The Electoral Commission mentioned this one. You can see how much of the libertarian rubbish firing up many…

The Electoral Commission mentioned this one. You can see how much of the libertarian rubbish firing up many Australians now is actually driven from overseas. Social media is an unlocked door to our own democracy, eating it from the inside out. That destruction needs to stop. /1 https://t.co/ow68666IUI

Fears about 'free speech' won't allow it, the same people who produce this weaponised propaganda have also framed the entire debate as a free speech argument. There is not and has never been any such thing as free speech. /2

All information and communication is mediated through social rules, customs and traditions. Accumulated expertise, precedent. By decoupling speech from that, largely through social media, we're like farmers leaving the chicken coop door open 24 hours a day for foxes. /3

We're wide open to everybody who wants to trash democracies. Homegrown, or even State actors, feasting on centuries of hard-won democratic institutional life. It needs to be shut down, rooted out, ruthlessly. These bad faith actors know it, they're ready to.../4

...respond with claims of 'authoritarianism' and 'totalitarianism'. That needs to be ignored. For example even off social media, how gutless are politicians that propaganda arms of some of these same interests are allowed to broadcast blatant propaganda? /5

For years now entire networks are laughing at us as they trash any sense of actual journalism or reporting, hiding behind 'opinion' when challenged. No sane society would tolerate it for a day. But it runs 24/7. All because of this belief in 'free speech'. /6

That and elections, together, will sink democracies. I think it may already be too late to save them. Populism, and completely unregulated information and communication. Or to strip it right back, vesting ultimate authority in who's the most popular. /7

And letting them and everybody else say and think anything they like, without any testing by custom or tradition or accumulated expertise. We don't run any business like that, or families. Running societies like that will destroy them. /end