In this interview, Professor Michael Shellenberger appeared on Ben Fordham Live to discuss the IPA’s research on misinformation and disinformation laws.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Ben Fordham:
Well, right now there is a fight to save free speech in Australia. The Prime Minister’s misinformation bill is being debated in the Senate after passing the House of Representatives. The Senate is going to vote on the bill next week. If it gets up, the bill will force social media companies to censor speech they deem to be misinformation. But at this stage, we don’t know how they will judge what’s true and what’s not. And if the social media companies refuse to comply, they’ll be fined, or there’s even a threat of jail time. But there’s some encouraging news because it looks like the bill is dead in the water. Labour is relying on the Senate crossbench to get the numbers to pass it. It looks like they’ve lost the support of the entire crossbench. Independent Senators, Lidia Thorpe, Fatima Payman, Tammy Tyrrell, and David Van are all opposing the bill. David Pocock is also opposing it. So is Senator Jacqui Lambie. All the crossbench Senators say misinformation is a problem, but the PM’s bill is not the solution.
And the Senate aren’t the only ones speaking out. Professor Michael Shellenberger is the chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free speech at the University of Austin, Texas, and he joins us on the line right now. He’s in Australia. Professor Shellenberger, good morning to you.
Michael Shellenberger:
Hey, thanks for having me.
Ben Fordham:
Lovely to have you here. I’ll tell you what, your timing’s good, just as the Senate is debating the misinformation bill. What do you think of it?
Michael Shellenberger:
Well, it’s a terrifying bill, honestly. I’ve never seen anything like it. And we’ve seen some really bad censorship efforts around the world in Brazil and Ireland, but this would effectively allow the government to criminalise virtually anything. It says that they would criminalise misleading statements. Well, you might start with one misleading statement might be the idea that the COVID vaccine prevents you from getting COVID. I say that as somebody that took the vaccine, but that was what the government said. They said you wouldn’t get COVID if you took it. You wouldn’t transmit it. Well, that was not just misleading. It was false. So is the government now going to be subject to its own law? It also criminalises so-called vilification of gender identity. There’s a legitimate debate around whether or not biological men should compete on women’s sports. Some people think they should. Some people think they don’t. Some people think you can change somebody’s sex or gender. Some people don’t. That’s a debate that people should be allowed to have.
This legislation would criminalise that debate. It would allow the government to criminalise people that take one side or the other. And it’s not totally clear which side either, because of course, if the government changes and it changes its mind, then you could go back and forth. So what this leads to is a very arbitrary form of rule where basically whoever’s in power would be able to arrest their political opponents for things that they say. So it’s a sweeping piece of legislation. I think it’s profoundly contrary to what Western civilization is founded on, and I am glad to see the momentum against it. There’s nothing… It’s not certain yet. We won’t know until later tonight whether or not they’ll bring it up for a vote next week. But it has been heartening to see so many Australians rise up against it.
Ben Fordham:
This is Professor Michael Shellenberger from the University of Austin, Texas. I just want to play you a piece of audio from a few months ago, and this shows how ridiculous it is, professor, because at one stage, the Prime Minister, when he was talking about misinformation, he brought up memes. So he was saying, “Look, online, there are Photoshopped images of me, the Prime Minister, and he was using this as an example of his crackdown on misinformation.”
Anthony Albanese:
Social media platforms have a responsibility to make sure that misinformation isn’t got out there. I noticed today, for example, on the way up here, they’ve removed various sites that were up containing fake images of myself superimposed on other people. That’s the sort of thing that is going on on social media. Social media has a responsibility to do the right thing here.
Ben Fordham:
So the Prime Minister wants to declare war on memes.
Michael Shellenberger:
That’s shocking. It would basically make it illegal to make jokes. Jokes are deliberately misleading and deceptive, irony. Think of sarcasm, think of how you say things in an exaggerated way. So it would basically allow you to criminalise whatever you want. I struggle to understand entirely where this is coming from. Sometimes when I hear that recording, I think it just comes from politicians being very thin skinned and being criticised online. Anybody that has a fair number of followers online, people say really mean things about. Well, you don’t have to read them. So I think there’s a fishbowl effect from social media where you feel like everybody can see how everybody’s saying all these mean things about you. I think we have to grow up a little bit. Social media has allowed normal people to express themselves. It’s a beautiful, wonderful thing.
This is democracy. This is what it’s founded on, but I think the technology has sort of shocked people like politicians who used to be able to kind of control what the media said. When it was just television or newspapers, you had a very limited amount of space. So it’s sort of a panic that’s going on. We also find though that it’s just an effort to control people. And that we saw during COVID had very negative consequences. There was a legitimate debate over where COVID came from. Did it come from a lab? Well, that’s the consensus now of most intelligence agencies in the United States. Well, that was being censored. We couldn’t even talk about where the virus might have come from. So you can see how quickly people become intolerant and desirous of silencing their fellow citizen. That’s a very scary thing, and I think we need to build a free speech movement to push back against it.
Ben Fordham:
And anyone who thinks that you can get everyone to agree on what’s true and what’s not, well, they’ve never been to a dinner party.
Michael Shellenberger:
Well, that’s right. Yeah, it’s an amazing thing. I don’t even really… I think it shows how… Look, I was somebody that took free speech for granted. This wasn’t something I worried about. Censorship wasn’t something I worried about until a couple of years ago. I realised that for me, growing up in the 1980s in the United States, that I actually had to learn why we allow free speech. It’s not necessarily intuitive. You ask high school students or college students, I think sometimes they haven’t really had the practise of thinking about why it is that we allow people to say nasty things. Here’s one point I always want to leave people with, which is that the only way to fight misinformation is with new information. If somebody believes terrible things or incorrect misinformation, you can’t correct that misinformation by censoring them.
Because if you’re worried that other people believe something false or have really awful racist ideas, the only way to counteract that is with more free speech. Censorship never addresses the actual content. So I think that’s just something that people need to realise that if you really do worry about misinformation, and as a journalist, I’m always countering and correcting and debunking misinformation, you can’t do that if you’re just trying to silence other people.
Ben Fordham:
And if you don’t like what people are saying online, you have the freedom to choose not to click on that app. It’s lovely to talk to you, and I hope you have a good time down under.
Michael Shellenberger:
Thanks so much for having me.
Ben Fordham:
Thank you so much, Professor Michael Shellenberger, the chair of Politics, Censorship, and Free Speech at the University of Austin, Texas. And he’s made a good point. What about Albo talking about memes and how someone online was photoshopping an image of me over the top of someone else? He needs to harden up. Think-skinned, that was the impression that Michael Shellenberger got from Albo trying to stop the meme-
This transcript with Professor Michael Shellenberger talking on Ben Fordham 20 November 2024 has been edited for clarity.
