Australia is in the forefront of taking on Big Tech in the disinformation wars. A couple of years ago, social media behemoth Facebook, apparently in a moment of lunacy, decided to bar “publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content,” as Liberty Nation reported. After an exchange of barbs between the Australian government and Facebook’s managing director for Australia and New Zealand, cooler heads prevailed, and hurt feelings were salved. BFFs again, right? Well, maybe not. Recently the Australian government made it clear it was passing laws allowing stiff fines against tech giants for failing to remove content that is not true – or, more likely,  stuff it doesn’t like.

“Communications Minister Michelle Rowland will on Sunday (June 25) release draft legislation to give the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) powers to hold digital platforms to account for spreading harmful fake news,” Anthony Galloway wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald. No one is claiming the ACMA is exacting retribution for Facebook’s lapse in sanity over unfriending Australia; more likely, the government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a left-leaning politician, is exercising his socialist bliss.

Australia Wants Big Penalties

From what the ACMA proposes, penalties will not be just slaps on the wrists with a promise not to sin again. “Under proposed draft laws, the Australian Communications and Media Authority will have the power to impose potentially multi-billion-dollar fines on tech companies who repeatedly fail to stop and take down undesirable content,” Australia’s television station 9News’ staff explained. For Australia, the penalizing media posts it determines to be disinformation is in keeping with the country’s general propensity toward exercising firm control over its citizenry.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Aussie mandates were some of the most draconian and lamebrained. “Dr. Kerry Chant, the Chief Health Officer in New South Wales, Australia, told citizens to avoid talking to each other, even if they are masked and vaccinated, because talking could spread COVID-19,” the medical “expert” claimed at a July 19, 2021, news conference, according to American Military News. What’s frightening is that these same government bureaucrats will be the ones determining what is disinformation and misinformation, which is not comforting.

Europe Going After Big Tech More Subtly

The enthusiasm for applying government power against free speech and thought in the guise of tamping down fake news seems to be all the rage globally. In an open letter with the salutation, “Dear CEOs of Big Tech,” the prime ministers of Moldova, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine wrote:

“Foreign information manipulation and interference, including disinformation is being deployed to destabilize our countries, weaken our democracies, to derail Moldova’s and Ukraine’s accession to the European Union and to weaken our support to Ukraine amid Russia’s war of aggression. Social media has become a potent channel for spreading false and manipulative narratives. Paid ads and artificial amplification on Meta’s platforms, including Facebook, are often used to call for violent social unrest, bring violence to the streets and destabilize governments.”

(Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The problem the prime ministers face is that Ukraine is engaged in the same information operations focused on Russia. Nowadays news sources seem eager to push propaganda instead of truth, so the lines are getting blurred. The prime ministers are requesting Big Tech to rein itself in, but when will self-policing result in hefty, punitive fines or worse? When a government gets into the business of regulating speech, it’s a slippery slope from defending citizens from being pummeled with news that will cause harm to information a government bureaucrat finds uncomfortable or offensive.

The best example is the US government’s collusion with social media companies to regulate what is allowed to be seen by the public. “Both Facebook and Twitter created online portals where government agents submitted, and perhaps still submit, censorship directives for official corporate action,” the Heritage Foundation concluded in the commentary When Government Colludes With Big Tech to Censor Americans. “These relationships reflect a coordinated campaign to promote a certain definition of truth and solidify the power of the Biden administration, and Big Tech’s participation undermines its claim to offer neutral platforms,” explained Will Thibeau and Erin Dwinnell.

It’s tricky to manipulate the thoughts and commentary of people in societies advertised as free and open. When attempting to police free expression, the pervasive pitfall is that one person’s fake news is another’s truth. Let the marketplace of ideas make that call.