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…...

And the Abbott-Turnbull- Morrison Government's NBN copper saga continues......

 

One of Telstra's old pits being used by the NBN
IMAGE: Coast Community News, March 2016

Now that so many old Telstra copper-laden access pits which connect households with NBN fibre-to-the-node broadband technology are currently under flood water up and down the coast of New South Wales, it might be time to consider how all this water is impacting the integrity of the copper components in these concrete pits and the effect that this might have on current and future access to the Internet and modem-connected landlines.

Because it seems copper is still king for NBN Chair Ziggy Switkowski and his seven fellow directors.

The New Daily, 21 March 2021:

The NBN Co’s decision to continue to purchase and roll out ‘obsolete’ copper cabling over ‘future proof’ fibre-optic cables is costing Australia, telco experts say.

New figures show NBN Co has purchased 55,911 kilometres worth of copper cabling for use in the national broadband network’s footprint – enough to wrap around Australia twice.

The government-owned business has replaced 6,300 degraded copper lead-ins on fibre-to-the-kerb (FTTC) with brand new copper, it was revealed this week.

RMIT associate professor of network engineering Mark Gregory slammed NBN Co’s continued use of copper as “wasteful”.

The admission by NBN Co that it had purchased 55,911 km to boost “obsolete” copper-based connections including fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) and FTTC “is shocking and should be met with outrage by taxpayers who will have to pay again, in the form of higher broadband plan costs, to have the obsolete copper based technologies replaced over the next decade,” Dr Gregory said.

“The Coalition’s NBN plan has become a national disgrace. The NBN rollout, which in reality has yet to be completed, is beset by cost and technology problems and the list of the government’s failed promises growing by the month.”

The copper figures were revealed in the Senate in response to Questions on Notice, and were 57 days overdue.

The Morrison government and NBN Co have faced criticism for being slow to answer Questions on Notice.

Last month, overdue responses to QoNs revealed that NBN Co had paid out more than $77 million in bonuses during the midst of the pandemic – nearly twice as much as the previous year…….

The NBN rollout was officially completed last year, but the Morrison government has already conceded that the many of the network’s copper-based connections already need to be upgraded.

In September, Communications Minister Paul Fletcher promised to pour more than $3 billion into upgrading millions of copper-based connections to fibre-to-the-premises by 2023.

This is on top of the cost of the rollout, which is estimated to have exceeded $57 billion…..

Labor’s shadow minister for communications, Michelle Rowland, accused Liberals of deceiving the public over the cost of fibre.

“We now know the Liberals knew back in 2013 that deploying fibre was dramatically cheaper than what they claimed in public,” Ms Rowland said.

“Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Fletcher kept this a secret and spent eight years knowingly misleading Australians to justify their copper mess.

“With waste and dishonesty as far as the eye can see – is it any wonder the cost of their copper NBN has gone from $29 billion, to $41 billion, to $49 billion and now $57 billion?”…..

Saffin points out underspending by Deputy Premier & Minister for Regional New South Wales John Barilaro on the 2019 promise of faster mobile and internet coverage in regional areas

 

Office of NSW Labor MP for Lismore Janelle Saffin, media release, 3 March 2021:

Saffin applauds action group for tackling digital divide

A RECENT Parliamentary speech by Lismore MP Janelle Saffin on the digital divide in rural and regional New South Wales has put her in touch with an action group helping isolated communities to access suitable broadband.

During a public interest debate on regional mobile and digital connectivity, Ms Saffin took NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro to task for only delivering $50 million of $400 million the Nationals promised in February 2019 for faster mobile and internet coverage in regional New South Wales.

Ms Saffin said health was one area where the digital divide can mean life or death, so for that reason we have to ensure good connections.

“How many times can the Deputy Premier announce this? We have heard announcement after announcement, but we want to see runs on the board. We want to see connectivity.

 “All members must work together to ensure that the people of rural and regional New South Wales have strong digital connectivity for jobs, business, health and safety.”

Coverage of the debate found its way into the Information Age as an article titled, "Rural MPs lambast Govt. broadband 'BS’”, prompting Jon Gough, of the Wamboin Communications Action Group (WCAG), to contact Ms Saffin.

“WCAG has done a lot of good work over some four years and is now in the process of obtaining suitable broadband for their rural community,” Ms Saffin said.

“Their particular focus has been on the Wamboin, Bywong and Sutton region around the ACT, which had a particular satellite NBN allocated to their area and which the local community stated was not fit for purpose for the residents of the area.

“They have focused on obtaining a service that could traverse challenging terrain and how to deliver fibre connectivity to rural areas at a similar price point to that of city residents.

“Their website contains information about WCAG that I found very interesting: https://sites.google.com/site/wamboincommunications/home

“When I spoke with Jon Gough, he asked me if there any communities in our area which would be interested in receiving assistance from them.

“The WCAG secured an Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) grant to help them document what they had done and success with the NSW Government.

“The purpose of this is to help other, similar, rural communities get recognised by both government and non-government organisations to deliver suitable, robust, future-proof digital communications.

“WCAG were successful in this endeavour and are now reaching out to find other communities that need assistance in raising their profile such that they are recognised as being in need of assistance.”

Ms Saffin said if there are any groups in the Electorate of Lismore who are interested and have the capacity to work on such a project, please contact her on 02 66 213 624 and she shall put them in touch with WCAG.

All the social media platforms that have banned or restricted U.S. President J. Trump so far may have limited the reach of his venom, but this does not mean the violence he unleashed last week is over

 

"I think I wouldn't be here [as U.S. President] if I didn't have social media. The media is fake. And frankly if I didn't have social media I would have no way of getting out my voice."  [Donald Trump during U.S. "60 Minutes" interview, October 2020]

Donald J. Trump appears to have had a presence on social media since at least 2008-09.

At the time he was reasonably well-known to US mainstream media, but outside of America his name was not as recognisable to the average person.

However it was only once Senator Barack Obama stood in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries and then became the Democratic candidate in the 56th American presidential election that the rest of the world began to really notice Trump.

However, much of the coverage of his views came second-hand in the mainstream media until May 2009.

By then Donald Trump had become a parody of his younger self, but did not at first glance appear to be highly dysfunctional. He came across as an eccentric and egotistical individual fond of conspiracy theories – especially if those theories supported his aversion to the idea of an African-American being President of the United States of America.

His open dislike of Barack Obama raised his own social media profile and he became adept at using Twitter and Facebook to express his personal world view.

Sometime between 2008 and 2012 Donald Trump began to flirt with the idea of running for US president himself, but it wasn’t until 2015 that he fully committed to the idea of standing in the Republican presidential primaries.

First as a political candidate and then in 2016 as president-elect Donald Trump was allowed a lot of latitude by social media platforms and he began to use social media as a weapon against all those he perceived as enemies.

There was so little pushback by management of the social media platforms that he frequented that by the time he became president I’m sure he saw himself as unassailable and, in many respects as the highest office holder in the United States he was.

In May 2020 his personal Twitter account reportedly had over 80 million followers, even though by then it was filled almost entirely with self-praise, blatant lies, insults, threats and political conspiracy allegations.

Then came his political defeat in the 2020 presidential election and a growing realisation that no matter how hard he tried he could not reverse the will of the people or the Electoral College votes.

It was then, when he thought he had nothing left to lose, that he became even more vengeful and recklessly destructive, setting in motion the events of 6 January 2021 when pro-Trump domestic terrorists violently forced their way into the US Congress in an effort to stop a joint sitting of the House of Representatives and Senate formally recording the Electoral College vote count that confirmed Joe Biden as the new president-elect who would be inaugurated on 20 January 2021.

Before that Wednesday ended the giants of the Internet began to show Donald J. Trump that even he could go too far and began to starve him of what political oxygen he had left.

First Twitter pulled the plug on his incitement of violence and sedition with a 12-hour suspension which quickly turned into the permanent expulsion of his account @realDonaldTrump. Then the list began to grow until 16 social media platforms/Internet services have slammed the door in his face, or the faces of his supporters, to date.

Axios, 7 January 2020:

Platforms are rapidly removing Donald Trump’s account or accounts affiliated with pro-Trump violence and conspiracies, like QAnon and #StoptheSteal.

Here is a running list:

REDDIT:

WHAT: Reddit has banned the subreddit group "r/DonaldTrump," a spokesperson confirmed to Axios on Friday.

COMMENT: "Reddit's site-wide policies prohibit content that promotes hate, or encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence against groups of people or individuals. In accordance with this, we have been proactively reaching out to moderators to remind them of our policies and to offer support or resources as needed," a spokesperson tells Axios.

CONTEXT: While not an official group or page hosted by the president, it's one of the company's largest political communities dedicated to support for President Trump.

TWITCH:

WHAT: Twitch disabled Trump's channel, citing the move as a "necessary step" to protect its community and "prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence."

COMMENT: “In light of yesterday’s shocking attack on the Capitol, we have disabled President Trump’s Twitch channel. Given the current extraordinary circumstances and the President's incendiary rhetoric, we believe this is a necessary step to protect our community and prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence," a spokesperson told Axios.

CONTEXT: Twitch was one of the first platforms in June to temporarily ban Trump's channel for hateful content around the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer.

SHOPIFY:

WHAT: Shopify took down two online stores affiliated with Trump — his organization and his campaign's merchandise sites — for violating its policies on supporting violence.

COMMENT: "Shopify does not tolerate actions that invite violence. Based on recent events, we have determined that the actions by President Donald J. Trump violate our acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits promotion or support of organizations, platforms or people that threaten or condone violence to further a cause. As a result, we have terminated stores affiliated with President Trump." - a spokesperson told The Financial Times.

CONTEXT: Shopify had until Friday gone the farthest in actually de-platforming Trump, as his stores were permanently removed, not temporarily disabled.

TWITTER:

WHAT: Twitter announced Friday the platform will permanently ban President Trump's account effective immediately.

COMMENT: "After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence," Twitter said in a statement.

CONTEXT: It's Twitter's strongest-ever action against the president's account and comes in response to the "risk of further incitement of violence," per the social media company.

GOOGLE:

WHAT: Google has pulled Parler, a social media app for conservatives and far-right extremists.

COMMENT: "In order to protect user safety on Google Play, our longstanding policies require that apps displaying user-generated content have moderation policies and enforcement that removes egregious content like posts that incite violence," a Google spokesperson said.

CONTEXT: Google’s move immediately suspends Parler, going further than Apple's earlier decision to remove the app unless it submits a content moderation plan.

YOUTUBE:

WHAT: YouTube is accelerating its enforcement of election misinformation and voter fraud claims against Trump and other channels.

COMMENT: "Due to the extraordinary events that transpired yesterday, and given that the election results have been certified, any channel posting new videos with these false claims in violation of our policies will now receive a strike, a penalty which temporarily restricts uploading or live-streaming. Channels that receive three strikes in the same 90-day period will be permanently removed from YouTube," Alex Joseph, a YouTube spokesperson, told Axios.

CONTEXT: YouTube is typically slow to take action on bad content and accounts. Its response, while swift, was somewhat benign compared to competitors removing or disabling Trump's account. YouTube did remove the video Trump posted Wednesday that addressed the Capitol violence without fully condemning it.

FACEBOOK:

WHAT: Facebook banned Donald Trump from posting on his Facebook accounts for at least the next two weeks until the transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden is complete.

COMMENT: "We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post Thursday.

CONTEXT: On Wednesday, Facebook did remove the video Trump posted Wednesday addressing the violence without fully condemning it before taking greater action against Trump on Thursday.

INSTAGRAM:

WHAT: Instagram banned Donald Trump from posting on his Facebook accounts for at least the next two weeks until the transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden is complete.

COMMENT: "We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post Thursday.

CONTEXT: On Wednesday, Instagram's parent Facebook did remove the video Trump posted addressing the violence without fully condemning it before taking greater action against Trump on Thursday.

SNAPCHAT:

WHAT: Snapchat disabled Trump's Snapchat account Wednesday because it believes the account promotes and spreads hate and incites violence, a spokesperson said.

COMMENT: "We can confirm that earlier today we locked President Trump's Snapchat account," Snap spokesperson Rachel Racusen told Axios.

CONTEXT: Snapchat was one of the first major social platforms to take serious action on Trump's account for threats to democracy in June when the company said it stopped promoting his account in its "Discover" section, which features professional content and other prominent people.

TIKTOK:

WHAT: TikTok is removing content violations and redirecting hashtags like #stormthecapitol and #patriotparty to its community guidelines.

COMMENT: "Hateful behavior and violence have no place on TikTok. Content or accounts that seek to incite, glorify, or promote violence violate our Community Guidelines and will be removed," a TikTok spokesperson said.

CONTEXT: Other hashtags like #stopthesteal and #QAnon have been redirected since last year.

APPLE:

WHAT: Apple on Friday threatened to remove right-wing-friendly social media app Parler from its App Store if Parler doesn’t lay out a plan to moderate its content.

COMMENT: "We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler app was used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 that led (among other things) to loss of life, numerous injuries, and the destruction of property,” Apple wrote to Parler in an email obtained by BuzzFeed News. “The app also appears to continue to be used to plan and facilitate yet further illegal and dangerous activities.”

CONTEXT: Apple is flexing its power to try to get Parler to moderate its content. [on 10 January 2021 Apple suspended the Parler App from its online store. This means the app can no longer be downloaded to an iPhone]

DISCORD:

WHAT: Discord says it has banned server The Donald, per journalist Casey Newton.

COMMENT: "While there is no evidence of the server being used to organize the Jan 6 riots, Discord decided to ban the entire server today due to its overt connection to an online forum used to incite violence and plan an armed insurrection in the United States," per Mother Jones' Ali Breland.

CONTEXT: The Discord account was connected to the pro-Trump social network TheDonald.Win and the r/theDonald subreddit that was banned Friday.

PINTEREST:

WHAT: Pinterest has been limiting hashtags related to pro-Trump topics such as #StopTheSteal since around the November election, a spokesperson said.

COMMENT: "Pinterest isn’t a place for threats, promotion of violence or hateful content," a Pinterest spokesperson said. "Our team is continuing to monitor and removing harmful content, including misinformation and conspiracy theories that may incite violence.”

CONTEXT: Trump doesn't have a Pinterest account, and the platform has tried to stay away from political content, but Pinterest hasn't been able to squelch it completely.

The bottom line: Trump is quickly losing access to all the platforms where he once was able to spread his message freely, but groups of his supporters will still be able to gather online. [my red annotations]

Donald Trump joined Triller (an American video making & social networking platform) in mid-2020 but this site is yet to announce its position.

However, Twitch affiliate PornHub Update recently announced it too was banning Trump.

When Twitter removed Donald Trump’s personal account it appears to have cut off an est. 88,770,584 social media users from receiving his views directly into their timelines each day.

Gary Corby, the Trump campaign’s digital director tried to give Trump his account. Twitter promptly suspended him.

Twitter has also removed the Team Trump account and is selectively removing attempts by Donald Trump to place tweets on @POTUS which violate Twitter’s terms and conditions.

Individual Trump supporter accounts such as @linwoods, @FightBackLaw and @TheRISEofROD have been suspended for either spreading untruths about the 2020 presidential election or advocating lethal violence members of the US Congress.

According to Techcrunch, PayPal has been deactivating the accounts of some groups of Trump supporters since last week, who were using the money-transfer fintech to coordinate payments to underwrite the rioters’ actions on Capitol Hill. PayPal has been increasingly banning some political accounts, banning a far-right activist in 2019 and also banning a spate of far-right organizations in the wake of violent protests in Charlottesville in 2017. These bans so far do not appear to extend directly to the president himself.

Parler which apparently refuses to moderate its platform is also full of such threats - including incitement to assassinate the current US Vice-President for his perceived failure to support Donald Trump - according to Input. On Sunday 9 January 2021 alarmed at the proliferation of violent images and posts on this platform Amazon Web Services announced it would cut Parler from it cloud hosting as of 11:59pm, US Pacific Time (6pm Sydney Time, Monday 11 January 2021). Parler is then potentially offline for up to a week until it rebuild its website.

The naked violence that Donald Trump unleashed on 6 January which left five people dead is still a very real threat…….

"Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021." [Twitter Inc, 8 January 2021]

Parler, 6 January 2021

BACKGROUND

 https://www.thetrumparchive.com/

From the moment then Liberal MP for Warringah Tony Abbott became Australia's prime minister the National Broadband Network became one enormous rolling disaster

This is what est. $50 billion dollar spend of taxpayer money by the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government has delivered in rural and regional Australia.....

Clarence Valley Independent, 21 May 2020:

As far as stories about inept management go, the bungled provision of National Broadband Network (NBN) services for the residents of Woombah features a tangled web of politics, bureaucracy, obfuscation and buck passing. 

Seven years after the process began; a recent survey conducted by the Woombah Residents Association has revealed that 60 per cent of the village’s residents are still unable to connect to the NBN. 

The association has written to Page MP Kevin Hogan, Minister for Communications Paul Fletcher and Deputy Prime Minister Michael Mc Cormack expressing their dissatisfaction. 

The COVID-19 lockdown has served to amplify the problem, with one frustrated couple, Robin and Einion Thomas, writing to Mr Hogan: “After contacting your office my email was sent to [NBN Co’s regional manager] Ian Scott. 

“He phoned me and suggested, as we had been unable to connect to the fixed wireless tower, a satellite service would be a good option, [however], a 300Mb plan I saw was for $200 per month. 

“It was also suggested we keep our ADSL line, as satellite is limited and ADSL would be needed if we wanted to do streaming, video conferencing and working with cloud-based services. 

“…Right now [the ADSL] is struggling and this is putting additional pressures on us in our home-based working environment. 

 “Neither of the suggestions made by Ian [is] workable, acceptable or affordable to us.” 

The saga began in April 2013 when Woombah residents were informed that a 40 metre high fixed wireless (NBN) tower was going to be erected at 97 West Street – within weeks a group of residents known as the Woombah Tower Action Group (WTAG), began lobbying to prevent its construction. 

The tower was erected in December 2013 and was commissioned in March 2015. 

As it turned out WTAG’s failed campaign was on the money when it was revealed that fewer than two in ten residences were covered by the tower’s broadcast footprint. 

One of the group’s members, Dane Webb, wrote to Page MP Kevin Hogan, declaring at the time: “This has to go down in history as one of the most ridiculous exercises ever, as it [the tower’s service area] covers – wait for it – TWO complete streets and a few partial streets.” (‘NBN tower fails to deliver’, Clarence Valley Review, March 23, 2015).... 

A panacea to the problem appeared to be close in March/April 2019 when NBN Co’s regional manager, Ian Scott, advised the Woombah Residents Association that two towers – one at Mororo and another at Palmers Island – would provide NBN services to Woombah residents. 

However, according to residents, things have not improved since the towers were commissioned. 

On May 12 the residents association wrote in its media release and/or correspondence: “Despite the huge expense involved in building these additional towers fewer than 40 per cent of our community members can successfully access the NBN fixed wireless internet. 

“Woombah has a population of approximately 1,000 residents and is dependent on tourism, farming and fishing. “It is the second fastest growing community in the Clarence. 

“The population is set to expand over the next year with the development of 147 new homes in a caravan park in the village. 

“…We note that a recent media release from [Communications Minister Paul Fletcher’s] office stated: ‘The importance of fast, affordable broadband delivered quickly has never been clearer than during the current COVID-19 pandemic (27/4/2020).’ 

“We agree wholeheartedly with your statement and would like to draw your attention to the problems we in Woombah face connecting to the NBN.”

According to finder on 21 May 2020, by the end of June 2020 it is expected that:

By the end of the rollout, roughly 40% of premises will be connected via Fibre to the Node or Fibre to the Basement (also known as Fibre to the Building) – the vast majority of these will be Fibre to the Node. 

Fibre to the Node connections still rely on the copper phone lines to cover the last few hundred metres, while Fibre to the Basement runs copper into the basement of multi-dwelling buildings and relies on the building's copper wiring. 

Meanwhile, around 12% will be dependent on Fibre to the Curb, reliant on much shorter copper runs, while 19% will be lucky enough to have Fibre to the Premises running all the way into their home. 

That leaves 21% using the HFC (hybrid fiber-coaxial) cable networks, 5% on fixed-wireless and 3% on SkyMuster satellite.

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, Broadband Performance Data, May 2020: