The Onion

Yeah. To me the misinformation conversation just sounds like”why are the poors talking to each other instead of listening to US?”

If we had a misinformation law in 2001, would it have applied to the news outlets or gov officials who were lying about the Iraq war?

There is A real problem in how we sort out second hand evidence, it’s just that this problem didn’t magically start when social media became a thing and it won’t be fixed by returning authority to those same old institutions who were lying to us in the past.

I agree with the potential for Orwellian uses, and I agree with the need for SOME kind of repercussion for active misinformation peddling and manipulation of the masses. (As opposed to honest mistakes).

Like all things in this world, I feel topics like this are nuanced and the current need to make everything into a chalk/cheese divisive issue is counter productive. I feel we need mature people who can navigate that nuance without the need for forced polarisation of the topics.

I'll also add some context for people outside of Australia:

The Onion / Shovel headline is cunning, as locals with knowledge will tell you the target of the the parody article (Peter Dutton) is a well known user of defamation suits to go after people who say things about him he feels are untrue.

"can get" implies there's examples of like misinfo laws becoming orwellian. I cannot find such examples. Laws that penalize people for knowingly lying for profit, clout, etc tend to curb bombastic discourse. These standards are common in defamation suits. Extending them to more media makes sense.

What's always orwellian is like anti terrorism laws where laws intended to curb oppositional rhetoric or groups become applied on large swaths of people.

The actual laws they prosecuted Assange for, for instance were anti espionage laws if I recall.

Sure, and this one probably wasn't great but also the article shows why there's of course a valuable line