Essay by Eric Worrall
Apparently free speech is OK, as long as the Australian Government thinks what you are saying is true.
Senate committee features climate disinformation, the Atlas Network, and Dr Karl’s clash with One Nation
By business reporter Gareth Hutchens
Disinformation and Misinformation
Thu 19 Feb…
The Senate’s select committee on information integrity on climate change and energy held two days of public hearings in Canberra this week.
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The committee is investigating how online bots and trolls, disinformation campaigns and tactics like “astroturfing” (fake grassroots campaigns) are delaying global action on climate change and renewable energy.
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But how does one definitively “prove” that someone is acting in bad faith? Who gets to be the judge?
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Meta would know that some of today’s most powerful political leaders are relying on the viral nature of algorithms to spread deeply racist, harmful and untrue messages.
It would know about Brandolini’s law, which states that the time and energy needed to correct misinformation is far greater than that needed to produce and spread it.
But Meta did not see that type of censorship of politicians as its responsibility, unless the politician was inciting violence, its representatives said.
“This is the problem,” Labor senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah told Meta’s representatives.
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Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-19/climate-disinformation-senate-committee-dr-karl-atlas-network/106350002
Sorry Senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah. You had your chance and you blew it.
Before President Trump, greens enjoyed years of near total victory. Sure, there were always some people who looked beyond the hype, but for most of the last two decades, climate alarmists were rock stars. Billions of dollars were committed to the glorious green energy revolution. A young woman who quit school was invited to speak to parliaments and united nations assemblies.
Yet despite all the money spent, despite all the claims that renewables are the cheapest source of energy, fossil fuels still dominate energy production.
The truth is, the main thing holding up “progress” on renewable energy is it doesn’t work.
Even Trump hating film producer Michael Moore gets it. Moore set out to expose the fossil fuel conspiracy which he believed was holding back the green energy revolution. But this isn’t what Moore found – Moore discovered the real hold up is Green energy isn’t living up to its promises, that proponents appear to wildly exaggerate the potential of renewables, while swilling on public subsidies. And to his credit, Moore decided to tell everyone what he discovered.
Given this overwhelming evidence the renewable revolution is a failure, why would anyone call for people who express negative sentiments about renewable energy to be censored?
I think President Obama provided the best answer to this question.
Obama concerned that Americans ‘almost occupy different realities’
BY LAUREN SFORZA – 05/16/23 2:45 PM ET
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“Today what I’m most concerned about is the fact that, because of the splintering of the media we almost occupy different realities, right? If something happens that, you know, in the past everybody could say, ‘All right, we may disagree on how to solve it, but at least we all agree that, yeah, that’s an issue,’” he said.
“Now people will say, ‘Well, that didn’t happen,’ or, ‘I don’t believe that,’ or, ‘I don’t care about the science,’ or, ‘I’m not concerned about these experts, you know, ’cause they’re just all liberals’ or, you know, ‘That’s just conservative propaganda,’” he continued.
The former president noted that one of his goals of the Obama Foundation is to get people to agree on a “common set of facts.” He recounted that when he was growing up, there were only three TV channels where viewers can get a “similar sense of what is true and what isn’t, what was real and what was not.”
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Read more: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4006754-obama-concerned-that-americans-almost-occupy-different-realities/
Oh for the days when everyone got their news from a small number of government licensed broadcasters.
They seem utterly desperate for our validation. They crave our agreement. And they appear prepared to censor as many “bad faith” actors as necessary, which appears to mean pretty much anyone who disagrees with their interpretation of the facts, to preserve their vision of free speech.
The Biden Administration made an effort to actually implement Obama’s grand vision of reshaping the US information landscape. But thankfully when they launched this initiative to censor America’s access to internet content, the person they picked to head their project turned out to be a clown.
