Australia’s new Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 seeks to impose a wide-ranging set of new obligations, very loosely defined, that will constitute offences if not complied with. The obligations fall on digital services providers, who must either comply with a yet-to-be-registered code, or comply with a code that ACMA will determine.
To encourage digital platform providers to protect the community against harm caused, or contributed to, by misinformation and disinformation on digital platform services;.
'misinformation' and 'disinformation' are distinguished from each other in that disinformation is misinformation with deliberateness added on.
The content is not excluded content for misinformation purposes; and.
So the definition of misinformation relies on the definition of harm, and the definition of harm relies on the definition ofer, harm.
While we appreciate that messages among friends and family should not be monitored, a key means of spreading misinformation and disinformation is through large broadcast groups with thousands of members - a very different proposition to family groups, and one far similar to a public square.
Importantly, we note that only the content of private messages is exempt and it is open to the ACMA to require connective media services to put in place mechanisms to prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
These might include a restriction on the forwarding of messages or the introduction of misinformation reporting tools, as has been proposed in Europe.
https://brownstone.org/articles/will-you-be-convicted-of-spreading-misinformation/
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