A couple of months ago I wrote about Australias eSafety Commissioner and her attempt to force Global Censorship on X (formerly Twitter) via a court case. The news this week is that after wasting a substantial sum of taxpayer money on it and making our country look like idiots, she has dropped the ridiculous case and has gone into Spin Mode to try and save some face.
Source
There are a few notable quotes of hers that are worth pointing out, however I think that this one is my favorite :-
"After weighing multiple considerations, including litigation across multiple cases, I have considered this option likely to achieve the most positive outcome for the online safety of all Australians, especially children"
A Polispeak statement loaded with duality if ever I’ve seen one. So...dropping the case is likely to achieve the most positive outcome for safety? That doesn’t even make sense. Oh, and won’t somebody think of the children! At this rate she might be in the running for a gig on The Simpsons or Southpark.
Perhaps an even more telling (yet subtle) quote, however, is this one :-
"Through this process, eSafety has also welcomed the opportunity to test its novel regulatory powers"
This is why it’s so important to be aware and get involved in the legislative process. Basically the politicians introduced a law, in this case the “Online Safety Act” and then the bureaucrats authoritarians see how far they can push it. Every dictator in history has taken power with the excuse of keeping their citizens safe. There is nothing new here, but it’s good to see that in this instance the attempt to use new laws to exert more power and enforce censorship has failed.
It was definitely a test to see how far they could go and everyone complied except twitter.
I saw today they rolled it out in Germany once again proving there is global coordination. One nation (usually from Five Eyes or Europe) is the testing ground for all nations. Gotta mix it up though so the people don't catch on...
You are spot on. These look like isolated, unrelated incidents when scattered around world wide but then when you step back there is clearly a pattern.
From a freedom of speech standpoint, I think the government going after social media companies is a big issue. I don't disagree that social media brings a certain share of problems, but it shouldn't be the governments job to judge what I can and can't see.
Totally agree. There are a lot of problems with social media, but having government enforce censorship is NOT the answer.
God... I would like to read your thoughts about this @galenkp
So would I :)
We will be here, whenever he answers
At least she was smart enough to drop the ridiculous case. They should have known it was going to come to nothing at the end, and look it amount of shame it has caused. Tommorow they will come to preach to us about the freedom of speech. Such hypocrisy. Thanks for writing.
I can't believe how unsafe you guys are now :(
Good luck 😂
Why force Global Cencorship on X? I feel social networks are usually lied against and they say it is what influences people to say trash or do
I don’t believe that