These days people are getting rather 'chatty' on Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's Facebook page

On 10 January 2022 the Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook Scott Morrison held a press conference accompanied by Lt. General John Frewen Co-ordinator General of Operation Covid Shield and Honorary Professor ANU Dr. Paul Kelly, Chief Medical Officer, Australian Government Department of Health.

At this press conference Morrison spoke on the subjects of COVID-19 public health rules, vaccination and booster programs, hospitalizations, death rates, transportation & supply, need for additional workers and the national economy. He answered around 11 questions from journalists concerning some of those subjects.

On the same day Morrison posted a video on his Facebook account.

All screen shots taken by Ronni Salt

It appears there were 5.8k comments received to this post of which only est. 2,226 were made visible by Morrison's social media team. 

Here are just a few of those in no particular order......

 

Australian Prime Minister & Liberal MP for Cook, Scott Morrison, goes into battle against the "Evil One" just in time for the forthcoming federal election campaign

Scott John Morrison has a Facebook account Scott Morrison (ScoMo), two Twitter accounts, @ScottMorrisonMP (created on 22 April 2009 when he was an Opposition backbencher, blue ticked, 606.9k followers) and The PMO (created March 2017 in anticipation perhaps, blue ticked, 20.5k followers) and an Instagram account, scottmorrisonmp (285k followers).

The first social media account is not accessible to me because I am not a Facebook member, the second is not accessible to me because years prior to becoming Australian prime minister Scott Morrison chose to block any access by me to his personal Twitter account (an act I still find baffling), the third has not been actively tweeting since 2019 and the fourth is not fully accessible to be because I am not an Instagram member. 

Like the vast majority of social media accounts held by the Australian population, Morrison's own Twitter accounts are classified as engaging in ordinary tweet activity by Bot Sentinel. Just like GetUp! and @GreenpeaceAP.

Scott Morrison uses all four social media accounts as vehicles for his constant self-promotion and relentless electioneering.

However, he is apparently dissatisfied with social media. He believes it is being used by "the Evil One".

This is Prime Minster Morrison during an ACC (Pentecostal) Convention on the Gold Coast, Queensland in April 2021:

At 14:10mins he begins to 'preach' against social media and suggests it is being "used by the Evil One" as a weapon.

I'm not sure exactly what he was referring to at that point. However, I note that at last count Scott Morrison has 215 nicknames and descriptive political terms applied to him by the general public on Twitter and I seem to recall at least one account parodying him.

Seven months later on Monday 28 November 2021 this was Scott Morrison in in a joint media release with Attorney-General Michaelia Cash:

Combatting online trolls and strengthening defamation laws

In a world-leading move, the Morrison Government will introduce new court powers to force global social media giants to unmask anonymous online trolls and better protect Australians online.

The reforms will be some of the strongest powers in the world when it comes to tackling damaging comments from anonymous online trolls and holding global social media giants to account.

The reforms will ensure social media companies are considered publishers and can be held liable for defamatory comments posted on their platforms. They can avoid this liability if they provide information that ensures a victim can identify and commence defamation proceedings against the troll.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the rules that exist in the real world should exist online too.

“Social media can too often be a cowards’ palace, where the anonymous can bully, harass and ruin lives without consequence,” the Prime Minister said.

“We would not accept these faceless attacks in a school, at home, in the office, or on the street. And we must not stand for it online, on our devices and in our homes.

“We cannot allow social media platforms to provide a shield for anonymous trolls to destroy reputations and lives. We cannot allow social media platforms to take no responsibility for the content on their platforms. They cannot enable it, disseminate it, and wash their hands of it. This has to stop.

“These will be some of the strongest powers to tackle online trolls in the world.

“Anonymous trolls are on notice, you will be named and held to account for what you say. Big tech companies are on notice, remove the shield of anonymity or be held to account for what you publish.

“In a free society with free speech, you can't be a coward and attack people and expect not to be held accountable for it.”

The reforms will give victims of defamatory online comments two ways to unmask trolls and resolve disputes.

First, global social media platforms will be required to establish a quick, simple and standardised complaints system that ensures defamatory remarks can be removed and trolls identified with their consent. This recognises that Australians often just want harmful comments removed.

Second, a new Federal Court order will be established that requires social media giants to disclose identifying details of trolls to victims, without consent, which will then enable a defamation case to be lodged.

Importantly, the reforms will also ensure everyday Australians and Australian organisations with a social media page are not legally considered publishers and cannot be held liable for any defamatory comments posted on their page, providing them with certainty.

Attorney-General Michaelia Cash said this was in response to the Voller High Court case, which made clear that Australians who maintain social media pages can be ‘publishers’ of defamatory comments made by others on social media—even if the page owner does not know about the comments.

“Since the High Court’s decision in the Voller case, it is clear that ordinary Australians are at risk of being held legally responsible for defamatory material posted by anonymous online trolls,” the Attorney-General said.

“This is not fair and it is not right. Australians expect to be held accountable for their own actions, but shouldn’t be made to pay for the actions of others that they cannot control.

“The reforms will make clear that, in defamation law, Australians who operate or maintain a social media page are not ‘publishers’ of comments made by others.”

The Attorney General said the package of reforms would complement the defamation reforms currently being progressed in partnership with states and territories, and sit alongside the Government’s commitment to improving online safety.

“Social media providers should bear their fair share of responsibility for defamatory material published on their platforms,” the Attorney-General said. ‘This reflects the current law.’

“However, if defamatory comments are made in Australia, and social media providers help victims contact the individuals responsible, it is appropriate they have access to a defence.”

These new powers build on the Morrison Government’s other world-leading reforms, from establishing the eSafety Commissioner, to legislating the new Online Safety Act, to drafting new online privacy laws and securing support for global action to be discussed at the G20 in Indonesia in 2022.

An exposure draft of the legislation will be released in the coming week. This will provide all Australians, the industry, states, territories and stakeholders to have their say on these important new laws.

[Ends]

On Wednesday 1 December 2021 - the second to last sitting day of the parliamentary year - Morrison released the exposure draft of "Social Media (Anti Trolling) Bill 2021" which can be found here.

Having decided to release this draft the Morrison Government needed to collect its political guns and ammunition to be used in defence of the over reach contained within the bill's 28 pages.

So it was serendipitous to say the least that at 9:42 am on the same day the Government announced in the House of Representatives its intention to establish a Select Committee on Social Media and Online Safety to inquire into the range of online harms that may be faced by Australians on social media and other online platforms, including harmful content or harmful conduct. This inquiry to be held during the parliamentary recess and its report due at the start of the 2022 parliamentary year. 

A year during which the Australian Parliament will sit for only 10 days until August 2022 when a full calendar is expected to recommence.

One might almost believe that Australian Prime Minister Morrison is casting about for ways to drive his persistent critics from social media

 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and those of his ilk are toying with the idea of creating a law which bans all anonymity on social media.

One which will force women who have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many other sites to publicly disclose their legal names when creating such accounts and not use a pseudonym when posting or tweeting.

Under scenarios being considered by the Liberal-Nationals Government, all Australians may have to submit 100 points of identification - such as a driver’s licence or passport - before creating a social media account.

Additionally, social media users would be liable for defamation or even subject to criminal prosecution for their activity online.

For some reason he and others in his government are professing to believe this will make the Internet safe for women and girls.

Create a hugh Australian database spread across multiple sites which contains the verifiable ID of tens of thousands of Australian females – including home and/or work addresses. What could possibly go wrong?

Another giant pot for gold every vengeful, misogynistic male who decides he wants to abuse, threaten and stalk in real life not just in cyberspace. 

At least one social media giant clearly demonstrates by way of repeated privacy breaches, just how easy it is to open databases.

This is the latest.......

The Guardian, 5 April 2021:

Australians are being urged to secure their social media accounts after the details of more than 500 million global Facebook users were found online in a massive data breach.

The details published freely online included names, phone numbers, email addresses, account IDs and bios.

In a statement, Facebook said the leaked information was old, and came from a problem it had resolved in 2019, but experts told Guardian Australia the data could still cause problems for users caught up in the breach.

So what might hackers do with your info? How can you check if your data was leaked? And what can you do to protect yourself?

How your information could be used

Dr Andrew Quodling, a researcher in governance of social media platforms at the Queensland University of Technology, said that the data could be used to gain access to people’s Facebook accounts but also emails and accounts with other social media sites.

Once a hacker has your email, they can try to login into your accounts by pairing your email with simple passwords.

“People will take a sort of an easy run at simple hacks – try the top 100 most common passwords, and try to get in with brute force,” he said. “So anyone using the password 123 on that list would be in trouble.”

How to find out if your data was leaked

The quickest and easiest way to find out if your data has been leaked as part of a wider breach is to check on websites run by security researchers.

One of the most popular and effective of these sites is HaveIBeenPwned.com, a database maintained by security analyst Troy Hunt.

It only needs your email, which it cross-references with more than 10bn accounts that have been breached in the past to find if your details were leaked online.

It also has an option, for users to check if their password has been compromised.

Unfortunately, it does not yet track phone numbers, which were the most common user field in the recent Facebook leak.

What to do if your data was breached

In any data breach, it’s important to ensure identity documents, such as driver’s licence and passport details, haven’t been compromised. If they have, replace them immediately.

If your email address was exposed, change your password for that account, and set up two-factor authentication where possible…...

Andrew Laming, Liberal National Party of Queensland MP for Bowman, created dozens of Facebook pages to promote his party and attack opponents

 

It would appear that Andrew Laming is vying with Scott Morrison for the title of Political Liar of the Year........

The Guardian. 6 April 2021:

The besieged Liberal National MP Andrew Laming operates more than 30 Facebook pages and profiles under the guise of community groups, including at least three masquerading as news pages, and another posing as an educational institute.

The Bowman MP, who is on leave from parliament to undertake empathy counselling following complaints about his behaviour towards women, uses the sites to promote political material and attack his Labor opponents through pages classified with Facebook as “community” and “news” groups. None of the pages include political authorisation disclosures.

Laming has announced he will quit politics at the next election, but the Morrison government has insisted he is a fit and proper person to sit on the government benches, where the Coalition holds a one-seat majority.

As further revelations about his “extraordinary” behaviour emerge, Guardian Australia has confirmed that the Facebook page operating as the Redland Bay Bulletin – which uses a similar name to the local news site the Redland City Bulletin – was set up by Laming in October 2015 claiming to be a “community group”.

The page claims to “update the issues and keep a close eye on politicians and their promises” in the Redlands;

area, but posts frequent links to Liberal National party advertising and attacks on the Labor party, including state member Kim Richards.

“This page was created to provide an opportunity for you to communicate your likes and dislikes, advertise an event or your business. So share this page to fellow residents. Let’s see if we are noticed so that positive changes can be made,” the “about” page reads.

After one community resident complained about the page’s apparent LNP “propaganda”, one of the page’s administrators responded: “Yes this page was created by Andrew, but is now administered by several locals from the Redland Bay and Mount Cotton area.”

Another Facebook page used by Laming claims to be the fictitious Redlands Institute, a “forum for balanced discussion of major issues” which has been registered with Facebook as an “education” group.

The Redlands Institute promotes stories casting doubt on climate science, calling it “apocalyptic environmentalism” and spreads anti-Labor and anti-Greens propaganda while linking to Laming’s official material.

Laming revealed his identity in comments on the page posted under the institute’s name, including by posting links to Facebook live events on his now deleted official page and asking page followers to ask him questions.

Laming has also revealed himself in comments on the Victoria Point News page and the Thornlands 4164 page, both of which have been set up as “community” pages.

Guardian Australia understands that Laming has set up a community page for each suburb in his electorate without disclosing his political links to the sites, and operates about 35 from his Facebook account, which have garnered thousands of followers. His official Facebook page was shut down in the wake of allegations that he stalked two Brisbane women online.

Another page called “Redland Hospital: Let’s fight for fair funding”, was set up by Laming ahead of the last federal election to campaign against Labor, and while this is revealed in the page’s “About” information, it does not include any party branding or authorisation.

According to the Australian Electoral Commission, political authorisation is required for “information that is a matter communicated, or intended to be communicated, for the dominant purpose of influencing the way electors vote in a federal election”.

“This includes, but is not limited to, a communication that expressly promotes or opposes a candidate, political party, member or senator.”

The disclosure laws, which were updated following the 2016 election, also explicitly include social media posts, requiring authorisation details either in the message or through the page’s biography details….

Read the full article here.

Tweets of the Week

The Australien Government has made an ad about the new media legislation it just passed, and it's surprisingly honest and informative! pic.twitter.com/iD5KRenxGT

— theJuiceMedia (@thejuicemedia) February 25, 2021

Who else needs to see this? pic.twitter.com/Y2B66ZOWaI

— Kailas Wild 🐨 (@kailaswild) March 1, 2021

Donald Trump-incited insurrection did not stop the joint sitting of the US Senate & House of Representatives certification and counting of the electoral college votes in the 2020 presidential election

 

A member of the large Trump-incited mob which forced its way into the U.S. Congress while it was in session on 

6 January 2021. It was this individual who was part of a group which invaded the Senate Chamber and, who 

posed for photographs at the podium. Note the lethal tip to his flag-draped staff.

A little before 8:24am on 7 January 2021 (Sydney, Australia time), outgoing President Donald J. Trump tweeted a one minute video of himself speaking to his political base in which he addressed the armed mob of domestic terrorists - who even then had been violently invading the U.S. Congress for over three hours - in words to the effect that they were good people, patriots. 

Telling them "we love you, you're very special" - as he purported to call for "peace".

By that point on 6 January 2021 (Washington DC time) the scheduled joint sitting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives had been suspended and one person in this violent mob had been fatally shot by police and reportedly another three people in the building had died from other causes.

Finally, the social media platform Twitter reacted to the very real danger Donald Trump presented to the citizens of America and its democratic institutions…..

This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump's video. We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence.

— Guy Rosen (@guyro) January 6, 2021

This is an emergency situation and we are taking appropriate emergency measures, including removing President Trump's video. We removed it because on balance we believe it contributes to rather than diminishes the risk of ongoing violence.

— Guy Rosen (@guyro) January 6, 2021

This means that the account of @realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of these Tweets. If the Tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked.

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 7, 2021

Our public interest policy — which has guided our enforcement action in this area for years — ends where we believe the risk of harm is higher and/or more severe.
https://t.co/ZcbhDEAYjH

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) January 7, 2021

 

The Trump-incited insurrection in action on 6 January 2021.....

IMAGE: abc7

Pro-Trump mob invading the Capitol building....

IMAGE: Yahoo! News UK

IMAGE: IrishTimes

Capitol Hill security personnel attempting to keep the rampaging mob out 

of the House of Representatives chamber......

IMAGE: Twitter

People in the House of Representatives chamber gallery sheltering 

from the mob....

IMAGE: abc7

Members of Congress fleeing the House chamber....

IMAGE: NBC News

Despite the attempt to derail the joint sitting of both Houses convened to confirm the previously recorded electoral college votes (and it is 

rumoured an attempt by those domestic terrorists to steal the original electoral college vote forms) at 7.44pm on 7 January 2021 (Sydney, Australia time) the U.S. Congress confirmed that Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris are respectively President-elect and Vice President-elect of the United States of America with a majority of 306 electoral votes each.

The 46th inauguration of a duly-elected American president will proceed 

as planned on 20 January 2021.

Unless Trump's terrorists take another lethally violent step.

BACKGROUND

President Trump Save America rally January 6: full comments

https://youtu.be/8X0KIYInLHc

NOTE: 

As is usual, Facebook was slower to respond to the unfolding danger.

According to The Guardian on 8 January 2021: 

Donald Trump will be suspended from Facebook and Instagram indefinitely and at least until the end of his time in office, Mark Zuckerberg has said, as a consequence of his support for the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday. 

The US president was initially suspended from the social network for 24 hours, as a result of two posts shared to the platform in which he appeared to praise the actions of the rioters. 

In a post to Facebook on Thursday, Zuckerberg said the suspension would last much longer. “The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Facebook’s chief executive wrote. 

“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission takes Facebook Inc to Federal Court over allegedly misleading and deceptive conduct, December 2020

 

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, media release, 16 December 2020:

ACCC alleges Facebook misled consumers when promoting app to 'protect' users' data

The ACCC has instituted proceedings in the Federal Court against Facebook, Inc. and two of its subsidiaries for false, misleading or deceptive conduct when promoting Facebook’s Onavo Protect mobile app to Australian consumers.

Onavo Protect was a free downloadable software application providing a virtual private network (VPN) service.

The ACCC alleges that, between 1 February 2016 to October 2017, Facebook and its subsidiaries Facebook Israel Ltd and Onavo, Inc. misled Australian consumers by representing that the Onavo Protect app would keep users’ personal activity data private, protected and secret, and that the data would not be used for any purpose other than providing Onavo Protect’s products.

In fact, the ACCC alleges, Onavo Protect collected, aggregated and used significant amounts of users’ personal activity data for Facebook’s commercial benefit. This included details about Onavo Protect users’ internet and app activity, such as records of every app they accessed and the number of seconds each day they spent using those apps.

This data was used to support Facebook’s market research activities, including identifying potential future acquisition targets.

“Through Onavo Protect, Facebook was collecting and using the very detailed and valuable personal activity data of thousands of Australian consumers for its own commercial purposes, which we believe is completely contrary to the promise of protection, secrecy and privacy that was central to Facebook’s promotion of this app,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims said.

“Consumers often use VPN services because they care about their online privacy, and that is what this Facebook product claimed to offer. In fact, Onavo Protect channelled significant volumes of their personal activity data straight back to Facebook.”

“We believe that the conduct deprived Australian consumers of the opportunity to make an informed choice about the collection and use of their personal activity data by Facebook and Onavo,” Mr Sims said.

The Onavo Protect website stated that the app would “save, measure and protect” users’ mobile data, while advertisements on Facebook’s website and app included statements such as “Keep it secret. Keep it safe… Onavo Protect, from Facebook”.

The ACCC is seeking declarations and pecuniary penalties.

The attached document below contains the ACCC’s initiating court document in relation to this matter. We will not be uploading further documents in the event this initial document is subsequently amended. 

Concise statement 

ACCC v Facebook Inc & Ors_ Concise Statement ( PDF 2.34 MB ) 

Background 

US-based Facebook, Inc. owns global social media and private messaging platforms including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. 

US-based Onavo, Inc. and Onavo Mobile Ltd, based in Israel, were mobile analytics companies that were acquired by Facebook in October 2013. After the acquisition Onavo Mobile became Facebook Israel Ltd. 

Apple removed Onavo Protect from its App store in 2018 for non-compliance with its developer terms such as, among other things, collecting information about other apps installed on a user’s device for the purposes of analytics. It was later also removed from the Google Play store and was discontinued in 2019. 

The ACCC’s Digital platforms inquiry final report examined a range of issues involving digital platforms and consumers, including concerns about Onavo Protect and how its users’ data was being collected and used. 

In December 2020, in an unrelated action, the US Federal Trade Commission (US FTC) brought proceedings against Facebook, alleging that the company is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct. The US FTC alleges that Facebook engaged in a systematic strategy including its 2012 acquisition of Instagram and 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp, and the imposition of anticompetitive conditions on software developers to eliminate threats to its monopoly. The court documents filed by the US FTC refer to Facebook’s use of Onavo Protect data to identify future acquisitions as part of the allegation that Facebook is illegally maintaining a monopoly.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's QAnon friend may have less reading material theses days

 

In 2018 Reddit.com shut down the original QAnon subreddit, r/CBTS_stream and r/TheGreatAwakening along with the 17 other major QAnon subreddits for inciting violence and doxing, with the last significant QAnon subreddiit r/Pedogate banned in September 2020.

Also in September as part of a broader QAnon sweep begun in July Twitter Inc permanently removed Scott Morrison's personal friend, Tim Stewart aka BurnedSpy34 from the QAnon cluster of conspiracy spreaders, for "engaging in harmful activity".

Now Facebook has extended its measures to counter conspiracy, hate, violent and militarized groups by completely banning QAnon from its social media platform.

Facebook Inc, 6 October 2020:

An Update To How We Address Movements And Organisations Ties To Violence

On August 19, we announced a set of measures designed to disrupt the ability of QAnon and Militarized Social Movements to operate and organize on our platform. In the first month, we removed over 1,500 Pages and Groups for QAnon containing discussions of potential violence and over 6,500 Pages and Groups tied to more than 300 Militarized Social Movements. But we believe these efforts need to be strengthened when addressing QAnon.

Starting today, we will remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even if they contain no violent content. This is an update from the initial policy in August that removed Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts associated with QAnon when they discussed potential violence while imposing a series of restrictions to limit the reach of other Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts associated with the movement. Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts that represent an identified Militarized Social Movement are already prohibited. And we will continue to disable the profiles of admins who manage Pages and Groups removed for violating this policy, as we began doing in August.

We are starting to enforce this updated policy today and are removing content accordingly, but this work will take time and need to continue in the coming days and weeks. Our Dangerous Organizations Operations team will continue to enforce this policy and proactively detect content for removal instead of relying on user reports. These are specialists who study and respond to new evolutions in violating content from this movement and their internal detection has provided better leads in identifying new evolutions in violating content than sifting through user reports.

We’ve been vigilant in enforcing our policy and studying its impact on the platform but we’ve seen several issues that led to today’s update. For example, while we’ve removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we’ve seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups, which diverted attention of local officials from fighting the fires and protecting the public. Additionally, QAnon messaging changes very quickly and we see networks of supporters build an audience with one message and then quickly pivot to another. We aim to combat this more effectively with this update that strengthens and expands our enforcement against the conspiracy theory movement.

This is not the first update to this policy – we began directing people to credible child safety resources when they search for certain child safety hashtags last week – and we continue to work with external experts to address QAnon supporters using the issue of child safety to recruit and organize. We expect renewed attempts to evade our detection, both in behavior and content shared on our platform, so we will continue to study the impact of our efforts and be ready to update our policy and enforcement as necessary.

QAnon conspiracy theories end up in the Federal Court of Australia

The Guardian, 29 August 2020:

In May, Anne Webster, a first-term Nationals MP from Mildura in regional Victoria, quietly launched a defamation action in the federal court over a series of posts and videos about her on social media site Facebook. 

According to a statement of claim seen by Guardian Australia, posts made about the federal MP in April claimed, without any factual basis, that she was “a member of a secretive pedophile network” who had been “parachuted into parliament to protect a past generation of pedophiles”. 

Within weeks of the case being filed, Justice Michael Wheelahan made urgent orders for the defendant to remove the posts, labelling them “vile” and describing the legal action as “one of those exceptional cases” where the court could order the removal of the allegedly defamatory material before a trial. 

“Given the potency of the allegations [in the] online posts, the scandal created may well reach quarters that cannot be known … this is one of those rare cases where damages may not be an adequate remedy,” Wheelahan said. 

Webster’s case was filed against a woman named Karen Brewer, an Australian who the court believes may now live in New Zealand. Though she is basically unknown outside of the online communities in which she spends much of her time, Brewer – which may not be her real name – is one of Australia’s leading conspiracy agitators. 

Brewer’s personal Facebook page, which has thousands of followers, is a petri dish of beguiling theories and vicious abuse. In the steady stream of live videos and posts she feeds to her thousands of followers each day, Brewer rails against vaccinations, fluoride, and the cabal of Freemasons she believes controls Australia’s parliament, judiciary, media and bureaucracy as part of an extensive paedophile protection racket....

Though Australia’s conspiracy landscape is complex, increasingly the thread that unites these groups is a messy Antipodean adaption of QAnon, a sprawling and baseless internet conspiracy theory born in the online messaging board 4chan in 2017. 

Wide-ranging and preternaturally bewildering, QAnon adherents are loosely tied to the belief that, as the Guardian put it this week, “a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires run the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children”. 

Evangelical in its zeal, adherents believe a multitude of spin-off theories, including that Bill Gates is using Covid-19 to implant microchips in people and that the ongoing lockdown in Victoria is a cover for the premier, Daniel Andrews, to install 5G technology throughout the state. 

Though Brewer is not outwardly affiliated with QAnon, many of her beliefs line up with the conspiracy. Webster’s defamation claim, which also includes her husband and a not-for-profit women’s organisation called Zoe Support Australia that they founded together in Mildura, alleges the posts falsely accused the couple of founding the women’s organisation to “access young children on behalf of a secretive pedophilia network”.

To date, social media companies have had little success controlling the growth of QAnon on their platforms.

Last week, Facebook announced it had taken down or restricted 790 groups, 1,500 ads and 100 pages tied to QAnon, and blocked more than 300 hashtags used by its followers on Facebook and Instagram. It followed Twitter’s announcement of a broad crackdown on about 150,000 accounts linked to the conspiracy in July.

Advertisement

But those steps have had little effect. On Twitter, QAnon followers successfully hijacked a save the children hashtag after the purge and in Australia the Guardian noticed little if any impact on local QAnon groups after Facebook’s crackdown.

In fact, a recent report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found QAnon’s following was growing considerably in Australia.

“We found that the US was consistently the largest QAnon content-producing country, followed by the UK, Canada and Australia,” the report stated.

Though most of QAnon’s lore is specifically catered to a US audience (QAnon’s followers believe the US president, Donald Trump, is secretly working to thwart the network of paedophiles and their “deep state” collaborators), its inherent adaptability means it’s capable of hoovering up pre-existing conspiracy theories into its swirling illogic.....

Coalition shields firebrand MP Craig Kelly from censure for spreading Covid misinformation

Read moreIn Australia, its adherents have had no trouble retrofitting the theory to suit our politics.....

Karen Brewer
Snapshot taken from a YouTube video
30 August 2020

On 19 May 2020 there was a hearing in the matter of Webster v Brewer (No 2) [2020] FCA 727.

There was no appearance at that hearing by counsel for 52 year-old Ms. Brewer.

The Court accepted that Ms. Brewer had been properly notified of the hearing date, court details and had received the statement of claim & revised statement of claim.

On 19 May the Court reaffirmed Orders of 8 May - the following is an excerpt from those Orders.

THE COURT ORDERS THAT: 

PENAL NOTICE TO: 

KAREN BREWER IF YOU (BEING THE PERSON BOUND BY THIS ORDER): (A) REFUSE OR NEGLECT TO DO ANY ACT WITHIN THE TIME SPECIFIED IN THIS ORDER FOR THE DOING OF THE ACT; OR 
(B) DISOBEY THE ORDER BY DOING AN ACT WHICH THE ORDER REQUIRES YOU NOT TO DO, YOU WILL BE LIABLE TO IMPRISONMENT, SEQUESTRATION OF PROPERTY OR OTHER PUNISHMENT. 

ANY OTHER PERSON WHO KNOWS OF THIS ORDER AND DOES ANYTHING WHICH HELPS OR PERMITS YOU TO BREACH THE TERMS OF THIS ORDER MAY BE SIMILARLY PUNISHED. 

 IN THESE ORDERS: 

 a) the respondent’s Facebook account is accessible at the URL address ‘https://www.facebook.com/karen.spiers.336’. 
b) the “First Post” is the post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 26 April 2020 at 6.21am. 
c) the “First Video” is the video post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 26 April 2020 at 2.01pm. 
d) the “Second Post” is the post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 27 April 2020 at 5.14am. 
e) the “Second Video” is the video uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 30 April 2020 at 6.13pm. 
f) the “Third Post” is the post uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 8 May 2020 at 5.42am. 
g) the “Third Video” is the video uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 8 May 2020 at 6.00am. 
h) the “Fourth Video” is the video uploaded to the respondent’s Facebook account on or about 8 May 2020 at 7.44am.

THE COURT ORDERS THAT: 

Upon the applicants giving the usual undertaking as to damages (see Practice Note GPN-UNDR), until further order, the respondent by herself or by her servants or agents, or howsoever, be restrained from publishing or causing to be published in any form, or maintaining online for downloading, or uploading so as to make available for publication online: 
a)the First Post; 
b) the First Video; 
c) the Second Post; 
d) the Second Video; 
e) the Third Post; 
f) the Third Video; 
g) the Fourth Video; and any other matter to the same purport or effect as any of the above matters to the extent that such other matters identify the applicants, whether expressly or by implication.