The recent assault on Google by the Australian Government based on anti-trust and freedom of speech argument is one of the most hypocritical and insidious attack on freedom of speech itself.
It is no secret that Scott Morrison does not like anything that can expose his lies – from pretending he is in the country while holidaying in Hawaii when Australia was burning, from claiming he had no part in the sports rort saga to evidence pointing to his direct instructions, and from insisting no cuts on ABC when accounting reality showing otherwise. Scott Morrison is not ashamed to lie and the last thing he wants is to have his lies exposed.
Google allows such platform for this to happen. When contentious issues with Scott Morrison and his government happened, people will be scrambling for information, and Google provides a platform for evidence against this PM and Coalition government’s lies to go viral quickly, and that draws the ire of them. Also, their decrying of control of free speech when hate speeches were removed was hypocritical as the PM and the Coalition government were doing exactly the same to quell free speech when in Scott Morrison’s eyes only speeches he likes can allow the pass to free speech.
Before we go on let us look at one simple thing that Scott Morrison and his government were arguing during the attack – pay for service. The simplest explanation is that Google has nothing to do with the profit of the likes of commercial news outlets. Google curates news according to algorithms but the do not profit from the curating. Google’s basic business model is advertising and subscription services, and Google and Google News do not require subscription. One of the reasons Google created the Android mobile system is to increase the uptake of Google search so there are higher chances for their advertising branch to earn from clicks from users on the advertisements. Google News on Android is a free service. So, the Scott Morrison government’s claim about Google is destroying local news and media outlets is nothing but a lie trying to sell to unsuspecting Australians who do not know how Google and tech company make money. Creating this fear is, as per usual, Scott Morrison’s best tactic.
Google’s other thorn on Scott Morrison’s side was, as I said, its ability to make uncovering of his lies go viral quickly. We had seen that many times last few years, including his latest comments and backlashes about Australia Day made him even more determined to shut down Google or force it out of the Australian market. The truth is Google’s search results are based on users’ search habit. It learns how users search and what they are interested in, thus displaying more relevant results and, of course, more relevant ads to capture business opportunities. So, when there are more people trying to find out the truth of what Scott Morrison government’s claims are, those search results or evidence will be bumped up completely in Google Search and Google News, helping the truth to come out to more people a lot faster. This, as compared to a number of major media and news outlets owned by Scott Morrison’s friends, which their news is highly manually curated and not search based, is more detrimental to Scott Morrison government’s image, as he cannot control the discourse within the society and online.
This leads to the basic argument of freedom of speech.
As mentioned earlier, news and media outlet curate news information manually. So, they can determine what people can read and find out. When these people want to save Scott Morrison’s skin when a scandal break out, they could suppress the ranking of this information so to control the damage to their friend. They may not call themselves State Media like in some countries, but they are performing the role of State Media disguised as free commercial media. That is also part of the reason Scott Morrison wants to cut down ABC, because it refused to behave like a State Media. With limited information, then Scott Morrison can control speech – and foster conversations he likes, even when they are hate speech that could do damage to the society but fits his ego and agenda. However, Google would not allow that to happen cos the search results and news are decided by the users, and when users crave the same truth, it can come out a lot faster and exposing Scott Morrison government’s lies a lot faster. This attracts the ire of Scott Morrison and his friends.
Scott Morrison always hailed himself as a devoted Christian but one of the things we learnt in the last few years is he behaved nothing like a real Christian. There were two very basic principles that Christians should abide to if they really think they are Christians:
Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. The ten commandments and other laws were given to Moses By God. Leviticus 19:11
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13
If Scott Morrison claims himself to be a devoted Christian be does not believe in any of the above or behaves according to any of the above, can he still call himself a Christian?
If a self-proclaimed Christian Prime Minister continues to act against his Christian doctrine, should people, who are real Christians, continue to believe and follow him or they are just forgetting what Jesus taught them:
Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. Matthew 15:14
Is Australia facing the age of ‘Fake Christian, Real Persecution’?
