IGF 2023 Lightning Talk #97 Combating information pollution with digital public goods

Time
Tuesday, 10th October, 2023 (02:50 UTC) - Tuesday, 10th October, 2023 (03:20 UTC)
Room
Room H
Subtheme

Global Digital Governance & Cooperation
Digital Commons as a Public Good

GitHub
Ricardo Torres; UNDP and Digital Public Goods Alliance; [email protected] Fernanda Campagnucci; Open Knowledge Brasil; [email protected] Cynthia Lo; GitHub; [email protected] Giulio Carvalho; Open Knowledge Brasil; [email protected]

Speakers

Ricardo Torres; UNDP and Digital Public Goods Alliance; [email protected] Fernanda Campagnucci; Open Knowledge Brasil; [email protected] Cynthia Lo; GitHub; [email protected] Giulio Carvalho; Open Knowledge Brasil; [email protected]

Onsite Moderator

Cynthia Lo

Online Moderator

Giulio Carvalho

Rapporteur

Cynthia Lo

SDGs

4.7
9.1
9.3
9.5
9.a
9.b
9.c
16.1
17.16

Targets: This proposal is corresponds to the SDGs in a number of ways, specifically with the focus on SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions) which emphasizes the importance of building strong institutions and promoting cooperation to achieve peace and justice through tackling misinformation as information pollution can harm trust in institutions as duty bearers. SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) as this session highlights barriers to innovation, technological advancements, and the development of digital infrastructure in low and middle income countries. Additionally, open-source software, open data, and open AI models as digital public goods can contribute to achieving SDG 9 and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) by providing an avenue for participation and access. Open-source software and digital tools can enhance access to technology and reduce barriers to entry, particularly in low and middle income countries in order to promote inclusive, sustainable platforms for sharing knowledge, expertise, and best practices. This session is dedicated to supporting capacity building in innovation, research, and development, and in enabling countries to understand how disinformation impacts the SDGs.

Format

Presentation

Duration (minutes)
30
Language
English
Description

This session will focus on the theme of Global Digital Governance & Cooperation and Human Rights & Freedoms and leading this session will be the Digital Public Goods Alliance, GitHub, Querido Diario and Open Data Index for Brazil. The Digital Public Goods Alliance and GitHub focus on how open-source and digital public goods help provide a global platform for projects that advance human rights-related work, issues with “data deserts”, and focusing on projects that help combat disinformation and tackle information pollution. While digital technologies are essential parts of our lives and provide solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges, we must urgently recognize, and help solve their downsides. This is particularly true regarding online information pollution, which has grown to be a cause of distrust and obfuscation. Digital public goods (DPGs), open-source software, open data, open AI models, open standards, and open content that help attain the SDGs, can provide scalable solutions that can be adapted to meet different context-specific needs in regard to information pollution. As seen with prominent platforms like Mastodon and Signal, open-source solutions can provide promising and effective alternatives. Given their open-source nature, DPGs can be deployed and adopted quickly by different types of stakeholders, especially in advance of situations and within regions susceptible to information pollution. The session will introduce the DPG concept and its relevance to content governance and information integrity, followed by remarks from DPG products whose work can become essential tools for addressing information pollution at scale globally. Then we will welcome participants to share their challenges, opportunities, and experiences using open-source and host a conversation that will surface promising next steps for open-source adoption in the fight against information pollution.

In order to create an inclusive session for in person and online this session will include a real-time interactive poll and surveys: Use real-time polling that both onsite and online attendees can participate in and the instant feedback will be discussed during the event with Slido and with GoogleForms as a backup. In order to plan for different time zones, we hope to record the session and share the talk at different times throughout the day. Next, this session will provide networking opportunities for online participants with a virtual portal using a Slack channel for digital networking opportunities where onsite participants can also join these sessions through their devices. Lastly, we plan on creating post-event follow-ups for continued engagement with a discussion forum, research groups and a community group on social networking sites where attendees can continue to interact and share their experiences from the event. Additional background papers to provide a better hybrid experience and post event interaction: - Querido Diario: https://queridodiario.ok.org.br/en-US/sobre, - Data Emergency, on how the open data index helped us to open up data during the Covid-19 pandemic: https://ok.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Ebook_EmergenciaDados_OKBR… - Data Ecosystem in the Brazilian Amazon, on how groups are generating and sharing data about climate and environment in the region: https://ok.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Ebook_EcossistemaDeDados.p…