Strategies for protecting Australian voters against digital disinformation campaigns
By Martha Knox-Haly
From April 2023 to October 2023, Australian voters were subjected to an unprecedented social media disinformation campaign around the Voice to Parliament Referendum. The Voice to Government was supported by Scott Morrison in 2017, and it had enjoyed the steady support of the majority of Australian voters several years. The proposal was modest. It did not extend to a treaty, and there was no reason to suspect the Voice referendum would be controversial. Then in April 2023, the new coalition leader Peter Dutton signalled he was going to side with West Australian Liberals, and that he would campaign against the Coalition’s previous policy.
This was the cue for the launch of the ‘No campaign’ in April 2023. The associated digital disinformation campaign was unparalleled in intensity, spread and sophistication. The ultimate victims of the no campaign were amongst the most impoverished and marginalised Australians. The trashing of Indigenous dreams by wealthy donors was reprehensible. To date, these wealthy donors have not apologised for the spike in Indigenous suicide rates that occurred from April 2023. The No campaign claimed to champion free speech, but how can speech be free when discourse is the product of online manipulation and deceit? It was not the first time political actors had pursued digital disinformation campaigns, but it was the first time these strategies had succeeded.
How can Australian voters be protected against digital disinformation and attacks on democracy? A robust regulatory framework requires coercive powers. It needs to be able to combat disinformation from the point of initiation and within echo chambers. The framework needs to empower social media users and the associated regulatory institutions. Above all, the regulatory frameworks needs to be agile enough to make a difference in the tight time frames that exist around electoral activity.
The Albanese Government proposed amendments to the Broadcasting Act of 1992, strengthening the powers of the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Despite the proposed amendment containing many of the elements the Coalition Government had taken to the 2022 election, the Coalition’s response was predictably histrionic. There were assertions that the bill would establish ‘a ministry of truth’ and ‘was a threat to democracy’. In reality, the amendment bill provided ACMA with a modest increase in the power to gather information and maintain records about a social media platform’s responses to disinformation. ACMA was not given powers to force content to be taken down expeditiously, and it did not cover media organisations.
Coercive powers around the removal of content were reserved for the ‘e-safety commissioner.’ The ‘e-safety commissioner’ is concerned with protecting the rights of adults or children who are subject to abuse, and its scope does not extend to ensuring the safety of democratic electoral systems. Under the Online Safety Act 2021, online providers are required to develop codes of conduct, and the E-Safety Commissioner can pursue fines. Online providers are required to respond to the E-Safety Commissioner’s questions, and take down content. There is nothing about compliance audits of social media platforms, or promoting algorithmic transparency and sovreignty in either the Online Safety Act or the proposed ACMA amendments. These frameworks are complaints focused, and not designed to bring about systemic reform of social media providers.
There is a proposal to introduce new laws based on recommendations from the Commission into Robodebt. These recommendations are that all federal government agencies be transparent in explaining how algorithms and AI affect decision making processes. Unfortunately, these recommendations do not extend to online service providers.
The regulatory gap is a problem. The onus is on social media giants to be responsive to requests to remove offensive content. The platform owner’s personality can influence responsiveness. For example, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was a programmer by background, and proactively managed the risks to elections. Regretfully Elon Musk, the current owner of X, dismantled the capacity for users to flag political disinformation during the referendum campaign.
The ACMA amendments permit the regulator to raise concerns with a platform, and investigate the platform’s self-regulatory process. If the self-regulatory processes of a platform are deemed inadequate, there are potential penalties and enforcement of a mandatory code of conduct. The emphasis is on providing the platform with as many opportunities as possible to take mitigating action before levying sanctions. The process is not in any sense fast moving or agile. There is nothing in the legislation around algorithmic sovereignty or opt outs from personalised recommendations. These are the very tools that a platform user needs to have to start creating an information ecosystem where disinformation is weeded out.
The European Union’s Digital Services Act provides an example of how social media users can be provided with these tools. On the 20th October 2023, the European Union adopted a delegated regulation under the Digital Services Act around compliance audits for what is referred to as very large online search platforms (VLOSP) and very large online search engines (VLOSE). The delegated regulation specified the role of independent auditors, who were required to use templates for implementation reports. In August 2023, Articles 34-48 of the Digital Services Act came into effect, with a range of compliance provisions, such as risk assessments, opt outs from personalised recommendations, algorithm transparency, data and access for researchers. The mandatory annual independent audit assesses compliance with these provisions, which are the basis for mandatory reports to the European Commission and Digital Services Coordinator. One notable weakness in the European Union delegated regulation is that auditors will be paid for by the companies they are auditing. The EU’s Digital Services Act is not an agile framework either. Importantly none of the regulatory frameworks in Australia or the EU is particularly effective at combating the formation of echo chambers, which are the repositories for disinformation.
Only technological solutions have the capacity to combat the lightning spread of disinformation. Examples of agile technology that could be incorporated into policy frameworks include BotSlayer, a software program designed by researchers at the University of Indiana. Botslayer detects the presence of coordinated disinformation campaigns through the use of bots. It is free software that can be used to monitor sudden suspicious spikes in activity. Another technological solution includes random dynamical nudges.
Researchers Curin, Vera and Khaledi-Nasab have explained that social media is built around the advertising culture of the ‘hyper-nudge’. This is a marketing technique of communicating identity-based messages that appeal to generating user consumer behaviours. This social media design feature is responsible for generating echo chambers. Curin and colleagues developed the concept of the random dynamical nudge, where social media users are presented with a random selection of other users’ opinions. Their research found that using random dynamical nudges led to consensus formation, rather than fragmentation of political discourse and formation of echo chambers.
Policy frameworks could mandate joint systematic monitoring by the Social Media Platform, ACMA and the AEC with the use of BotSlayer style software, with compulsory auditing for the dismantling of disinformation campaigns and deployment of random dynamical nudges around electoral promises. Regulating online platforms and providers is complex, but protecting democracy is worth the effort.
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11 comments
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Phil Pryor
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p
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JulianP
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JudithW
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nullgod
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Fred
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Bob
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Clakka
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Terence Mills
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Pete Petrass
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Clakka
Return to home pageIt was always hard to protect democracy from itself, for there may be more maggots than meat around at election times. Winning at all costs by any means is the greedy conservative way, and flows of wealth motivate the filthites, posing scum, patrons, Merde Dog misfits and assorted ambitious waggon jumpers. The old country party core and international miners were keen to stuff the voice, for future mining leases, contracts, flows, depend on as easy a run as possible, without interference in areas of Australia where indigenous people and attitudes count.The good old scraping, raping, digging, pigging, holing, careless plundering must go on, or shares, bonuses, perks may shrink, collapse. We have a plundered wilderness to finish off yet…
Seriously, Labor just needs to stop worrying about what the Noalition think about everything they do. The people (that matter) are fully behind them.
So what if the Noalition carry on like stuck pigs if they cancel the Stage 3 tax cuts, that is what the people (that matter) actually want.
So what if the Noalition carry on like stuck pigs if they legislate against Murdoch (and co) and their media monopoly for trudging out a continual stream of lies, disinformation, hate, etc. That is what the people (that matter) actually want.
I could go on all day but you get the drift. Stop listening to and worrying about spud and his little minions.
@ Phil Pryor
Agreed Phil, winning at all costs and by any means possible is just the Tory way – always has been.
Speaking of plunder, I remember a comment from a while back (in another forum) that the mining industry had long regarded Indigenous folk as weeds in the way of progress.
Foolproof by Sander van der Linden describes how people can be inoculated against misinformation and disinformation, and the strategies of division used to confound, confuse and create disinterest in voters. Their team has created an app designed for secondary students.
It’s a Must Read in preparation for the next Trumpian onslaught of propaganda disguised as news bites
Speaking as a long-time Green member, now lapsed due to them pushing for sterilisation and experimental genital mutilation of autistic children with gender dysphoria, this entire proposal was the opposite of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s beautiful speech.
The “voice” does not acknowledge we are all equal humans to be judged by our character and merit, but rather demands we judge based on groupings of melatonin and “race”.
This is the literal definition of racism, and the voice as presented was nothing but divisive “us vs them”.
I saw many melatonin-challenged people saying cruel words to indigenous, thinking they were ignorant and uneducated for holding a different opinion, abusing and gaslighting instead of listening.
Anyone who trusts our government to provide censorship laws…remember the other side will be in soon!
nullgod: I admire your naivety that we are supposedly “all equal”. From what I’ve seen, those with wealth seem have it a lot easier than the poor/disabled/indigenous members of our society. It appears that you support the “might is right” paradigm, i.e. colonisation on the basis of self proclaimed “terra nullius”. If the “all equal” concept had been applied from the start then the indigenous members would not have been treated so appallingly for the last 235+ years, with “differences” still prevailing today. The voice was only ever going to be a small step in the right direction. The “NO” outcome confirms we are racists.
I’m with nullgod as to this soft puff-piece about increasing ACMA powers, “Anyone who trusts our government to provide censorship laws…remember the other side will be in soon!”
There’re enough checks & balances already. Giving power away assists turn-key totalitarianism. The ACMA premise is that voters are as children incapable of researching all sides of topic. Are you a child in need of being spoon-fed by what some ACMA bureaucrat deems to be palatable?
On the subject of misinfo & disinfo, think back to the 2020-2023 blanket coverage of all things covid. The 24/7, 365 days/year dia-tripe from MSM can easily be destroyed today by 100 words of simple analysis, but . . the official narrative, protect the official narrative.
The control-freaks have a plan and independent thinkers are a nuisance, thus the rush to silence dissent.
I say a give Australia a Bill of Rights before giving any more power to ACMA.
The guile of the anglosphere.
Old Blighty subjugated nearly the entire globe with its grim portent looking down a barrel and using doublespeak to affect theft. It appears they have moved on. Now, as compensation with a smile, they mostly hate themselves, and everyone else.
Uncle Sam, from the beginning struggled with its multiculturalism. Throughout the 18th century it continuously fought with itself yelling down the barrels of guns, subjugating everything en masse. Then in the 19th century it took subjugation via death to a fine art, whereby those pouring into the new land of hope and glory, along with the old guard, all spiralling with aspiration, and beguiling themselves with cultural polemics, virtually blew themselves to smithereens. But glued themselves back together with riches and arms-length paranoia.
Come the 20th century, opportunity arose from across the Atlantic for Uncle Sam to redouble its shaky internal bonds through wars of glory on foreign soils. It won, and loved itself for it, understanding that the world now owed it plenty. And as again they poured in to the glued and manicured land, the damaged and terrified subsumed angst and paranoia through rampant aspiration in the unfettered land of the free. Disguised, like Clarke Kent, as the self-appointed world copper, to feed its freedom, it helped itself across the globe, and everyone had to understand what they owed.
Its corrupted politics buried itself by peddling bling and self-righteousness, as the people immersed themselves in hear-no, see-no, speak-no, until Ronnie Reagan enfranchised the yabber yabber of every multicultural puritanical god as a solution to the world, the universe and everything. So, slowly, but surely, truth has become enslaved by consumerism, xenophobia, denial, exceptionalism and ultimately individualised moronism, to the extent that those that think reasonably and rationally hide out for fear of being mobbed.
It is now their greatest export to the world.
Whilst Old Blighty set the scene in Oz, it has allowed itself to be assailed by Uncle Sam. As the wild horses set in, and global economic collapse and chaos ensue, whether Oz can save itself from dirty words, Dutton, the mindless LNP and social media and Murdoch is an understandable, but kinda weird question.
As the death cult prevails, we can’t all be physicists, nevertheless, I’d have thought the constraints set by Mother Nature are looking to beat us all to the punch. And it’s also kinda weird that politicians carry on believing they ought not elaborate for fear of scaring the horses.
Today there have been several news reports on the ABC and elsewhere reporting on a Smith Family survey that has found more than 2,200 families who used its services and found almost half worried their children would miss out on uniforms and shoes for school this year. They say that parents are being squeezed by the cost of sending kids to school, whether their children are attending public or private, according to two new studies.
So that was the news they reported but what they didn’t include was that the school kids bonus introduced by the Gillard government and aimed specifically at those out of pocket expenses was scrapped by the coalition when in government (and have not been reinstated by the Albanese government).
The payment was introduced by the Gillard government and provided families with $430 for each child in primary school and $856 for each child in secondary school.
So, one item from the survey was news but the other item about the coalition scrapping the payment was not worthy of coverage……………..why so ?
It is high time Labor man up and completely ignore Dutton and Co and the MSM and just do it. Stop worrying about what they think because the large majority of us normal Australians want this stopped…………..yesterday. We are thoroughly sick of it.
The grim msm, and the glib and divisive (TV) movie industry and its appalling celebrity cult, the pumping social media and advertisers have the world of voyeuristic morons by the groin and hip pocket via which their minds will follow. Collectively much whining about rights is based upon a shit-pile of manufactured fantasy and bling all to divert from the increasingly harsh realities. And so they can rob us and the world’s treasuries blind (that too a short-term self-defeating lunacy).
With the predations of climate change, the expiry of financially feasible fossil fuels, environmental degradation, and dire shortage of phosphorous and potable water, the big crash is already well underway. The disguises of Wall Street et al, abstractions driven by mathematical / financial jiggery-pokery are falling away, and economies everywhere are collapsing.
Those cringing behind religious gobbledygook and antediluvian ideaologies are either at war or preparing for war in futile desperation. They’ll simply bring forward and accelerate the death and destruction made immanent by industrial collaborations of persistent greed and stupidity.
Change is not coming, it’s here. The questions are, as usual, who will benefit, who will survive and how, and what’s next?
To comprehend the now, it’s no good diverting oneself from a deep and objective understanding of history, as the shadow of the future will be lit by ineffable unexpected realities.
The trumped up utterances of Dutton, the LNP and its feckless flunkies provides a salutary lesson in the prevalence of stupidity. Perhaps one should ask the loudest avowed nihilists about their plans, and cast their response to the headlines?
The morons may then be sobered to the thoughts of the value and beauty of life as provided by nature?