Donald Trump says Australia’s proposal to allow opting out of algorithms is ‘censorship of protected speech’. The comments were made during an uninterrupted three-hour broadcast on Trump TV, a network created after major media networks were banned from the White House this week.
Trump criticised Australia’s proposal, saying that people should have their news selected for them, as they do in America. “The idea that people could have a choice about what’s in their news feed is basically communism,” a White House spokesperson said. “We advocate a free-speech model where we determine what news is appropriate and ban everything else”.
The US said that allowing people to choose their algorithm sets a dangerous precedent. “They might start looking at things that they want to look at, rather than what we want them to look at, which is essentially the opposite of free speech when you think about it,” the spokesperson said.
In a submission to the Australian Government, the US embassy LITERALLY said, “We are particularly concerned by potential mandates that would allow regulators to impose rigid, one-size-fits-all platform design requirements,” somehow forgetting that – in the same week – their president had imposed an actual rigid, one-size-fits-all media reporting platform in the White House.
