"Since end-to-end encrypting communications on the platform as a measure to protect user privacy, Meta no longer has access to the content of messages so cannot monitor what is spreading. But the company now says it has technology to spot accounts engaging in abnormal behaviour, with 8m accounts banned a month – 75% of which are banned before those accounts are reported by users."
"... social media firms still continue to disseminate terrible pieces of information, untruths, rumours that circulate like wildfire through an anxious community."
I'm no fan of the DataFarms or any other rumour mill. But this sounds disturbingly like the way the Chinese government talks about online platforms when they don't censor on their behalf, to their satisfaction.
No doubt people are saying similar stuff in phone calls. But we never see similar statements condemning phone companies who "continue to disseminate terrible pieces of information...".
The whole point of many-to-many platforms - especially those hosting private chats - is that they allow people to talk to each other. Politicians who talk about them as if they're the same thing as one-to-many broadcast media, are either being technologically ignorant, or intentionally misleading.
"[Chris Minns] said in the immediate aftermath of the attack, the NSW government liaised with the federal government and the eSafety commissioner to have pages 'that have become famous or infamous for spreading misinformation in the community' taken down."
Preemptive censorship, justified by vague claims of "spreading misinformation". This also sounds like the CCP. Democracies cannot survive casualised state censorship. Not good.
"If we needed to see any case study about what can happen when misinformation spreads at speed and scale, we only need to look at what happened in western Sydney the other night – the damage to public property, threats to life and health."
Michelle Rowland, Australian Communications Minister, 2024
Sounds very much like what the CCP said about the anti-lockdown protests in China. Or US politicians about mass protests at the WTO in Seattle, or Berlusoni about Genova.
“We know the platforms have incredible powers and abilities to be able to examine content on their platforms. Their algorithms are opaque. They need to do more.”
Michelle Rowland, Australian Communications Minister, 2024
> still continue to disseminate terrible pieces of information, untruths, rumours
"[Politicians making blatantly untrue claims] is where media's role should be, to [say] 'no, that's just a lie', and just squash it. But they don't. They just repeat it. They amplify it."
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