CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Prime Minister Scotty From Marketing has called out social media companies for allowing people to vilify others and spread misinformation without consequences
The PM flagged potential changes around digital accountability yesterday, as he labelled social media a “coward’s palace” where liars can “destroy people’s lives”.
“[They] say the most foul and offensive things to people, and do so with impunity,” he told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.
“Now that’s not a free country where that happens. That’s not right. They should have to identify who they are.
“People should be responsible for what they say in a country that believes in free speech.”
Scotty says if people want to say heinous things on the internet, they should at least put their name to it – because you can actually get paid to that in this country.
For example, the Prime Minister’s allies at the Murdoch press, who are given paid handsomely to tell millions of Australians that they should ‘fight back’ against wearing masks during a pandemic of a highly contagious respiratory illness.
That’s the right kind of misinformation, according to the government, who has handed Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp billions of dollars in tax rebates over the last decade, including one big hit of $880m under Tony Abbott.
However, Scotty says spreading rumours about conservative politicians online is going too far – and is a disgusting departure from the more ‘respectable misinformation’ that NewsCorp has honed, like dismissing the victims of pedophilia at the hands of Catholic clergy as lying drug addicts.
Or the last twenty years of climate change denialism that has permeated right across the Australian voter base, even going as far as blaming the record-breaking Black Summer bushfires on ‘greenies not letting us chop down trees’.
“Basically…” said Scotty From Marketing.
“The only misinformation that should be spread on social media should be the type that benefits me, or Gina Rinehart”
“Like the Labor death tax… Or the theory that ‘the climate has always been changing’ – or that corruption watchdogs disrupt the good work that politicians do and should be scrapped”
“Everything else must be stopped!!!”
