A look behind the OIA process on Covid misinformation

Netsafe refuse to answer how many misinfo reports they received from the Ministry of Health, and DPMC finally release a misinfo report conducted in 2022.

During the weekend The Australian ran a piece by political commentator Chris Kenny stating that over 4,000 government referrals of what was deemed Covid misinformation - appear to be factual.

The piece is unfortunately behind a paywall, but Racket News had already reported in May further background on this, which you can read in full for free on their Substack.

I’ve been asked how much the New Zealand government directly censored and where’s our smoking gun. I can’t find evidence that anything like what was found in say, the Twitter Files happened - where the FBI and Biden White House directly sent accounts to Twitter.

Social media platforms were also simply banning Covid related posts as mis/disinformation on their own without direct government interference.

In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health’s dedicated mis/disinformation team, DART, referred misinformation onwards to be actioned - including to Netsafe who could report it to social media platforms on their behalf.

How many referrals from the Ministry of Health were sent to Netsafe and what were the outcomes of it?

I haven’t been able to find out so far.

A handful of dedicated requestors has allowed me to cover aspects of the Covid response through their Official Information Act (OIA) requests. When I wrote several posts on mis/disinformation during Covid - I relied on their and then my own follow up OIAs.

Ministry of Health OIA’s show their DART team discussing referrals over email with Netsafe. When Chantelle Baker, a conservative commentator, got back on Facebook through her new venture - Netsafe reported her to Facebook but failed as she hadn’t violated any platform policies. From their email trail with the Ministry of Health, it appears Netsafe reported her to Facebook on their own volition. The DART team member who told them she was back on Facebook got a response Netsafe knew about it and were acting on it already.

Netsafe is the appointed agency through the Ministry of Justice of the Harmful Digital Communications Act. They are subject to OIA’s under the work they do as part of the Act. But Netsafe don’t appear to like responding to OIA’s - if you look through what’s available through the few on the FYI website - only a couple got responses.

Almost all of the mis/disinformation content I wrote is based on OIAs to the Ministry of Health and Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC).

Netsafe had partially responded to an OIA under the Act for the Chantelle Baker removal requests. After reading the Racket News story I eventually did an OIA to see how many referrals Netsafe received from the Ministry of Health, and how many of those were then reported on to platforms. But they refused the OIA saying that work didn’t fall under the Act and therefore they were not required to answer the OIA.

But on what basis were they receiving and reporting mis/disinformation referrals from the Ministry of Health then? On what basis were they reporting Chantelle Baker for disinformation? They’ve already confirmed through the above OIA they were reporting Chantelle Baker based on her alleged Covid misinformation under the Act - so is their answer to me an attempt to circumvent answering?

Another misinformation report from DPMC

There was 1 report I couldn’t get out of DPMC when I wrote the series of posts on mis/disinformation. I knew it existed from someone’s else’s OIA and I asked DPMC to provide it in an OIA I submitted in April (it’s all such a process!). In early July, after twice more prompting, DPMC published it as a proactive release on their website.

(Why some reports are released and others remain hidden in OIA’s I still don’t understand - The Disinformation Project reports are available in OIA’s but none have been released on the DPMC website.)

This DPMC mis/disinformation report follows on from the Classification Office’s 2021 ‘the Edge of the Infodemic’ report, by Kantar which looked at the general misinformation landscape in New Zealand with a heavy focus on Covid.

In September 2022, DPMC paid Kantar to do another report titled ‘Unite against the COVID- 19 infodemic’. They refused to release to me how much was paid for the report.

However it’s far more nuanced than the other reports and frequently shows some introspection:

It’s an interesting read if you are curious about this topic as it was the 1st time I’ve seen ‘tell us an example’ of what people thought was misinformation:

The first one ‘vaccines are unsafe/ineffective’ is fascinating and relates to The Australian piece.

And this:

The world is complex and nuanced and mis/disinformation is the same. It deserves greater thought than blunt tools and brick wall ideas to ‘stamp it out’.

I hope the OIAs were worth it - the report is available here if you’re curious to read it.