The federal government’s proposed Misinformation and Disinformation Bill poses a serious threat to freedom of speech and expression in Australia. I’ve experienced first-hand what this law could do to ordinary people.

You see, I’ve been Facebook ‘fact checked’ and ‘cancelled’ – via someone else’s Facebook page!

This type of censorship is what will soon be required by law.

I suppose I should be flattered. What I’ve said must be considered so significant by Facebook and its outsourced fact-checkers that it needs to be labelled with a ‘fact-check’. To that end, I can provide a case study in the operations of social media’s thought police.

In my case, the censorial incident concerned a 26-minute interview posted on Facebook by a member of the public.

In the video both I and the chair of Self-Employed Australia (SEA) (who is a lawyer), discussed the outcome of an application SEA had made to the Victorian Supreme Court in 2022.

SEA had asked the Court to make an order requiring WorkSafe Victoria to investigate whether individuals and entities we had named had breached work safety laws over the disastrous 2020 Victorian Covid hotel quarantine program. The program led to 801 deaths and was the subject of the Coate Inquiry Report (December 2020).

As part of a conversation in the video, we expressed an opinion about why we believed a particular court ruling related to the matter was wrong. Remember, it is perfectly legitimate to form and express opinions on court rulings. This occurs all the time and is an essential part of an open and vibrant ‘rule of law’ society.

On this occasion, the video conversation came to the attention of Facebook after being posted by a member of the public in early May. By June, Facebook had added a ‘fact-check’ to the video, alleging that the views expressed within the video were ‘missing context’ and ‘could mislead people’.

This fact-check came with an additional warning that:

‘People who repeatedly share false information might have their posts moved lower in the News Feed so other people are less likely to see them.’

The warning finished with a notice advising that the, ‘video stresses wrong reason for Covid court case failure’.

In this case, Facebook has stepped in to make a judgment on citizens having an opinion and engaging in a discussion about a court ruling.

If the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill becomes law, it will require digital platforms to be ‘…accountable for improving and implementing measures to counter the spread of misinformation or disinformation’. As explained in my earlier Spectator Australia piece, what is ‘misinformation or disinformation’ is not explained in the proposed law. The proposed ‘definition’ is anything but a ‘definition’.

Facebook’s ‘truth’ policing is far from reassuring.

They have outsourced fact-checking to at least one third party in Australia – APP FactCheck.

AAP FactCheck’s organisational structure says it was established to ‘…advance tolerance and understanding by protecting independent, ethical, and sustainable news gathering and reporting in Australia’.

It goes on to say it is funded through ‘…a targeted allocation from AAP FactCheck’s general newsroom budget and income earned through fact-checking work for Meta (Facebook) and TikTok’.

When investigating claims, AAP FactCheck state they focus ‘…on investigating claims of political significance and counteracting misinformation shared on social media. We have no political affiliations no agenda, simply a focus on revealing the facts’.

Further, AAP FactCheck say they ‘cannot assess personal opinion’ and that staff ‘must declare any conflicts of interest’. They ‘must always consider contacting the person who made the statement to ask for their supporting evidence’ although they add ‘we do not offer the right of reply, instead we assess the claim on its own merits’.

It is SEA’s opinion that AAP FactCheck analysis is wrong, but there is no right of reply on a fact-check. The assumption of ‘guilt’ sits on a social media post affecting people’s perception of ‘the truth’ before they have read the argument.

This is the problem with the planned Misinformation and Disinformation law – it is a judgment beyond ‘fact-checking’. A decree of ‘truth’, if you will.

I wrote about this pending ‘truth’ law in a recent Spectator Australia article Albo’s government to appoint itself social media’s truth police. Many others have made comment on the law. In summary, the law will force digital platforms (Facebook, etc.) to be the determiners of what is ‘true’. The law will require digital platforms to block and close down views, information, and opinions that are declared false and dangerous by the digital platforms’ ‘truth police’.

In effect, the law will require Facebook and other social media platforms to do what some are already doing – that is, acting as determiners of what is ‘true’ as announced by their outsourced ‘fact-checkers’. And as a consequence, only allowing on their platforms information and opinions that fit with the platforms’ determination of ‘truth’. The government says that it will play no part in deciding what ‘the truth is!’

Not all platforms have fact-checkers or truth police. Opinions that are considered ‘dangerous’ on one platform can still appear on a different platform. The difference between Twitter and Facebook is a perfect example. But this law would require all platforms to act in the same way.

It is one thing for a social media company to set itself up as a censorial entity, but it is something entirely different for Parliament to pass a law that forces all social media companies to follow suit. For Parliament to do this as outlined in the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill is to silence opinion.

The compulsory silencing of opinion on the basis of political ‘fact’ determination by appointed ‘truth police’ heralds an era of oppression of the people. We have seen this far too often in the history of human activity. The consequences are always ugly, sometimes horrifyingly so.

Ken Phillips is Executive Director of Self Employed Australia and is on Substack

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