An unassuming businessman with computer skills in Victoria who is opposed to the Voice decided to take some action and started his own Facebook and web pages called Constitutional Equality. https://constitutionalequality.au/ Mr Mobbs was spending substantial amounts of money, up to $2,000 a week, boosting his Facebook posts to ensure wide distribution of his site across the Australian community, as is his lawful and legitimate right.
However, Mr Mobbs rose to prominence overnight thanks to John Paul Janke’s claim made on the ABCs Insiders program on August 6th that the No campaign is now “using AI with black, Indigenous characters to try and look like it’s an Indigenous person supporting the No campaign”. Mr Janke, host of NITV’s The Point program, said the No campaign had “multiple social media pages” using the AI ads, which was of course was not true.
Gerard Henderson’s Sydney Institute Media Watch Dog Blog (#6471) gives a succinct account of the Insiders transaction:
John Paul Janke:– You know, online, the No campaign have multiple social media pages. Some of them now are using AI, with a black Indigenous character to try and look like it’s an Indigenous person supporting the No campaign.
David Speers:– Crikey!
John Paul Janke:– Yeah.
David Speers:– Sorry, did you say that was from the No campaign or from some random?
John Paul Janke:– No. From the No campaign. And they’re supporting, obviously, different voices. And they’re under the guise of moderate voices against the Voice. Like, it’s Australians for Unity. But they’re using AI of a black character that is supporting the No case.
David Speers:- Ok.
It’s interesting that the elitist ‘Speersy’ happily refers to unofficial citizen campaigners who have an opinion (informed or otherwise) as ‘some random’ – clearly, the rest of us just don’t count!
Immediately after Janke’s allegations, the ‘official’ No campaign, when challenged about it’s involvement with Mr Mobbs, emphatically disavowed any knowledge or involvement in his activities, which is true; they were not connected with him at all, despite apparently having planned to do similar ‘AI’ ads themselves, an idea they later dropped.
As Henderson notes, the ABC later issued a correction:
“Insiders: On the program broadcast on Sunday, August 6, panellist John Paul Janke described the use of AI generated videos by some opponents of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. The ABC wishes to clarify that the campaign coordinated by Warren Mundine and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – Australians for Unity – is not affiliated with the videos being referred to.”
Henderson continues:
“A good try don’t you think? But those watching the program would have got the impression that Mr Janke was referring to the most prominent No advocates – the Australians for Unity group. In fact, he was railing against a little-known Melbourne businessman named Phillip Mobbs running an organisation that virtually no one would have heard of if the SBS journalist had not raised the issue on Insiders.”
Even Prime Minister Albanese chipped in on the 15th of August, taking this ‘AI debate’ one step further by saying that the content was “misinformation”. It appears that anything the No campaign presents is immediately labelled ‘misinformation’ by those who don’t like to hear it.
One imagines the inaccurate use of the scary term ‘AI’ (Artificial Intelligence) was to instil fear in the population of creepy and suspicious ‘QAnon’ far-right ‘actors’ undermining our fair democracy, whereas in actual fact, the ads are not ‘AI’ at all, they’re simply animated ‘Talking Head’ PowerPoint creations, a program readily available to anyone.
In disputing claims that he was being misrepresentative or racist, Mr Mobbs stated that the Talking Head PowerPoint creations are cheap, require no actors, lights or cameras, the script can easily be edited to respond to day-to-day events, and can be converted into many other languages to better communicate with our multicultural society. “The Avatar has a tanned skin colour, but what’s so unusual about that”, said Mr Mobbs, “Clearly this ‘person’ is not Aboriginal, but what colour is an Aboriginal today anyway? They can be any colour.”
The ensuing media storm on the 6th and 7th of August in The Guardian, The Australian and on the ABC resulted in 8,500 views of the Constitutional Equality video in 24 hours. However, Mr Mobbs instantly became a target with a big red bullseye on his back. What happened next is something out of Orwell’s 1984 and should send a chill down the spine of all Australians.
On the night of the 7th of August, Facebook limited the advertising spend of Constitutional Equality’s Facebook page from almost $300.00 a day to $39.00 a day, an 87% reduction. Facebook also limited or ‘shaped’ the functionality of the page to stop Constitutional Equality’s page appearing in peoples Facebook feeds and severely curtailing the ‘share’ function on the page as well, so Facebook users could not share Constitutional Equality’s posts. The nett result was that Constitutional Equality had a 91% reduction in engagement from then on. How is this not silencing the alternative voice?
Whether the spend limit and shaping was ‘coincidental’ or not is a moot point. What had Constitutional Equality said or done ‘wrong’ to warrant such action by Facebook? No explanation was provided to Mr Mobbs. Facebook did not identify the post that had “breached Facebook policy” or how to fix the issue, or when it would be fixed. Mr Mobbs challenged Facebook about their actions and for an intensely frustrating thirty-three days he argued the point with them. As of the 8th of September, Constitutional Equality’s spend limit and the shaping of the share function has been removed, Constitutional Equality having lost over a month’s worth of advertising and sharing opportunities with only 36 days left until the referendum.
Constitutional Equality’s daily internet reach plummeted by 91% from 30,000 to 2,700 and their ads stopped appearing on Facebook user’s feeds, including my own. How is this not political interference?
Australians should be further concerned about the Albanese Government’s proposed Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 seeking to criminalise certain forms and content of speech. Even the Australian Human Rights Commission has grave concerns about the proposal, as Lorraine Finley2 explains. The first issue she notes is how broad and vague the terms ‘misinformation’, ‘disinformation’ and ‘harm’ are defined. Laws targeting misinformation and disinformation require clear and precise definitions, which the Bill does not have.
Secondly, Finley notes the low harm threshold categories whereby misinformation and disinformation is “reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm” are also extremely broad. Indeed, “content can be labelled as misinformation even if it does not actually cause harm – it only has to be ‘reasonably likely to do so’”.
And the third and most worrying concern is how the proposed law defines ‘excluded content’ which is protected from being labelled misinformation or disinformation. In essence, this means that “any content that is authorised by the government as being excluded content … cannot, by definition, be misinformation or disinformation under the law”! Shades of Jacinda Ardern’s New Zealand Covid policy right there.
Clearly, any ‘Combating Misinformation and Disinformation Act’ will focus on monitoring and screening all communications. Only with today’s advanced technology is that even possible. Welcome to Brave New World, 1984, Big Brother Social Credits and the New World Order all rolled into one.
Mr Mobbs noted that “Constitutional Equality started as a one person’s desire to participate in democracy and express an opinion. My idea developed into a place where other individual citizens could contribute in the democratic process”, but for how long will such participation be permitted? It is already being fettered by big tech.
Will a Misinformation Act even be required when the gate-keeping big-tech elites can simply shape or shut down your account if you are promoting material that is against their approved ideology? And don’t even get me started on debanking and a cashless society!
References:
1. https://thesydneyinstitute.com.au/blog/issue-647/
