The Australian government is considering passing a misinformation bill requiring social media platforms to keep records tracking the amount of “misinformation” and “disinformation” on their sites and turn these records over to the government when requested. The bill also allows the Australian Communications and Media Authority to set regulations for the companies, which, if violated, could result in multi-million-dollar fines.

The new rules would reportedly apply to “social media platforms, news-aggregators, and even podcasts.” This bill is an undeniable violation of free speech. By forcing companies to comply with what the government deems correct procedure, it violates both their property rights as private business owners to determine their own moderation policies and the rights of their users to share beliefs, ideas, and knowledge because of the inevitable censorship-inducing effect these regulations would have.

Thankfully, this kind of legislation could never survive here in the US because we have the First Amendment protecting the freedom to express our thoughts, as long as we are not violating other people’s rights. (For example, libel, fraud, death threats, etc., are not free speech protected by the First Amendment). However, unfortunately, Australia doesn’t have such protection enshrined in government.