#128 - Michael Shellenberger - Australia Is the Testing Ground for Censorship
Show notes
🎙 In This Episode of the 2 Worlds Collide Podcast, I sit down with award-winning journalist and Twitter Files reporter Michael Shellenberger, fresh from CPAC and two days of meetings in Canberra, to talk about the Digital Duty of Care Bill and what he calls the push for mass censorship in Australia.
Michael shares what happened when he sat down with Labor Party staffers to discuss the bill, and why he believes they couldn't answer one simple question: what happens when the people you call "extremists" hold these powers? We dig into the part of the bill most people missed: government-authorised "sock puppet" accounts.
Michael explains the history of fake accounts and bot narratives since 2016, why he sees Australia as a testing ground within Five Eyes, and what eSafety and Digital Rights Watch told him when he asked them to justify it.
We also discuss the government going after the algorithm itself, the "My Feed, My Choice" campaign, why Michael believes framing censorship as "care" is so effective, and the government's response to the Bondi attack. Finally, we talk about Australia's "she'll be right" attitude, what Michael calls suicidal empathy, and why he believes free speech is the foundation Western civilisation is built on.
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