Proposed Law Would Fine Australians Who Share Protest Information $11,000 | Hacker News Reader

Proposed Law Would Fine Australians Who Share Protest Information $11,000

newspunch.com

11 pointsAndrewBissell14 comments

>NewsPunch is a Los Angeles-based fake news website known for spreading conspiracy theories, political misinformation, and hoaxes. Originally named Your News Wire, it was founded in 2014 by Sean Adl-Tabatabai and Sinclair Treadway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewsPunch

Is there something in the article you think is untrue?

I'm not going to give them ad views.

Here is an archive link, so you can read the article without giving them views:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210802152519/https://newspunch...

Here is the actual source: https://au.news.yahoo.com/facebook-post-lockdown-protest-110...

>These include $11,000 fines for people sharing information on social media about illegal rallies and inciting others to illegally attend.

So Newspunch title seems to be untrue, "Independent Media Content" <> "information on social media about illegal rallies and inciting others to illegally attend".

I already had changed the HN headline, wouldn't mind switching the link to this as well.

"Independent" in this case meaning anti-vax, anti-mask, Covid denial.

And therefore a priori wrong and deserving of government censorship, in your opinion?

Exactly.

You people have lost your minds. Masks don't work (which is what every RCT concluded before Covid started), the vaccines are a poor risk proposition for huge segments of the population they're being administered to, and Covid is a virus on par with the 1968 influenza season whose threat is being vastly overstated to cajole the public into agreeing to things like banning assembly and protest.

And just like that, you owe Australia $11k.

Seems so far the fines are just proposed for people posting about "illegal" rallies (lol), so we're maybe still two or three months out from just criminalizing questioning of the Covid dogma as such.

> You people have lost your minds...the vaccines are a poor risk proposition for huge segments of the population they're being administered to, and Covid is a virus on par with the 1968 influenza season whose threat is being vastly overstated

It's always interesting to see how people spin narratives to fit their own biases and preconceived notions, as exemplified by the criticism of vaccines in this context. If the general public was more likely to be thoughtful and considerate, rather than bombastic and dismissive, there would (probably) be fewer such news stories about restricting the spread of misinformation.

Which would also mean censoring the CDC a year and a half ago.

So, yeah. Let's not have governments deciding "truth" and censoring everything else, because governments can be wrong. Even with the best of intent, governments can be wrong. But if they're wrong and they censor what is right, they're going to have a hard time learning that they're wrong.

Worse, if they do learn that they're wrong, they have bureaucratic inertia built up. They're likely to keep censoring the truth for a while after they know it's true, because changing would mean that some bureaucrats have to eat crow.

Even worse, we have plenty of examples of censorship that is not "with the best of intent". It's to preserve the existing power structure. Let's not create the temptation to use our own governments in that way.

Yes, Covid misinformation is a huge problem. No, government censorship is not the answer.

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