Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis gave a comprehensive interview to Cyprus MEP Fidias Panayiotou, highlighting among other things the issue of bot propaganda that influences and manipulates public opinion, with the Tempe train disaster period serving as a characteristic example.
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Specifically, Mr. Georgiadis stated: “What concerns me most, and I’m telling you this because you’re so active on social media, is that social media, with all their benefits – and I am active myself and I like them – but while on one hand they have many good aspects, on the other hand they also have many negative ones. They have brought to the surface a toxicity. You go on X, I’ll call it by your friend Elon Musk’s name now, you go on X and the insults, threats, curses that are thrown around – these are not pleasant things, and you must have received such treatment, and I receive it constantly. And basically everyone receives it. This very high toxicity I don’t like and I believe it won’t end well. And one of the reasons why Western democracies are experiencing such a major crisis, I believe, is this – that social media are uncontrolled. I personally am very much against anonymity. I believe that all accounts should be mandatorily named. If you want to insult someone, sir, go ahead and insult, but you will also face the consequences of your actions. If you cross the line, I should be able to sue you. Not set up an anonymous account or have a bot and sit there insulting or wishing death on my children or cancer without suffering any consequences. I say, if I could speak to Musk I would tell him: Do you want, Mr. Musk, to make a great revolution in freedom of speech? Make all accounts named. And let everyone say whatever they want. But with their full name. Anonymously you can also tell lies. You can slander the other person.”
Adonis Georgiadis: “Social media anonymity has led to lawlessness”
When asked by Fidias Panayiotou “don’t we have the right to lie?” he replied: “No. If you’re going to harm someone’s honor and reputation, no. If you cause them damage, no. Lying is a bad thing. Unethical. If it’s going to harm the other person, it’s a criminal offense. It’s slander.”
He added: “I’ll say it again because you like direct democracy so you understand it well. With responsibility – freedom comes as a package with responsibility. If you don’t have responsibility along with freedom, then you don’t have freedom. You have lawlessness. And lawlessness leads to destruction. The anonymity of social media has led to lawlessness. Everyone says whatever comes to their head without thinking of any consequence on another person’s life. It’s not right. I’m not saying don’t say what you want. Say whatever you want. But with your name so you have responsibility for what you say. Because if I want to lie, say that you’ve taken a contract, if I know you’ll sue me unless I say or prove that you’ve taken a contract, I won’t write it. But if I know I don’t like Fidias because I believe he supports the Russians and I want to harm him and write that Fidias is a pedophile, which is an extreme example, and two hundred people chase you in the street because you’re a pedophile, that’s not freedom, it’s slander. Do you understand the difference?”
Adonis Georgiadis on Russian propaganda and Tempe
Continuing about bots, he stated: “This is leading Western Democracies to destruction today. And your friend Putin’s bots come to Europe this way. That’s where they come from. Why do they come? Because they’re anonymous. If they were named, could Putin make bots? No. He makes bots because they’re anonymous. If every bot had a name and surname, goodbye Russian propaganda. I consider Russian propaganda to be a major problem. Very big, enormous. In this they are first in the world. I admire them, of course. It’s a kind of war, they do it very successfully. They certainly did it here too, here in Greece back then with Tempe, but okay. They did it here in Greece with Tempe. We found millions of fake social media accounts. We don’t have proof that it was the Russians but someone did it for money.
Public opinion is manipulated, social media manipulate public opinion. When we investigated during that period with Tempe, we officially found from the Authorities, millions of accounts that one day had a name ‘Ludmila’ and the next day became ‘Fidias’. The name is random, don’t misunderstand me. Well, and suddenly accounts that were writing about another topic, I don’t know, on some planet I’m a member of, were dealing with Tempe. It was obvious that someone had an interest in destabilizing Greece. Now that you’re an MEP, you understand that politics is not a simple thing. It’s interests, geopolitics, money. So, therefore, end anonymity, end other bots.
When asked if he means that all this theoretical propaganda was done by Russia, he said: “Russia didn’t necessarily do this. I said that Russia has very great power in this area. The Greek authorities have announced that there was a bot attack, millions in Greece at that time. Whether it was done by Russia or some other power has not been proven. I’m clarifying this. It could have been Russia. It could not have been. What is certain is that Greece suffered a cyber attack from bots. Proven, no question. Besides, someone who wanted chaos to happen in Greece did it.”
Finally, when asked “so there’s no problem and the bots are to blame?”, he replied: “Of course there are many problems. The manipulation of public opinion happens over existing problems. You can’t easily manipulate public opinion if everything is going well. Obviously, on a real problem, based on what mobilized people and their feelings and their sadness and anger for many justified things, on top of the real event that existed came the cyber attack and added fuel to the fire. On top of the real problem, some forces invested to throw Greece into chaos.”
