YOU CAN'T GO BACK: [@shellenberger] shakes his head in horror and disbelief as @SenatorAntic explains the Labor Government and the Australian parliament are trying to push forward a bill that will create an "independent" body (government funded) to decide what the truth is. The misinformation and disinformation bill is being debated NOW. "if you were to allow the government, or the intelligence community, or some political party, or some group with an agenda to take control of those information channels, that's totalitarianism" Michael Shellenberger (CBR Chair of Politics, Censorship & Free Speech) "I think to really underscore how dangerous and scary the moment is, which is to remind people that [you] can't go back to this period of the printing press and print materials everybody gets their information in the same way, which is from a small number of internet platforms" "You can't go back to this period of the printing press and print materials everybody gets their information in the same way, which is from a small number of internet platforms and if you were to allow the government, or the intelligence community, or some political party, or some group with an agenda to take control of those information channels, that's totalitarianism, [that's] dictatorship...I'm not [gonna] sugarcoat it for people, that's very very disturbing [and] you just can't have a democracy, you can't solve problems, if you have people with an agenda, who are deciding what can and cannot be said online" "they call misinformation like the number one threat to democracy, it's the most Orwellian idea you know that allowing other people to share their point of view is a threat to democracy... no you're the threat to democracy...you think that there's too much free speech, you're the threat to democracy" "the people don't want censorship and yet these characters they're all demanding global control of information [and] I continue to be shocked by it. Sometimes, even when I have a victory like Ireland, you get like one week to celebrate and the next thing, you know Australia's on the verge [of] basically [the] government controlling the social media companies [and] it's very concerning" The Labor Government used the US election as an opportunity to stop all other parliamentary debate, to push through the disinformation bill will less media scrutiny, because they knew the ABC (who would have televised the Parliamentary broadcast) media was pre-occupied with the American election. Putting the Draconian Misinformation bill aside, the way they proceeded with the debate ALL NIGHT during the elections, in itself, is just plain sneaky