Everyone hates social media, right? But stop pretending you’re better than it

There are reverse ferrets and then there are reverse ferrets, like the spectacular one made by Peter Dutton yesterday.

Last year, the government’s innocuous misinformation bill, which would impose the same kind of half-baked co-regulatory regime on social media companies as that imposed on broadcasters, was, at least according to the opposition, a “very bad bill” that gave the Australian Communications and Media Authority “extraordinary powers”, “appalling and will be strongly opposed”. Communications shadow minister David Coleman joined the goons of Sky News to conjure up the “horror scenario” of ordinary Australians being forced to attend inquiries into their own statements.