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With Germany drafting rules to mandate State-approved news in social media feeds, Australians might reasonably wonder what comes next.

Let me ask you a question.

If you discovered your accountant had a serious gambling problem, would you let him keep doing your books?

Or would you say,

‘Listen, Shifty McLedger, I don’t think you should be running my finances anymore.’

If you discovered the chef at your local café had numerous criminal convictions for poisoning people, would you keep eating his food?

Or would you say,

‘I’m sorry, Gordon Ramslay, but I’m no longer comfortable with you cooking my meals.’

And what about this:

If you discovered your Prime Minister was a compulsive liar — about everything from falling off a stage to compiling a dirt file — would you let him anywhere near your social media feed?

Or would you say,

‘Hey, Albanocio, if I can’t trust you to tell the truth about anything, I’m definitely not going to trust you to decide what I can and see online.’

And I know, I know… the Prime Minister’s pinkie-swearing that’s not what he’s up to, but you see the problem, right? We just don’t believe him.

And that’s not on us. That’s on him!

When Governments Want a Say in Your Feed

A lot of people have talked about the Digital Duty of Care Bill, and a lot of people have talked about Anthony Albanese’s rather elastic relationship with the truth.

But not enough people have considered those two things in tandem.

Imagine a Prime Minister who can’t stop misleading the public, suddenly discovering he could mislead the public on an industrial scale if only he controlled what the public sees.

A politician who can’t reliably be trusted to describe reality suddenly gets a say in which bits of reality you’re allowed to encounter.

It’s like appointing a convicted arsonist to decide which buildings need smoke alarms.

But how would he convince the public to hand over control of their online experience?

Well, you’re all very familiar with the story.

It started with a social media ban for under-16s… to protect the children.

And — I’m using the PM’s own words here — “the inevitable next stage” was doing something about the ‘algorithm’… that annoying feature that spontaneously causes people to see right-wing material, or — if you prefer — the way the world really is.

The PM told us that forcing big tech to let us opt out of the algorithm feature wasn’t about control; it was about giving people choice.

And this time, they’re telling the truth.

Seriously.

This time, they really, truly, cross our black hearts and hope to be re-elected are telling the God they don’t believe in’s honest truth.

Sure, they didn’t tell the truth about power prices.

Or stage 3 tax cuts.

Or negative gearing.

Or capital gains tax.

Or falling off the stage.

Or joking about the Japanese PM’s melons.

Or the Helen Haines dirt file.

But this time we can believe them.

So what’s the next stage?

Germany’s 20 Per Cent Rule for Approved News

Well, you might be interested to know that the German Government has just released a draft of its latest version of their Digital Duty of Care bill.

And get this… the draft mandates that 20 percent of the algorithm has to include government-approved news services.

Well, colour me astonished.

Who could possibly have predicted that a government determined to protect us from dangerous online content might eventually decide it should have a hand in choosing the content we see?

Germany’s Digital Media Interstate Treaty, released on September 28 and open for consultation until November 13, mandates that every fifth social media post citizens see should come from a pool of news outlets recognised for providing what regulators consider to be diversity.

The legislation is being sold as a way of saving the public from what officials call… “algorithmic displacement”.

Which I think means… displacement from the comfortable, government-approved version of reality.

Under the German proposal, regulators would determine which outlets qualify for preferential visibility on your social media feed.

Why 20 percent? Well, I suppose 100 percent would sound suspicious.

Diversity of Sources Doesn’t Mean Diversity of Views

The German Government says it will ensure that people are getting a diverse number of news sites in their news feed.

And that’s the first of many problems with this draft legislation. A diversity of news sources doesn’t mean a diversity of views.

If you’re getting the ABC, SBS, CNN and the BBC, are you getting a diversity of views? Or are you getting a diversity of news sites all promoting the same worldview?

The German system gives regulators the power to determine which outlets qualify for preferential treatment.

But official recognition isn’t the same thing as accuracy. Established media can be wrong. Public broadcasters can be wrong. Governments can be spectacularly wrong.

The problem isn’t that every approved outlet is untrustworthy. The problem is that the state is being asked to distinguish the voices that deserve preferential visibility from those that don’t.

Now, why would they want to do that?

Which brings us back to Anthony Albanese. With his love of… how can I be kind… reframing reality… do you not think the German laws would appeal here?

The German legislation is still in draft form.

It is not yet a law, and we shouldn’t pretend that Australia has proposed an identical 20 per cent quota.

But it would be astonishingly naïve to assume the broader idea has nothing to do with the direction of travel here.

From Online Safety to Government-Controlled Information

Albanese has, for a long time, been invoking the language of safety, choice and protection.

And he’s already demonstrated a willingness to use government power to reshape what Australians can do online.

So when he tells us he has no intention of controlling what we see online, perhaps we should remember his record.

This is a Prime Minister who asks us to believe remarkable things about his government’s performance.

And when questions are raised about his own conduct, we’ve been treated to explanations that defy gravity.

The German proposal provides a glimpse of where the logic of these schemes can lead.

First, the government tells you that some content is dangerous.

Then it tells you that algorithms are making the problem worse.

Then it tells you that platforms must give you more choice.

And eventually, someone decides that the best way to guarantee a diversity of views is to mandate which views must appear.

At which point, the government has helpfully solved the problem of online diversity by deciding what diversity looks like.

And if you object, well, perhaps your objection is precisely the sort of content that needs a little less visibility.

That’s the danger.

Slippery Slope

I’m not one of those who believes that every government begins with a master plan to censor its critics.

But we should all be able to see how every new power is introduced as a modest, reasonable response to a problem — and then becomes the foundation for the next power.

The guardrails move. The definitions expand. The exceptions multiply.

And the thing that was unthinkable yesterday becomes the sensible compromise of tomorrow.

We should judge this government not merely by what it says it intends to do, but by what it’s already done, the powers it’s seeking and the incentives those powers create.

And when a government with a decidedly patchy record of telling the truth asks us to trust it with greater control over the information we receive, well, scepticism is not paranoia.

It is basic civic hygiene.

In fact, the more emphatically this government insists it would never go there, the more carefully we should examine the road signs.

Because if there is one thing this government has demonstrated a considerable talent for, it is saying one thing and doing another.

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Republished with thanks to The James Macpherson Report. Image courtesy of Adobe.