The Australian Parliament is conducting hearings into its contentious Misinformation Bill that has already passed the country’s lower house.
Calling something “misinformation” does not necessarily mean it is false just because it has been fact-checked by experts, a Senate Committee has heard.
Anne Twomey, a professor at the University of Sydney and a legal consultant, raised the point during a hearing into the impending Misinformation Bill before the Australian Parliament.
The Bill will compel social media platforms to regulate mis- or disinformation on their platforms with the threat of fines.
However, the Bill has also been contentious with concerns it could silence debate. Thus far, the federal opposition has been critical of the Bill, along with several independent MPs.
The Bill has passed the lower house and is set for debate in the Senate.
Meanwhile, Twomey explained that social media companies had to partner with “fact-checkers” to verify information due to a lack of expertise and knowledge about the content on their platforms.
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“It’s fact checkers who decide these sorts of things–what’s true and what’s not,” she told the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee.
“How do they decide? Because they don’t have a clue either. And this is one point I really do want to stress.”
Twomey said fact-checkers had to ask experts for help, which led to another problem.
Fact-Checkers Not Always Experienced Enough
The professor shared her experience providing advice to fact-checkers.
“They try hard, and they’re well-meaning, but they are not experts themselves in the field,” she said.
“They‘ll ask me a question in a particular form of words, [and] I’ll give them an answer that’s suited to the way they ask me that question. Sometimes later on, I read what they write and discover that they have misinterpreted it, or themselves being misleading about it.”
“So the problem with expertise is the expert might have it, but the person writing the fact check doesn’t, and they often misunderstand the experts, so they often get it wrong.”
Twomey added that fact-checkers no longer came back to experts to verify the accuracy of the information they receive.
“The impression I get is that these are just frequently young kids out of university who don’t really know, and they’re taking on this really important role of making a decision that will lead some Meta or Google, or whatever, to make decisions about what is true and what is false when the fact checker themselves hasn’t properly understood what the experts have said,” she said.
Quality of Fact-Checking Process An Issue
At the same time, Twomey pointed out that there could be issues with the process.
Specifically, she said experts could produce distorted fact-checking reports under time pressure.
“How many are out there who actually answer your email that says, quick, I need this response in 24 hours?” Twomey asked.
“There are very few people who are prepared to waste their time doing this stuff because they have a real job.
“So the process of working out what is reasonably verifiable is not a very good one, I’m afraid.”
The Risk of Being Misinformation for Contradicting Consensus
Twomey also said that there were risks that information that went against authorities’ consensus could fall into the category of misinformation.
She gave the example of what health authorities told Australians during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“[At the] beginning of COVID, we were all told the scientific consensus was it was not an airborne disease. It travelled by droplets. And so we all went round wiping every hand,” she said.
“Two years later, they tell us the opposite, that it is an airborne disease.”
Due to the consensus, the professor said people who voiced opinions that the disease was airborne at the beginning of the pandemic could be considered spreading misinformation under the current Bill, which could have implications for public health.
“If people believe it was spread by one thing and not by others, they weren’t then dealing with better ventilation and all the sorts of things that would save people’s lives,” she said.
“By excluding those possibilities, you actually give yourself the harm that you said you were trying to avoid.”
