Steven Edgington has written a perceptive piece in the Telegraph about the “moral panic” over ‘disinformation’ and the clueless Conservatives handing their ideological enemies a nuclear weapon in the form of the Online Safety Bill.
Yet how often do official ‘facts’ turn out to be wrong, and supposed ‘misinformation’ turns out to be true?
Remember all the fuss about Hunter Biden’s laptop? In 2020, everyone had an opinion on its significance. You were either convinced of a great media coverup of Biden-family corruption, or adamant that Trump’s conspiracy theories had got a whole-lot weirder.
Perhaps you even believed that it was Russian disinformation. That’s what Mark Zuckerberg was concerned about when the story broke.
Of course, even the New York Times now admits the story was authentic. But in a recent interview with Joe Rogan – the world’s most popular podcaster – the Facebook founder said the FBI had warned him to be on “high alert” for a big Russian dump of propaganda.
Attempting to excuse his company’s decision, he said: “Hey, look, if the FBI, which I still view is a legitimate institution in this country… come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously.”
This led to Facebook suppressing the story for up to a week. People could still share the expose, but far fewer people saw it on their Facebook feeds. Twitter banned sharing any link related to the story altogether.
Fifty former intelligence chiefs even signed a letter dismissing the Hunter Biden story as having “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”.
This moral panic over “disinformation” arguably altered the course of the election, and such concerns continue to grip politicians and journalists on both sides of the pond.
A grievance racket of what I call the disinformation industrial complex has grown ever larger in recent years.
Covid took the censorship to a whole new level.
In April 2020, YouTube decided to crack down on Covid misinformation. The company’s CEO Susan Wojciki said at the time: “Anything that would go against World Health Organisation recommendations would be a violation of our policy.”
But what if the WHO gets it wrong, as it did in January 2020 when they tweeted that there was no clear evidence of Covid human-to-human transmission?
By sponsoring the Online Safety Bill, the Tories are shooting themselves in the foot, argues Edgington.
In the U.K., the Government is currently trying to pass the Online Safety Bill, which will outline a new category of legal-but-harmful online content. It says the new law will force social media platforms to address “categories of content which are harmful to adults, likely to include disinformation.” The law will also focus on “empowering users with the critical thinking skills they need to spot online falsehoods”.
Since when was this the role of government? The naivety of a Conservative administration pushing for imprecise laws against disinformation is staggering.
Reports have suggested that Nadine Dorries may hang on as Culture Secretary in Liz Truss’s new Cabinet, meaning her Bill will almost certainly pass by the end of the year. It doesn’t bear thinking about the damage that an ideologically-driven Labour Culture Secretary could get up to with these new powers. How long would it be before something as innocuous as “women don’t have penises” is classified as disinformation?
If it passes, the Tories may leave office in 2024 having given the Left its best asset for censoring conservatives online.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Rockefeller Foundation reports that the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) has announced it will provide “an initial $7.2 million in direct research funds to 12 teams working in 17 countries in order to better understand how health mis- and disinformation spreads, how to combat it, and how to build stronger information systems, while increasing COVID-19 vaccination rates”. The amount of money pouring into global censorship efforts is terrifying.
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The conservative party decided it was an establishment mouth piece the day it assassinated Mrs T for saying a few bad things about the EU. Please don’t assume it’s conservative because it has the legacy branding.
Still view? What an interesting choice of words by Zuckerberg.
If that isn’t a tip of the hat to the idea that the authority of the state and its institutions is unravelling, I don’t know what is.
‘… how to combat it, and how to build stronger information systems, while increasing COVID-19 vaccination rates”.’
At this rate they will discover PRAVDA.
“…while increasing COVID-19 vaccination rates”.
Well they have sure as hell pissed on their chips with that. Those of us who have said no are not now going to change our minds.
The only misinformation I am aware of is the garbage coming out of MSM and as I consider it to be propoganda my first thoughts on any new proclamation are how can I ridicule it.
I will be the sole judge of the veracity of all information I come across.
End of.
Just another day in the life of the Rockerfellers, Gates’ and the rest of them, paying off people around the world to obey them and do their bidding.
“Philanthropy” is what Gates keeps calling it.
They are not conservatives, and haven’t been for a long time.
Are they conservatives or Tory lite aka Blairites. Plus liberal party infiltration.
Hmm:
One fundamental problem is that they keep on announcing that something is mis- or disinformation, only for it to be shown to be clearly true only a few months later. Thus it is only natural for people to be suspicious of any information that comes from the same source.
One way to force this certainty on TPTB is to write into the ‘misinformation laws’ that any statements declaring that something is ‘misinformation’ have to be collated, and any that turn out to be plausible (that is enough; it shouldn’t need to be a new certainty — the problem is TPTB declaring certainty when there is uncertainty) after all have to be published on the front page of the state run media as ‘we were wrong’ with an apology.
Of course they’d never do the above, as it would completely undermine all of their actions — ‘misinformation’ isn’t at all about ensuring that the public is properly informed, and instead is all about control.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s the ultimate Orwellian turn of phrase.
All this effort to “combat misinformation” is actually a reaction to the new channels of information that actually give people a chance to be better informed.
For all their faults, social media, video sharing platforms and the like are where lockdowns were questioned, where the jab injuries first started to be talked about, where the heavy handed suppression of protest against lockdowns and jab mandates was shown, where we could find out about the thousands protesting against lockdowns and realise we weren’t alone.
it’s all that sort of “misinformation” that they no doubt want to get rid of.
They tried to deal with the issue by leaning on the big platforms to self censor, only to discover that the content emerged somewhere else, like Rumble or Gab or Telegram. So they’re dealing it with it with a blanket law. Not just in the UK. Other countries are passing similar laws.
If they get their way we’ll only get to hear what the establishment want us to hear.
It’s good that this is being pointed out in the mainstream press but I do wish that newspapers and journalists supposedly on the political right would stop expressing surprise that the Conservative Party is pursuing distinctly unconservative policies and has been since at least Cameron. It’s not as it Hitchens hasn’t pointed this out (and many others no doubt).
The same question keeps cropping up: are they really so stupid or is it deliberate? (Rhetorical).
Most politicians are socialist.
They are also muppets and puppets
Most Conservative MPs will vote through anything they are told because they are not Conservative.
Boris Johnson should never be forgiven for the evil he has done to this country.
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How charmingly naive to imagine that the government is “accidentally” implementing draconian censorship laws.
The CONs are no different to Labour when it comes to building Orwell’s nightmare. The WEF requires censorship, so that’s what their puppets in Government will do.