The Morrison government bills its proposed digital platform reforms, announced on Thursday, as "world-leading". That may be true, in the same way that China’s "Great Firewall" – a tool of authoritarian suppression – was "world-leading" when it began in the 1990s.

The government's supposed intervention against "fake news" is chilling. Credit:The Age

If that comparison seems dramatic, it is meant to be. The government's ham-fisted measures have absolutely no place in a liberal democracy like Australia.

The proposed laws come as a response to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's digital platforms inquiry, which in itself was largely a response to complaints by conventional media outlets about the impact of social media on their business models.

Not that they don’t have a point. There is an uneven playing field, with broadcasters and publishers subject to a suite of regulations that digital platforms are not, ranging from advertising standards to defamation law. But the way to achieve :platform neutrality" – as the government calls it – is to scrap said regulations, not apply them to new players in ways that are almost certainly unworkable.