Disinformation is setting us on a dark path. We need laws to protect us from billionaires, bigots, shysters and trolls
OPINION | Democratic Freedoms
The profit motives of big tech companies is wreaking havoc on our democracy.
We need parliament to step in.
By Alice Drury
Acting Legal Director
Human Rights Law Centre
We know social media has the power to bring people together. Millions of Australians rely on networks such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and X to stay up to date with news, friends, family and the wider world every single day.
But alongside the memes, social media platforms are allowing disinformation to spread like wildfire, with frightening repercussions. Big tech companies make decisions about what content to amplify, and thus have a huge degree of power over public discourse. With that power comes a responsibility to prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation. Right now, they’re failing abysmally.
In Australia, as we’re seeing across the globe, disinformation is being used as a powerful weapon by far-right groups to gain public support for regressive movements that want to wind back human rights.
Most recently, disinformation was used in the referendum to sow confusion and undermine support for the voice to parliament. During the campaign, racism and fearmongering was rife on social media platforms, and amplified on television, radio and newspapers by traditional media.
Disinformation targets people’s fears and anxieties to recruit them to extremist ideologies, and polarises our communities for political or financial gain. Once unleashed, it travels seamlessly across social media, between newspapers, talkback radio and messaging apps.
Disinformation is extremely lucrative for digital platforms like Meta and X (formerly Twitter) and their multibillionaire owners. Disinformation captures our attention and guarantees our engagement online, which can be monetised to advertisers. The spread of disinformation isn’t accidental – it’s incentivised by the tech giants’ business models. And yet we have no laws to stop this – or even uncover it.
In Europe, lawmakers have responded by introducing the Digital Services Act, which requires large social media companies to undertake annual risk assessments, including the foreseeable impact on people’s human rights, with respect to disinformation spread through their algorithms and recommender systems. Social media companies must put into place reasonable, proportionate and effective mitigation measures for any risks identified, and these measures are overseen by a regulator.
The law isn’t very prescriptive, because there are a range of problems that require different solutions and the technology is constantly evolving. But at least there is infrastructure in place to hold social media giants to account.
In Australia, we are just embarking on this journey of regulation.
For the past few months, the Albanese government has been consulting widely on an exposure draft of a bill to take its first step towards curbing misinformation and disinformation on social media.
The combating misinformation and disinformation bill would empower the Australian Communications and Media Authority to oversee the degree to which social media companies comply with their own codes of conduct and, where they fail, enforce them. The government’s first draft needs work – there are issues with what’s regarded as disinformation, for one. But the government has committed to addressing many of the concerns raised, and the proposal as a whole is hardly radical – it gives great deference to social media platforms and doesn’t go nearly as far as the more robust European model.
Predictably, the proposal has sparked outrage from the Liberal party – confected, because it was originally their idea – and the likes of News Corp, the Australian Christian Lobby and Advance Australia. The draft bill, ironically, has been the subject of disinformation: Advance Australia (which faced a number of controversies for spreading disinformation in the 2022 election and voice referendum) have described it as creating a “Ministry of Truth” seeking to control Australians.
Freedom of speech is precious and must be protected in any proposal to regulate disinformation. But that’s not what this outrage is about. If it were, the Liberal party, News Corp and Advance Australia would be advocating for amendments to the bill, but supporting its intent. Instead, they’re asking for it to be “ripped up”.
This campaign against the bill is about incredibly powerful, and often hateful, voices in our community reserving their ability to manipulate and lie to the public, to win votes and wind back human rights. We must not let them win.
Unregulated disinformation, incentivised by the profit motives of big tech companies, is wreaking havoc on our democracy. It is making the world a much more hostile and scarier place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, transgender people, migrant communities and women. It is setting us on a dark path at a time when things feel very volatile.
We need parliament to step in and pass laws that will protect our right to freedom of speech, while also shining a light on how disinformation is spread, and by whom. We then need social media companies to change the way they do business, so they’re no longer biased toward promoting hate speech and disinformation. We need users to have much more control over how their data is used and the ability to opt out of being profiled.
Until we do, our human rights gains will continue to be unwound by billionaires, bigots, shysters and trolls.
Alice Drury works in the Democratic Freedoms team at the Human Rights Law Centre. You can learn more about the team's work here.