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.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Councils will politely tell the Minister to foxtrot oscar and carry on regardless. Nobody but the most gullible are fooled by these statements.
Agreed. They know they need only wait a few months for sir-kneeler to become PM. Then they’ll feel empowered to hire twice as many political commissars and hang the expense.
What an unpleasant prospect.
Quite, just another word salad straight out of the Rishi Sunak book of “words speak louder than action”. Or, as my mother would have put it: “Fine words butter no parsnips.”
It has been her party that has institutionalised wokery into every workplace in the country.
Don’t believe one word she utters, nor any of the Braverman, Patel, Mogg, Redwood, Davies, Anderson gang – they are all peeing in the same pot.
Too little too late. Tories failed for decades on all the big issues.
“Tories failed for decades on all the big issues.”
Now, now tof what Ms McVey is talking about is hardly a big issue, it’s pissing in the wind stuff. And knowing how councils work I can guarantee that away days for the “directors” will not disappear because Ms McVey has directed it to be so. This sort of expense will simply be filed under something reasonable and innocuous like ‘staff training.’ Now who could argue against staff training?
The real waste in council expenditure is Directors pensions which in the case of our local council is costing millions. If Ms McVey really wanted to achieve something useful for residents she would take a chainsaw to that largesse along with the numbers employed as ‘Directors.’
Quite frankly I believe McVey has insulted the electorate with this paltry nonsense. The cost saving apparently amounts to £67,000 per council – so what?
McVey needs to keep her head down because conning the public with faux cost-cutting measures will get her nowhere. The Tories are toast now anyway at the next election – if we have one – although it is difficult not to believe that their destruction is not being deliberately orchestrated.
Indeed just a sop to try and fool voters into thinking they are conservative. And McVey is one of the less bad ones.
“And McVey is one of the less bad ones.”
Aye, and she’s nice on the eye.
Redwood, Patel, Braverman, Davies, Anderson, Mogg, Anderson et al are all out the same fake mould. They all take the whip at the end of the day.
This may be true. But when each council, on average, employs 2 EDI people at an average salary of £33500/ year, these posts should certainly just DIE.
If we want to truly cut waste in all area’s of government and public sector this would be an extremely long response, and I’d still be typing on Monday.
But, just for starters, cut out all the BS related to Net Zero and Green energy, scrap the pointless Covid enquiry and commission a “proper” one, using a few notables from here for starters.
I have a life, so I’ll leave it at that for now!
I’m intrigued to read this report about local government spending.
https://www.tussell.com/regional-spending-report
I’m torn. Will it be a whitewash or a greenwash?
Apparently you can download it for free (which always makes me suspicious). If anyone gets the time, do share its contents.
Or the Government could just scrap (or amend) the Equality Act and make the whole nonsense stop completely.
But they’d rather posture.
Have Tory MPs been asleep for 14 years or are they desperate to save themselves from oblivion.
Both.