing “harm” to the public.
Patriotism or patriot — In the past, a “patriot” was one who stood up to tyrannical governments and/or displayed a great love for their country. Today, a patriot is one who complies with the edicts of their government and helps attack or embarrasses those who challenge governmental authority.
Public health — This term once meant the state of overall health in hundreds of millions of people who comprise “the public.” In the last two years, it’s come to mean the “health” of people who may or may not have COVID-19. Today, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental health, obesity – all the conditions that kill and harm people — are afterthoughts when compared to “COVID health.”
“Public health….In the last two years, it’s come to mean the “health” of people who may or may not have COVID-19.”
I think that’s pretty generous, tbh. It’s now just a cover for exercising more power over people.
Post the Covid propaganda, I already assume that anything “the health authorities/ government” tells me on the subject of “vaccines” and related issues is at best suspect and probably complete hogwash so if they think blocking alternative information will stop dissent they’re delusional.
If words now cause “harm” and make people “unsafe,” it follows that there will be LAWS to prosecute and arrest people causing this alleged harm.
Above I post a glossary of some of the definitions that have already been changed in our Orwellian “New Normal.”
Changing the legal definition of “harm” and “safety” might be the most important changes in our new politically-correct dictionary. Spreading “mis-information” looks like it is now a crime … even when the misinformation is true information. It goes without saying that the real serial spreaders of misinformation and disinformation are the people who get to arrest, prosecute, convict, cancel, bully or fire those who disagree with …. them.
Misinformation according to whom? Devi “100% safe” Sridhar? Heaven help us!
Sadly, Hugh, she is one of many who spread misinformation but judge others.