Big differences when it comes to policing “Free Speech” Political speech and whistleblowing are significantly different from Racial Discrimination and sexual abuse yet the LNP right-wing declared all speech should be free as speech is speech and it’s all equivalent. Tony Abbott certainly supported Andrew Bolt and was prepared ti rid us of the RDA, Racial Discrimination Act. However not any more says Scott Morrison and it’s no longer so! However, he’s not going to police it but says he will force Twitter and Facebook etal to dance to his tune. Mandatory ID of the Twitterati will be required is his threat but not so across the board. Those “sources” unnamed in the media supporting him and his party over and above, say Dan Andrews will be ok and of course that privileged protection he has when he’s in parliament will continue. Politicians should be allowed and encouraged to sue the electorate.
Morrison personally isn’t what might be regarded as an “action man”. He’s a wordsmith and has a team of highly paid elves on call constructing his words, slogans, and catchy sentences and he believes that’s should be an exclusive and protected by executive privilige.
Once again politicians and journalists are talking up the bad side of social media and threatening to police our Twitter identities. However, as Dr Martin Hirst argues, this is just another attack on our right to political speech.
However, this is the nature of political speech. The one thing that politicians hate – along with their media cheer squad – is being held to account for their words and their actions. They hate that we use social media to call out their lies and deceit.
In fact, they hate it so much that outgoing-ABC news boss Gaven Morris is encouraging journalists to quit the platform.
Said Morrison:
“I increasingly have told people at ABC News that I certainly don’t want them on there for their job. I’d have no problem if they choose to be there, personally, but we don’t need journalists to be on Twitter or to be on social media as part of their job.”
He’s fudging of course. The ABC – and all media – need the engagement, but they like it better when we keep quiet.
Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised India’s handling of the second surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. These tweets, which are now inaccessible to Indian users of the social media website, include posts by Revanth Reddy, a sitting Member of Parliament; Moloy Ghatak, a West Bengal state minister; actor Vineet Kumar Singh; and two filmmakers, Vinod Kapri and Avinash Das.
