Brazil’s government is demanding answers from Meta after the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that the company will no longer use “fact-checkers” to censor content in the US.Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, tech companies have been using “fact-checking” as a pretext to suppress content online. Companies like Meta have contracted with Left-wing organizations that determine whether content is true or false. Once a fact-checker labels a post “misinformation” or even partly false, social media platforms censor the content and sometimes suspend the user. Major fact-checking organizations are heavily <a href="https://www.thegoldreport.com/news/fact-checking-giant-funnels-money-from-soros-google-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-to-global-propaganda-outlets" id="">funded</a> by backers like Google, George Soros, Bill Gates, the government-funded National Endowment for Democracy, and other globalist organizations.On Tuesday, Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.thegoldreport.com/news/meta-ends-censorship-because-of-trump-ceo-plays-victim" id="">said</a> there is “too much censorship” and announced Meta is ending its fact-checking program on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads for US users. The billionaire acknowledged that Trump’s victory in November has ushered in a “new era” that prizes free speech.Despite the decision being limited to the US, Brazilian authorities reacted angrily to the announcement. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called the change “extremely serious” and convened an urgent meeting with other officials, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/10/brazil-meta-fact-checking-messias-.html" id="">according</a> to CNBC. Lula reportedly expressed pride in being called a communist and a socialist during his speech at a <a href="https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/brazil/lula-proudly-embraces-communist-and-socialist-labels-at-sao-paulo-forum/" id="">meeting </a>of the São Paulo Forum in Brasília in 2023. "Lula criticized the right wing and their attacks on the left, stating, 'They still accuse us of being communists and socialists and think they offend us like that. That makes us proud.'”‍‍Solicitor General Jorge Messias has demanded Meta “explain” its actions by Monday.“I’d like to express the Brazilian government’s enormous concern about the policy adopted by the Meta company, which is like an airport windsock, changing its position all the time according to the winds,” Messias told reporters. “Brazilian society will not be at the mercy of this kind of policy,” he added.<h2 id="">In Brazil, censorship is the law</h2>Meta and other social media platforms have been <a href="https://www.thegoldreport.com/news/brazil-feuds-with-social-media-platforms-to-censor-brazilians" id="">feuding</a> with Brazil’s government since 2023 when a law was passed forcing them to censor content and remove users at the behest of officials.Social media companies that do not comply with government orders face fines of R$100,000 ($20,053) to R$150,000 ($30,080) per hour. Last year, X Corp was forced to pay the Brazilian government $5.5 million in fines after billionaire Elon Musk refused to censor users and content on behalf of authorities.<h2 id="">Zuckerberg: ‘We’re in a new era now’</h2>Meta has been notorious for its censorship, which included suppressing the New York Post’s story about the Biden family’s corruption just before the 2020 election. It was later revealed that Meta has been working closely with the <a href="https://www.thegoldreport.com/news/meta-disinformation-agents-declare-win-against-chinese-disinformation" id="">intelligence community</a> and the <a href="https://www.thegoldreport.com/news/tech-companies-collude-with-dhs-doj-monthly-on-censorship-says-report" id="">Biden administration</a> to censor content and users that challenge the government’s narratives. During COVID-19, for example, Facebook executives repeatedly approached the White House to ask for the government’s messaging, which they then enforced through censorship. Furthermore, any content about COVID-19 that fact-checkers declared “partly false” or “missing context," was treated by Facebook as completely false.&nbsp;But “misinformation” is not the only reason social media companies censor content. Immediately after January 6, 2021, for example, Meta suspended Trump from Facebook over concerns about “inciting violence.”Now the tech mogul is working hard to court Trump after spending eight years sidelining him. Shortly after Zuckerberg met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in late November, Meta donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Last week, Meta added UFC CEO Dana White, one of Trump’s closest allies, to its board of directors.‍In his video address announcing the termination of its fact-checking program, Zuckerberg claimed to have always championed free speech and expression.“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms,” he said. “More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”Zuckerberg acknowledged that “we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship,” but blamed it on the Biden administration and mainstream media.&nbsp;“Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more. A lot of this is clearly political,” he said, adding that the company’s sudden devotion to free speech is because of Trump’s election victory: “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.”At another point in the video, the Meta CEO again blamed the mainstream media for censorship and tried to paint Meta as having pure motives.“After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote nonstop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US,” said Zuckerberg.He then pointed fingers at the Biden administration, though he did not address who was forcing him to censor content while Trump was in office.“That’s why it’s been so difficult over the past four years, when even the US government has pushed for censorship. By going after us and other American companies, it has emboldened other governments to go even further. But now we have the opportunity to restore free expression and I am excited to take it.”Zuckerberg also said the company would be taking some related measures like recommending political content to users because “it feels like we’re in a new era now.”‍

Brazil expresses ‘enormous concern’ over Meta ending censorship in US

Meta's decision 'extremely serious,' says socialist Brazilian president

California Governor Gavin Newsom is capitalizing on the deadly fires that have devastated Los Angeles by raising money for his gubernatorial campaign.On Sunday, Newsom posted a tweet on X directing users to CaliforniaFireFacts.com, a site his administration launched to fight “misinformation.” The governor is under heavy criticism for his failure to prevent one of the worst infernos in California’s history, with President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly calling for his resignation.“A lot of misinformation out there,” Newsom wrote on X. “Just launched a new site to ensure the public has access to fact-based data around the Southern CA wildfires.”<div data-rt-embed-type='true'><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">A lot of misinformation out there. Just launched a new site to ensure the public has access to fact-based data around the Southern CA wildfires. The TRUTH: - CA did NOT cut our firefighting budget. We have nearly doubled the size of our firefighting army and built the world’s…&mdash; Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) <a href="https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/1878203590197862416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 11, 2025</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>When users visit the site, they are prompted to donate to the California Fire Foundation. But instead of being taken to a foundation website, the visitor is presented with a <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/donate/cfd-em-la-fire-2025" id="">donation form</a> from ActBlue, a Democrat fundraising platform. The page features a large photo of a smiling Newsom and the form contains the words “Campaign for Democracy,” the name of Newsom’s political campaign. Underneath, it says:<blockquote id="">Donate to the California Fire Foundation</blockquote><blockquote id="">Your donation will go directly towards supporting firefighters and the communities they serve, including direct financial support to impacted residents.</blockquote>Donations made via the form are collected by ActBlue, which <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/pricing" id="">takes</a> a 3.95% transaction fee from every donation and funnels the rest to Newsom’s campaign.Alternatively, those who wish to donate to disaster relief for the LA fire victims can visit the California Fire Foundation at <a href="http://cafirefoundation.org" id="">cafirefoundation.org</a>. This foundation, formed in 1987 by the California Professional Firefighters, is a nonprofit organization that collects donations and provides financial relief to fire victims, among other services. Its payment page does not take visitors to ActBlue.<h2 id="">The LA wildfires: A woke apocalypse</h2>Four major wildfires spreading throughout Los Angeles County have so far left 16 dead and burned roughly 40,000 acres. Over 150,000 residents have been served evacuation orders and the blazes have torched over 10,000 structures as strong winds drive the flames.Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass are being widely <a href="https://www.thegoldreport.com/news/la-wildfires-a-woke-apocalypse-years-in-the-making" id="">ridiculed</a> for their far-Left policies that many believe contributed to the disaster. Governor Newsom, for example, has been diverting millions of gallons of water to the Pacific Ocean to save an endangered fish rather than direct them to Californians, against Trump’s warnings. The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), in the meantime, has been excessively focused on “diversity,” placing a major emphasis on the sexual preferences and skin colors of personnel.‍

California governor uses fire disaster to raise campaign funds

Donations are funneled to Newsom's campaign through Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue

District Judge Sam Cummings has dismissed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against Pfizer, explaining that the pharmaceutical company is protected from such lawsuits under the terms of the PREP (Public Readiness and Emergency) Act. A similar suit brought by the Attorney General of Kansas, Kris Kobach, is widely expected to be dismissed on the same grounds.Both Paxton and Kobach singled out Pfizer for attack, even though other pharma companies also developed dangerous COVID shots injected into the arms of millions. ‍<h4 id="">Texas v. Pfizer</h4>Just over a year has passed since Paxton <a href="https://www.thegoldreport.com/news/texas-sues-pfizer-over-covid-19-vaccine" id="">filed </a>his lawsuit against Pfizer, accusing the company of misrepresenting the efficacy of its mRNA COVID shots by citing the relative risk reduction (95 percent) without mentioning that the actual or absolute risk reduction was just 0.85 percent. In other words, in order to prevent one symptomatic case of COVID-19, 119 people would have to be injected.But the shots were even less effective than those figures suggested, Paxton’s suit contended. They actually make people more susceptible to COVID infection:<blockquote id="">COVID-19 cases increased after widespread vaccine administration, and some areas saw a greater percentage of deaths from COVID-19 among the vaccinated population than the unvaccinated.</blockquote>Multiple studies have confirmed this observation.The Texas lawsuit also accused Pfizer of applying pressure on those who criticized the shots. Given that mainstream media largely fell in with the official narrative without demur, this pressure was mainly directed at the owners of social media sites:<blockquote id="">How did Pfizer respond when it became apparent that its vaccine was failing and the viability of its cash cow was threatened? By intimidating those spreading the truth, and by conspiring to censor its critics. </blockquote><blockquote id="">Pfizer labeled as “criminals” those who spread facts about the vaccine. It accused them of spreading “misinformation.” And it coerced social media platforms to silence prominent truth-tellers.</blockquote>‍<h4 id="">Dead on arrival?</h4>In its filing of <a href="https://www.kcbd.com/2024/12/31/lubbock-judge-dismisses-paxtons-lawsuit-against-pfizer/" id="">dismissal</a>, the Court made no reference to the content of the suit, stating:<blockquote id="">After careful consideration of the arguments, applicable law, and circumstances presented, the Court finds that the Motion to Dismiss is GRANTED.</blockquote><blockquote id="">More specifically, the Court finds that as a matter of law under the circumstances of this case, the Defendant is entitled to immunity under the Public Readiness and Emergency Act (“PREP Act”). Moreover, both the PREP Act and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (“FDCA”) preempts [sic.] Plaintiff’s claims. Finally, the Court finds that the alleged statements by Defendant were not connected to any “trade or commerce” or any “consumer transaction.”</blockquote>The judge thus determined that Pfizer is protected under the terms of the PREP Act and the shots are not consumer products in law. The decision noted that Pfizer had requested of the Court that it take the then-prevailing situation into account in its ruling — the rush to manufacture a vaccine and the “national emergency.” The Court complied:<blockquote id="">Defendant asks the Court to take judicial notice of the circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Operation Warp Speed, and national emergency that was declared in relation to the pandemic. The Court takes judicial notice of these facts and circumstances.</blockquote>‍<h4 id="">Kansas v. Pfizer </h4>The Texas lawsuit was relatively restrained in its content, referring only to Pfizer’s alleged misrepresentation of the nature of the shots and concealment of trial data. The <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/kansas-sues-pfizer-over-misrepresentations-adverse-affects-covid-19-vaccine" id="">lawsuit </a>filed by the Attorney General of Kansas, Kris Kobach, is broader, highlighting the dangers of the shots as well as alleging that Pfizer marketed its shots as safe while knowing of the associated health risks:<blockquote id="">Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine was safe even though it knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis, failed pregnancies, and deaths.</blockquote>Based on the results of its clinical trials as well as post-marketing studies, Pfizer, the state claims, did know that its shots correlated in some way to serious adverse events.Kobach stressed in his suit that more people in Kansas received the Pfizer shots than other shots.<blockquote id="">... Pfizer administered 3,355,518 Pfizer vaccine doses in Kansas as of February 7, 2024.&nbsp;This accounted for more than 60% of all vaccine doses in Kansas.</blockquote>‍<h4 id="">Pfizer guilty of acting like a pharma company</h4>Kobach also singled out Pfizer for “concealing critical safety information from the public”:<blockquote id="">Pfizer did not publicly release adverse events data from its database...</blockquote><blockquote id="">When Pfizer announced that the FDA had authorized Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, Pfizer did not disclose that its trial included only healthy individuals and excluded unhealthy individuals...&nbsp;</blockquote>He also accused Pfizer of conducting its clinical trials in such a way that there could be no long-term comparisons made between the health of the injected and the non-injected:<blockquote id="">Because Pfizer unblinded the original control group and allowed them to receive Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer, government regulators, and independent scientists cannot fully compare the safety and efficacy of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine against unvaccinated individuals...</blockquote>And he claimed that this was a basic modus operandi of Pfizer:<blockquote id="">Pfizer’s extensive and aggressive efforts to keep its COVID-19 vaccine information hidden conflict with its public transparency pledges and raise serious questions about what Pfizer is hiding and why it is hiding it.</blockquote>In part due to all these “misrepresentations,” Kobach alleged, Pfizer accrued “record company revenue” of around $75 billion in just two years.‍<h4 id="">Meanwhile, the other participants in Operation Warp Speed...</h4>Many of the accusations in the Texas and Kansas legal acgtions appear to apply equally to Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Janssen. When one compares the VAERS reports of adverse events following the shots, the number linked to Pfizer is the same as the number reported following Moderna’s shots: 42. Given that many more people got Pfizer’s brew in their arms, this makes Moderna’s version proportionally more dangerous. In fact, this applies not only in Kansas but also nationwide when one compares VAERS data.What Kobach has said, when questioned by journalists on why he omitted to include Moderna and other vaccine manufacturers from his suit, is that Pfizer was “not part of Operation Warp Speed (OWS)” and therefore was not subject to government supervision.Pfizer was, however, part of OWS from the very beginning, as the following image from an OWS PowerPoint slide shows. The slide was used at an FDA meeting held in October 2020.<figure id="" class="w-richtext-figure-type-image w-richtext-align-normal" style="max-width:40%" data-rt-type="image" data-rt-align="normal" data-rt-max-width="40%"><div id=""><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66450044188dfe741d77c31e/677c9fd35b065052c3446d88_677c9f8b24867794fec56efe_sasha%25201.png" loading="lazy" alt="__wf_reserved_inherit" width="auto" height="auto" id=""></div></figure>Pfizer’s COVID shot contract with the Department of Defense was worth around $10 billion. The terms of the contract clariy that Pfizer was part of OWS, as do numerous press releases from OWS over the months.‍<h4 id="">If only the government had been in charge...</h4>The second part of Kobach’s response suggests that Pfizer’s trial data were kept hidden from the government which did not have access to it. While it is true that Pfizer, unlike Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Janssen, had its own data safety monitoring board (DSMB) during clinical trials, the government acceded to this demand. And it appears that much of the trial data was not hidden from the government. In fact, many OWS reports praise Pfizer for prompt provision of trial data, and there appears to be no record of any government official accusing the company of hiding data from the government. One may assume that Kobach would have presented any such record as evidence, had it been available to him.Additionally, Pfizer’s conduct in this regard — insisting on conducting its own clinical trials rather than outsourcing the job to the government — may be entirely standard in the pharmaceutical industry. The usual, almost uniform practice is for a drug company to run its own clinical trials, finance those same trials, analyze the data from the trials, and only then present that analysis to the government (i.e., the FDA).With Operation Warp Speed, this usual method of doing things was dramatically altered. A single, unified DSMB was established (headed by Dr. Richard Whitley, a Fauci appointee), which was controlled by the NIH and BARDA (i.e., the federal government). <figure id="" class="w-richtext-figure-type-image w-richtext-align-normal" style="max-width:40%" data-rt-type="image" data-rt-align="normal" data-rt-max-width="40%"><div id=""><img src="https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/66450044188dfe741d77c31e/677c9fd35b065052c3446d8e_677c9fb6efbb8a7293dd93b6_sasha%25202.png" loading="lazy" alt="__wf_reserved_inherit" width="auto" height="auto" id=""></div></figure>Notice the footnote where Pfizer is presented as an outlier.‍<h4 id="">Whose vaccines? Whose profit?</h4>Looking at the OWS contract with Moderna, one sees that the federal government undertook to pay for all its clinical trials. Furthermore, its animal studies as well as the Phase 1 human clinical trials were performed by the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH. The investment may have paid off for the NIH as it <a href="https://sashalatypova.substack.com/p/breaking-the-lawsuit-v-pfizer-by?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=870364&post_id=153859849&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=240v19&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email" id="">resulted</a> in co-ownership of Moderna’s COVID shots and therefore a share of the profits.This raises a potential conflict of interest as the government body funding the research into a new product, is responsible for deciding whether to license that product, and then may profit from that product while mandating use of that product.‍It is not immediately obvious why Pfizer chose to keep its clinical trials under its own control rather than opting to come under the government’s protective umbrella as its competitors did. In his lawsuit, Kobach accused Pfizer of maintaining its own adverse events database, separate from the government VAERS database, which contained adverse events that were,<blockquote id="">... reported spontaneously to Pfizer, cases reported by the health authorities, cases published in the medical literature, cases from Pfizer-sponsored marketing programs, non-interventional studies, and cases of serious AEs reported from clinical studies regardless of causality assessment.</blockquote>The government does, however, have access to all this data.‍<h4 id="">Pharma should be just as transparent as the government...</h4>In the end, direct government supervision within the OWS framework may not have resulted in a safer end product in any case. As we have seen above, this was demonstrably not the case with Moderna, whose shots are statistically more dangerous than those produced by Pfizer. And while the government had access to all the data, it did not make those data publicly available other than in the few cases in which it was forced to by private citizens filing repeated Freedom of Information Act requests. In fact, the government did not even make the clinical trial data from the COVID shots freely available to the pharma companies which signed up for full government supervision. When Janssen wanted to access its own trial data, it had to file a FOIA request to obtain it.Regardless of the benefit of government involvement, or lack thereof, the above differences in the Pfizer research structure, compared with other COVID vaccine makers, may provide a path to victory for the plaintiff states, if the dismissal is overruled. Texas has already <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-continues-lawsuit-against-pfizer-knowingly-misrepresenting-efficacy#:~:text=Attorney%20General%20Ken%20Paxton%20has,district%20court%20dismissed%20the%20case." id="">begun </a>the appeal process:<blockquote id="">“Pfizer repeatedly and knowingly misrepresented the effectiveness and safety of their COVID-19 vaccine and pressured Americans to take the shot without full knowledge of the risks,” said Attorney General Paxton. “When consumers questioned the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine, Pfizer sought to silence them—prioritizing profits over the truth. I will not stop until Pfizer is held accountable for deceptively pushing its COVID-19 vaccine on consumers.”</blockquote>‍<h4 id="">Plan B?</h4>Paxton or Kobach might, instead, have filed criminal suits against not only Pfizer but also Moderna and the other companies involved in Operation Warp Speed. The PREP Act protects the pharma companies against civil lawsuits such as those filed by Kansas and Texas, but not against criminal suits. Private citizens may not bring a criminal case against the companies, but Attorneys General may. &nbsp;The information contained in this article is for educational and information purposes only and is not intended as health, medical, financial or legal advice. Always consult a physician, lawyer or other qualified professional regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition, health objectives or legal or financial issues.

Texas AG appeals dismissal of lawsuit against Pfizer

Other COVID vaccine manufacturers not included

Rebekah Barnett, Brownstone InstituteIn a win for free speech advocates, the Australian Government formally abandoned its misinformation bill over the weekend, after failing to secure support in the Senate. The proposed laws would have forced social media companies to show that they were preventing the spread of misinformation and disinformation on their platforms, with fines of up to 5% of global revenue for non-compliance.The controversial bill was opposed by the Coalition (conservative Liberal and National Parties) but after several amendments, it sailed through the House of Representatives earlier this month with the support of Labor (centre left) and the<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teal_independents" id=""> Teals</a> (the Greens did not participate in the vote). However, by last week it was clear that Labor’s bill would not enjoy the same success in the Senate, as <a href="https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/breaking-independent-senators-to" id="">critical support from independent crossbench senators collapsed</a>. The Greens’ <a href="https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/greens-call-government-withdraw-mis-disinformation-bill" id="">announcement</a> on Friday that the Party would not support the bill was the final nail in the coffin.“Based on public statements and engagements with Senators, it is clear that there is no pathway to legislate this proposal through the Senate,” said Communications Minister Michelle Rowland in a <a href="https://minister.infrastructure.gov.au/rowland/media-release/communications-legislation-amendment-combatting-misinformation-and-disinformation-bill-2024" id="">statement</a> withdrawing the bill on Sunday, the day before it was to be voted on in the Senate.The bill has been so roundly rejected by the Senate that a motion was passed on Monday to acknowledge the “shocking flaws” in Labor’s misinformation bill, and for the government to “categorically rule out reintroducing it.”<h3 id="">High Level of Community Concern</h3>According to <a href="https://medialiteracy.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/AML2024_report_final-compressed.pdf" id="">research by the Australian Media Literacy Alliance</a> oft-cited by Rowland, 80% of Australians want the government to do something about misinformation and disinformation online – but this bill was not it. The Senate inquiry into the bill drew more than 30,000 responses, indicating “significant public interest and community concerns,” according to a <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/MisandDisinfobill/Report/Chapter_1_-_Introduction" id="">report</a> handed down by the committee on Monday.By comparison, fewer than 100 submissions were made during <a href="https://www.digitalidsystem.gov.au/have-your-say/2023-digital-id-bill-and-rules-submissions" id="">consultation on Digital ID legislation</a>.Just over 8,000 of these submissions were submitted by individuals or organisations, while a further 22,000 were submitted through various campaigns. The committee published only 105 of the submissions it received, tracking a recent trend of Senate committees <a href="https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/australias-excess-mortality-inquiry" id="">selectively withholding submissions</a> from the Parliament website (this may in part have been due to the tight turnaround time for the inquiry). Additionally, some senators <a href="https://x.com/TammyTyrrell_/status/1856172471885672849" id="">said they had received</a> “thousands” of calls and emails asking them to vote against the bill. An earlier version of the bill released by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) in 2023 drew a similarly strong response, attracting approximately 23,000 submissions to the <a href="https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/have-your-say/new-acma-powers-combat-misinformation-and-disinformation" id="">consultation</a>. However, the government hoped to win support for its revamped bill this year by <a href="https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/strengthened-protections-for-free" id="">strengthening protections for free expression</a>.Carve-outs for satire, parody, news content, academic, artistic, scientific, and religious content were intended to “carefully balance the public interest in combatting seriously harmful misinformation and disinformation with the freedom of expression that is so fundamental to our democracy,” said Rowland when the bill was reintroduced in September. But the committee noted that concerns over the impact of the proposed laws on freedom of expression had not been allayed, with a plurality of community and professional groups – including human rights groups, religious groups, medical unions, and law societies – worried that speech protections were not adequate.Other criticisms raised during the inquiry included: the overly broad definitions of “serious harm,” “misinformation,” and “disinformation;” the inclusion of “opinions” in content that would be censored; lack of transparency in the ACMA’s decision-making processes; the prospect of the government’s misuse of powers; and that the exemption of powerful media corporations from the rules would give billionaire oligarchs an unfair advantage over smaller, independent news operations. In additional comments, Liberal Senator Dave Sharma said that while the committee’s report had made a “valiant attempt to construct support for the legislation,” the truth was that “almost no witnesses who appeared before the committee were prepared to speak in support of it.”Despite the committee’s view that “doing something is better than doing nothing when it comes to keeping Australians safe online,” given the lack of support for the bill in the Senate, the sole recommendation of the report is that the bill be “withdrawn immediately.”<h3 id="">‘Gaping Hole at the Heart of the Bill’</h3>One of the main sticking points during the Senate inquiry into the bill was the fact that it would require social media platforms to arbitrate whether information should be censored or downranked, without clear explanation as to how they were expected to do this. Legal expert James McComish from the Victorian Bar said that the bill didn’t lay out exactly how truth would be determined by social media platforms.“That is the gaping hole at the heart of the bill. For it to be shown that any content is misinformation or disinformation, the true position has to be identified,” he told the Senate inquiry into the bill. The ACMA said it would play no role in arbitrating the true position, but would rather apply a “systems-based approach” that would scrutinise the platforms’ processes for handling misinformation and disinformation. Constitutional scholar Anne Twomey said that this arrangement effectively put foreign corporations, like Elon Musk’s X platform or Chinese-owned TikTok, in charge of shaping Australia’s public discourse online.“As a general principle, outsourcing censorship to foreign corporations is generally not a good idea,” Twomey told senators.Platforms would rely heavily on fact-checkers – as they already do, but this would be enforceable by the ACMA under the new legislation.But Twomey, an expert frequently called upon for fact-checks, said that in her experience, fact-checkers are often “young kids out of university” who “misunderstand the experts” and “often get it wrong.” “They’re taking on this really important role of making a decision that will lead Meta or Google or whatever to make decisions about what is true and what is false, when the fact-checker themselves hasn’t properly understood what the experts have said,” Twomey told the inquiry.<h3 id="">Real Problem, Wrong Solution</h3>Senators opposing the bill said that while the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation online is a real problem that needs to be addressed, this bill was not the right solution.“We are concerned this bill doesn’t actually do what it needs to do when it comes to stopping the deliberate mass distribution of false and harmful information,” <a href="https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/greens-call-government-withdraw-mis-disinformation-bill" id="">said Greens spokesperson for communications</a>, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young on Friday. “It gives media moguls like Murdoch an exemption and hands over responsibility to tech companies and billionaires like Elon Musk to determine what is true or false under ambiguous definitions. It does little to stop non-human actors like bots flooding social media and boosting dangerous algorithms.”The Greens want “comprehensive reforms that tackle the business models and dangerous algorithms that fuel division and damage democracy, and legislate a duty of care so these platforms prevent harm in the first place,” said Senator Hanson-Young. Independent Senator David Pocock agreed that the bill took “the wrong approach,” posing a threat to free speech, while at the same time failing to target the underlying issues of algorithm transparency and bot activity.“I believe that our rights to speech and protest are fundamental to a healthy democracy. As these rights are not legislated, we must be vigilant whenever legislation is put forward that could encroach on these rights,” he said in a newsletter email. Australia has only a constitutionally implied right to freedom of political communication, which is much weaker speech protection than, say, America’s First Amendment. However, “Bots do not have a right to freedom of speech and are being weaponised to influence views on different topics, including in elections,” he said, calling for tougher action on bots, and for legislation forcing social media companies “to show us how they are using algorithms to influence users.”<h3 id="">What Next?</h3>Despite withdrawing its misinformation bill, the Labor Government has not given up on its stated goal of making Australians safer online. “The Government invites all Parliamentarians to work with us on other proposals to strengthen democratic institutions and keep Australians safe online, while safeguarding values like freedom of expression,” said Rowland over the weekend. Rowland put forward several legislative initiatives, including strengthening offences targeting the sharing of non-consensual and sexually explicit deep fakes; a proposal to enforce truth in political advertising for elections; and progressing reforms on the regulation of Artificial Intelligence.Other legislation in the works that will impact Australian internet and social media users include a move to<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-12/albanese-government-will-outlaw-doxxing/104340372" id=""> criminalise doxing</a>, new<a href="https://www.innovationaus.com/privacy-act-reforms-enter-parliament-bold-changes-on-ice/" id=""> privacy reforms</a>, and new<a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/new-federal-hatespeech-laws-set-the-benchmark/news-story/665cf65e787f4f4581ec06c753dc484a" id=""> hate speech laws.</a>As yet, the government has not indicated any plans to tackle social media algorithms and bots, which senators identified as a high priority. The Labor Government is also ramming through a bill to enforce a minimum age of 16 years for social media. Despite allowing only a single day for public submissions and two days for Senate review, Crikey reports that the government’s snap inquiry<a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/11/25/teen-social-media-ban-inquiry-submissions/" id=""> attracted 15,000 responses</a>.The response to the inquiry was no doubt boosted by Elon Musk’s <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859479797329535168" id="">viral post on X</a> (now viewed over 24 million times) responding to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with the statement, “Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians.” The Greens have voiced concerns about the bill, but with support from the Opposition, it is expected to pass in Parliament this week. Perhaps the government should not count its chickens yet though, as the Guardian reports that several Nationals MPs <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/25/conservative-opposition-to-social-media-age-limit-grows-ahead-of-lower-house-vote" id="">have expressed hesitation in supporting the bill</a>. Republished from the author’s <a href="https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/free-speech-win-down-under-as-misinformation">Substack.</a><a href="https://brownstone.org/author/rebekah-barnett/">Rebekah Barnett</a>Rebekah Barnett is a Brownstone Institute fellow, independent journalist and advocate for Australians injured by the Covid vaccines. She holds a BA in Communications from the University of Western Australia, and writes for her Substack, Dystopian Down Under.Published under a<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" id=""> Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>. For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the original <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/free-speech-win-down-under-as-misinformation-bill-is-officially-binned/">Brownstone Institute</a> Article and Author.

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