The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Welcome to the session on editorial media and big architecture. I am chairing the session today. I'm a professor the journalism at University of Schibsted. It's about the material conditions about distribution of media content., and editorial media are, as you know, responsible for overseeing power and for providing an arena for democratic conversation. So here in Norway, it's the responsibility of the state to ensure the infrastructure for information, communication, and expression is open, diverse, and free to all. This responsibility is in fact embedded in Paragraph 100 of the Norwegian Constitution on freedom of expression. Media largely used to own the distribution in the past, owned the television towers that relayed broadcasting signals, the trucks that delivered newspapers, and they leased the bandwidth where radio signals were transmitted, but they have also always been somewhat reliant on third parties to get their content out to audiences. In the past, these were cable distribution companies, video stores, movie theaters, and newsstands. Today news delivery is modular, it's distributed through a range of platforms, most of which are owned by a handful of U.S.‑based technology companies. News media rely on terrestrial and submarine fiber cables to have hyperlinking and also co‑production and audience reach. They need content delivery networks to stream content, they rely on Cloud services like the ones provided by Microsoft and Amazon Web Services to store and manage data. They rely on web architecture like provided by Google for website functionality and news media have also relied for quite some time on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Tik Tok to reach and engage their users, and also to generate advertising revenue.
More and more, news media also grow increasingly dependent on the AI services provided by Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon for research and production, analytics, and also personalization of content.
So, many of the key players here operate across sectors, and now this creates potential vulnerability ace long the value chain of news production and distribution raising questions as to the resilience of the overall technological infrastructure for news globally. These resilience issues emerged because these technologies, and these are technologies that work really well, by the way, they're concentrating in power and they're also concentrating geographically.
So, we are quickly approaching the point where it becomes impossible to operate sustainability without these services so this leads to issues of dependency and potential capture posing questions about the resilience of the information ecology overall. So how does this infrastructure create vulnerabilities for editorial media ability to operate sustainably, how do we secure free editorial media in the future. We will delve into the issues in the session. We will start with two keynotes followed by a panel discussion.
Our first keynote is by Chris Disspain. Chris is a corporate lawyer who for 16 years was the CEO of the Manager of the Australia Internet Country Code where he started the Australian IGF. He was a Director of ICANN, so Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers for the 9 years and member of the multistakeholder advice group for 6 years and continues to be heavily involved in ICANN and all areas of Internet governance.
So, Chris, the floor is yours.
(Applause).
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Good morning, everybody. This is a really, really weird setup. Hang on. That's it. Let's get rid of that. I can hear myself properly instead of cutting out. Good morning, everybody.
Thanks for asking me to be here. I'm going to ‑‑ I was in two minds how to do this, in the end I decided the Best thing for me to do is sort of level set and save all the sort of controversial stuff for the discussion because I have no doubt there is going to be some of that.
So let me start by asking you to imagine waking up tomorrow morning to find that your favorite news outlet, maybe an independent investigative site or local newspaper trying to expose corruption has vanished. All because it's run out of money, all because it's broken the law, not because of those, because the infrastructure it depended on, Cloud storage, content delivery systems, et cetera, was quietly turned off by a private company acting in its own interests and with no oversight or transparency.
That's ‑‑ that's the reality. That could happen today. So the question that I'm going to address is how does the concentrated Internet infrastructure affect a free and resilient news media. In an era where information is both our most valuable resource and most contested battleground, understand being the invisible hand shaping our access to news is more crucial than ever.
We tend to think of the Internet as an abstract space, a borderless cloud, an place where information flows freely. It's not a democratic realm floating above us, it's physical, centralized, and privately owned. At every layer from the undersea cables that carry data to the data centers that host it to the platforms that distribute it, real companies control real assets and with that comes enormous power.
I think we're all clear by what we mean by Internet infrastructure and I'm going to talk mainly about with reference to mainly undersea cables and CDN content delivery networks, but it applies to all the layer. They're not just technical scaffolding, they're points of control, and when ownership of the layers is concentrated in the hands of a few, then we can create choke points that can be used intentionally or not to silence journalism, suppress descent, or manipulate public discourse.
It's ‑‑ the concentration isn't just about market share, it's about infrastructure power. The ability to shape, restrict or enable the flow of information at the most fundamental level. As platforms and infrastructure providers consolidate, they evolve from mere gatekeepers to architects of the entire media ecosystem. Their control extends from the creation of news through to the distribution and to how and whether it reaches you at all.
When a small number of CDN providers control the infrastructure that delivers most of the web content, they also effectively act as gatekeepers, if they chose, voluntarily or under government or corporate pressure to restrict access to certain news sources, those outlets may back practically invisible or unreliable, and of course undersea cables are the physical backbone for the global Internet and that includes news delivery. A lot of people not involved in the area think the undersea cables are owned by governments and indeed some of them are, but a lot of them are owned by a small number of corporations and the number of governments that own them is also very small.
Controlling of this part of the infrastructure enables you to prioritize or deprioritize certain data flows so you can favor your own platforms, your own services or own partners. It creates potential choke points where governments are companies can interfere with transmission of independence journalism and that's especially true in the case of crisis or conflicts, not that we have any of those around at the moment.
It can enable censorship by infrastructure, denial of access and bandwidth ruffling. Speaking of censorship, we traditionally worry about government censorship, but corporate censorship can be just as impactful and far more opaque. CDNs can remove or block content they consider controversial, false, or harmful. And while this may align with societal goals, it can also be abused to suppress legitimate investigation or whistleblowers.
Infrastructure owners have at times been pressured by governments or acted on their own to block content or services. Examples include financial intermediaries, cutting off funding to news organizations, app stores removing controversial apps or network providers shutting down entire countries access to content during a political crisis. That's the ‑‑ imagine you woke up in the morning and you couldn't access the news channel.
There are surveillance and privacy risks as well. Companies that own cables may, maybe not can't, but may be authorized to share with governments. Confidentiality and journalists, whistleblowers are undermined. Surveillance at the infrastructure level not the software level is harder to detect or resist. CDNs often handle DNS, TNS handshakes and metadata about who accesses which and what news content and concentrated ownership allows the aggregation of highly sensitive consumption data which could be abused. The concentration could also put economic measure on independent media, tech giants in cables also dominate social media distribution, search engines, cloud hostings, advertising markets, and you'll notice that I haven't named any of them because I suspect we all know who they are.
The vertical integration can financially squeeze independent media who become dependent on a few platforms for content distribution and monetization. Infrastructure control gives big companies even more leverage over the digital economy and there is of course the risk of geopolitical weaponnization, the countries that dominate the ownership, currently the U.S. and China, can pressure or disrupt global information flows and regimes, companies with influence how news circulates internationally, and for smaller countries, the lack of ownership or control creates a dependency which reduces sovereignty over the information access.
History shows concentrated ownership whether traditional media or infrastructure poses serious risks to media pluralism and independence. When a few entities controls the spaces and relationships on which media organizations depend, they can shape public discourse, not just by what they amplify, but by what they suppress, there is economic leverage, too, news organizations, especially some dependent for access, distribution, and revenue. Dependency can erode editorial dependence and long‑term sustainability, and there is some marginalization, consolidation often leads to less original more homogenized content and decline of local reporting and diversity of voices, even if overall content quality doesn't always suffer. I live in a small village in the UK, and it's reached the point now where the only way I can really find out about what's going on in the local area is in the individual parish magazines that still get printed and delivered through the front door because the local news is over. It doesn't really exist anymore. There are local papers, but all they are, all they have become is delivery of advertising.
The concentration introduces vulnerabilities that threatens the resilience of Internet and news media. Small groups of countries own, outages or targeted disruptions can have effects. Look at the recent blackout in Portugal and Spain. That doesn't highlight the importance of diverse providers and reliance on a few actors making the system brittle, if that doesn't highlight it, then nothing does.
Witness the beautiful and glorious United Kingdom privatized water system, the individual water authorities have a monopoly of delivery of water in various parts of the country and most ‑‑ nearly all of whom are polluting our rivers and waterways so at that they can pay more money to their shareholders.
Infrastructure owners can also become instruments of the states or corporate power and willing their control to advanced political or economic interests. Sometimes at the expense of press freedom and public interest.
When ownership is concentrated, failure of one operator or goa R geopolitical tension, the thing I mentioned we didn't have very much of at the moment can lead to severe disruptions, and it's important to remember that news organizations and depend on realtime global access to sources, feeds, witnesses, correspondents, and concentration makes the system itself more vulnerable to things like cable cuts, political absorptions or regulatory capture and corporate decisions written by profit and not by public interest. Consequences for democracy could be profound. Dependence on infrastructure depends on actors undermines the ability to serve communities and hold local power to account.
It used to be possible, you may not be able to hold national power to account until there is no election but you used to be able to hold local power to account because you have the news and turn up at the office and shout at them a lot.
Homogenized content and diminished local reporting weakens the public's ability to scrutinize and analyze those in power leading to less informed citizens and diminished political participation and of course there are threat threats to pluralism with fewer independent actors the diversity of perspective shrinks.
Minority vices marginalized, marginalized communities marginalized and risk being excluded from the conversation. The challenges require a multi‑pronged approach, of course, and I have no doubt we're going to talk about that some when we get to the panel. It may be that there are additional tools for limiting media concentration and are not appropriate or don't work anymore. They're certainly broken down in the mainstream media. The rules used to be that you couldn’t own and use the television channel but not anymore. Policy should encourage a diverse ecosystem. Policy is important. How you set it is obviously also important but teas another conversation. Infrastructure owners need to be held to higher standards of transparency regarding their control over data flows and so on. We should invest in alternative infrastructure, community owned networks, and independent hosting and decentralized platforms are within our own control if we choose to take that control.
It's a fundamental challenge to the freedom, diversity, and resilience to the news media and if it's left unchecked it risks entrenching new forms of gatekeeping undermining local journalism and the voices that sustain our democracy. But that said, it was ever thus, and it might sound as if I'm suggesting that we're headed towards the end of a diverse media or death of local news or single point of control of our news, and I don't believe that inquiry. It's forever tried to manipulate what we read. If we look at the relatively recent fight between Prince Harry and RupertMerdock and case in which he sued them, he won, front page news in lots of newspapers but bizarrely in the Merdock press a small article on the bottom of page 8. He didn’t have the power. Despite the fact that he owns a lot of media, to suppress the story.
There are more opportunities now for citizen journalists than there have ever been and I think we're taking advantage of them but it's not always journalism, sometimes just rhetoric.
Above all else, we should never underestimate the resilience of us humans an desire to be heard. I started by asking you to imagine your favorite news network vanished, well that's not something that some people need to imagine. It has happened in several countries over the last 10 to 15 years where the government has attempted to switch off the population's access to news. What happens when that happens? Our own resilience kicks in. In one particular case by folks heading to attics and dusting off old modems and connecting to the world of news with two rubber caps and sound escape of squeaks and buzzes over the good old fashion telephone. Even so the choices we make today will shape the feature of thus for expression and democratic participation for generations to come. It's our collective responsibility policy makes, industry leaders, journalist, citizens alike to ensure that the infrastructure of the Internet serves the public good and not just private power. Thank you for listening. I look forward to the panel discussion.
(Applause).
MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Chris, for that. The next keynote speaker is Anna Schriffin, the Director of technology communication program at Colombia University school of international and public affairs. PhD from the University of Navara on online disinformation and published extensively on journalism and sustainability capture and o policies to support journalism. She's a former journalist covering Asia and Europe as report for many years. Anya, the floor is yours.
>> ANYA SHRIFFIN: Thank you all for inviting me, and Haley for organizing this. Everybody good? Okay. I'm going to time myself. I have 15 minutes. If I have to skip I'm happy to accepted the talk to you later. It's really great to see old friends here like Pamella and Guy and Rasmus and new friends too, and thank you to UNESCO for the support over the years.
I'm going to be depressing. I'm from Colombia and in America. We're in a terrifying moment, one that feels like everything we worked to build over decades is being dismantled, not for any good reason, not because thoughtful people who shared the values of an educated or equal society built on truth and science and scientific inquiry decided it was time to carefully consider how to make the world more fair, more just, provide services more efficient bely, referring to DOGE. No, everything is being torn apart by autocrats because they can. They came to pour with support from oligarchs and organizations with money enough to support. They had support enough of frustrated voters angry with income equality, wokism, and migration. In the U.S. and other country, the new leaders use every method they have to grab and hold more and design courts and institutions and civil service and Civil Society. So now we're here trying to figure out what to do next.
As usual, the media is on the frontlines, journalists believe that they're the guardians of truth and they were called to power to account. They work if local communities covering local news, institutions, politicians, and they work across borders, exposing massive global problems and provide new information to change hearts and minds and be acted on by responsible governments that want to act.
Quality information is even more important now in the age of AI slop where age of information ecosystem is a wash of misleading images and stra blah words at that sound like they mean something but don't.
Public discourse has been totally debased in the U.S. our leaders lie without compunction, seem to lie on every topic, migration, vaccines, they attack and defame opponents they did what they did in the McCarthy era and attacked the voice of America and like like rainians burned books. What comes after the attack, confusion. Nathan heller New York piece last November summed up the U.S. today. It's no longer the microtargeted online disinformation that's the problem but the general confusion. As he said about seeding the a.m. beans of information, throwing facts and fake facts alike into an environment of low and worse is the terrifying public violence, the assassination in minute societies, people bringing scars to crash into protesters, not once by repeatedly.
he talks about life before the public, without the public what did we have in the middle ages? Fairs, pilgrimages, multitudes dominated by bias or emotions angers or panic. Sounds like today. I won't go into all the details we all mow so well about what happened to quality news media, the collapse of the business models, IP and content stolen by social media, changes in audience comes, loss of advertising revenue, captured by the state, the spread of news deserts, Rasmus will talk about trust I'm sure, COVID‑19 hitting advertising, and quality information is a public good that's my husband been saying for decades and if you want to pay the full cost of production and dissemination and that's true of course of our culture, health, and many other essentials.
So here but there is a cost to not producing public goods, and we are paying that price now so here we are in 2025, trust and Musk decided to cut funding for journalism around the world, voice of America, staforts d ups in Africa, exile media from Russia and Ukraine, intermediary organizations, it's a blood bath ripping through the system. Some such as Gina Neff and Taylor Owen say that we immediate to have new regulatory frameworks, as the previous speaker pointed out much of what we've done may not be enforceable in the future, others like glacier have said we have to prepare for systems collapse and they lay out in a recent paper and I think it was in the Stanford social innovation review different options for funders, whether it's protecting communities, blocking the worst parts or being creative and willing to transform and fundamentally reimagine the sectors surrounded or supported by foundations and under attack.
Since we're talking today about platform dependency and the material conditions for fry and resilient news media, I want to talk about where I think those discussions are going and what I'm hearing around the world. I first want to acknowledge that there has been a tremendous amount of creative thinking already. I strongly disagree with the view that journalists didn't innovate, spent too much time blaming platforms. I think that journalists and donors have spent decades promoting engagement with audiences, supporting local news, trying to communicate and build trust with communities. They've innovated in endless ways trying the subscription pod he will, community building models, trying to earn income to replace by the tech monopoly. Companies in men government vs. done a huge amount to support public interest news, I don't think is a moment we all need to sit around and criticize ourselves. I think we've done enough of that and the time is action. There has been also, let me point out, tremendous enchainment with the platforms. Attempts have been made to create voluntary codes of conduct, require data transparency, work together to develop new forms of technology and income stream, and it was only when those attempts were not sufficient that government stepped in and tried to help publishers, the good news is that we have the tools. Governments tried first with voluntary measures but they know how to do tax policy and they know how to regulate monopolies, many especially in this part of the world have done a terrific job supporting public broadcasting and journalism. But when government has tried to use use their powers to tax and legislate they were met with platform resistance, the platforms have shown themselves to be bad actors in many cases. I have a little list. They have polluted the information ecosystem by making money from spreading mis and disinformation and hate speech, they steal intellectual property and by stealing it they weaken the ability of those who want to provide good information to be able to do. It they're monopoly capitalists and stifled information, engaged in tax avoidance despite reaping enormously from the power. The oligarchs heading the forms use their wealth to interfere with the political process and written the rules in the U.S. to benefit themselves, their monopolies and done the same things in countries around the world. Not respected s attempt for IP copy right. The it is and was the U.S. playbook. Spreading misinformation about laws, commissioning research and threatening exit, and I have a book chapter I wrote with FlipoaR that comes out next year that looks as South Africa and Brazil for the classic playbook in tech. Some regulators, the Sims and Australian competition commission came to realize the heart of the problem is platform dominance and power asymmetries between platforms and publishers and this is why in Australia it was the competition authorities rather than the copyright office that tried to get platform remuneration for publishers. The Australia case is significant because it led to payments by Google and Meta along with a raft of measures enacted by government which helped shore up declining local news. But we saw what happened in Canada when they adopted a similar law, Meta responded by dropping news which caused a collapse in website traffic, we saw in Brazil how Google lobbied against similar law and South Africa and Canada and all over Europe, Google is it also pulling out of many Australian laws and always they blame the victim, it's the labor party's fault for not being clear. Anyway, my point is that the platform in trans generals has led regulators consider a host of new measures, late 2024, Australia announce that had platform that didn't want to negotiate with publishers could pay a digital levy which would be more expensive than what bargaining code payments would be, South Africa is also looking at digital levies and many countries are considering things like digital services taxes with funding earmark the for journalism. I don't want to go over time, but I'll just say a few things.
In the OSCE we have this report coming out on platform dependencies and publishers which we're presenting in September and October and talk about must carry and visibility policies. This is I think a dramatic shift and I'm not sure much would be implementable in the U.S. because of first amendment considerations which preclude compelled speech. But I think that there is two things to remember. One is had the platforms agreed to previous laws and attempts we would not be in this position at what I consider fourth‑best measures and the only way to get concessions is to proceed from platforms, is to proceed with legislative proposals; otherwise, they do not act.
I think that the next frontier is going to have to be some sort of AI tax, possibly with funding given to support journalism, and I see four policy options. Free for all where the LLM AI companies can scrape however they want online and creators and publishers have no protection. This is what we saw during a training period. The second path would be one in which there is a strict policy of no use of intellectual property. This is clearly unrealistic. Now we have two options which involve paying for the use of IP. One would be a fixed scale of fees that are pre‑determined. Payments to Pharma companies during periods of compulsory licensing of medications are one example. I know the South Africans in the room are very familiar and India as well with compulsory licensing regimes. Frankly I'm working on a paper now with a team of exists and that is what we are going to be appropriating. The other way is more what Australia did, you lay out a negotiations framework. This has to be done because the competitive environment has a direct bearing on negotiations. This was the whole entire point that Australia understood that I don't have fair conversations when it's a couple of monopolies at the table.
So I want to be really clear, I've got 5 more minutes, and I'll get back to a couple of things. I want to be clear what we're up against. The U.S. government made it clear that it opposes both tech regulation and taxation all over the world. There is a proposal in Trump's current budget to preempt state regulation on AI for 10 years. This is really important because in the U.S. we have federal systems so states do quite a lot. If they're not able to regulate AI for 10 years we have a huge problem on our hands.
Another thing is I don't know if you've heard about the revenge tax. This is a provision in the new budget which would punish companies in companies that try to enforce the OECD tax agreement on global minimum corporate taxes which you may remember was settled at 15% which is pretty low or impose digital services taxes. This is the U.S. saying, we're taxing you back if you do either of these things.
The funny thing about this, the revenge tax is such a bad idea that U.S. business hired lobbyists to try to kill it. That's amazing. Let's make no mistake what's happening in the U.S. Trump and his friends oppose miss and disinformation research and legislation because they like to lie online. Trump and Vans and their Silicon Valley allies oppose paying for IP because that would eat into their profit. That's what's happening here. Let's not muddy the waters. We're not talking about first amendment or anything else. Here is the question. Can Europe stick together? In the U.S. those of us who care about the stuff, want to know whether the EU and rest of the world okay if capitulate or whether will take with the plans to tax and regulate big tech. India apparently agreed to roll back the tax on digital advertising. There is also discussion including the head of financing for development meeting in next week where I'll be going about whether having the U.S. out of global discussions is better because it means the rest of the world can go on with making their own plans. Normally what the U.S. does is they're negotiators, demand concessions to international frameworks, drag out the discussions, and they then in the end after dragging out, wasting everyone's time, watering down, they just refuse to sign because Congress won't pass it anyway.
So I don't think that the EU and the rest the world and the international community has any choice either U.S. is isolationist and out of the picture for long term and in which case the rest of the world has to move ahead in all sorts of areas without us, or the U.S. returns to sanity and in which case it's good to have spent a few years developing smart policies and the U.S. can catch up later.
Thank you for including me and I look forward to the discussions.
(Applause).
MODERATOR: Thank you for that, Anya. I'll introduce the panel now. Distinguished actors working in the area of policy, industry and academia. First Pamela Sittoni, a Kenya journalist and author. Media and communications consultant and public editor at nation media group in Kenya. She's previously served as exec tech editor and managing editor in the East African and Standard newspapers in Kenya an also worked as communication specialist for the United Nations children's fund, UNICEF in Kenya. Pamella?
>> She has a background of journalist and editor and served as general secretary of Norwegian press association and Chair of the latest Norwegian freedom of expression commission.
We have Rasmus Kleis Nielson, senior research associate at roites where also served. He published extensively on political communication, business of news, platform dependency and misinformation and co‑author of the annual Roiters annual digital news report.
A Norwegian lawyer, professor of constitutional law. She's a special advisor to the Norwegian human rights institution. Anina served as legal advisor for the Council of Europe and served as Chair of the commission of academic freedom of expression here in Norway. Tawfik Jelassi is assistant Director‑General at UNESCO. PhD in information systems from New York university and served as Minister of higher education, scientific research and information and communication technologies in Tunisa. Professor of strategy and technology management at IMD. We also have on stage two keynotes, Anya Schriffin and Chris Disspain. Tawfik is joining us now.
MODERATOR: Welcome to the panel, everyone. We'll start with the session on reactions to the keynote presentations I think. I want to start maybe with you, Rasmus. Chris tells this story in the sector and draws it back to the press. Do you think it's a good parallel, same old story.
>> Reminder of the coat, like other men more so. I think it is the same old story much more pronounced in that the concentration of power we see today is increasingly transnational and even global and that is a more sent waited than the history that Chris rightly outlined.
I also think it's important to keep in mind the animal spirits of the macialght, animalistic that have been unleashed in the areas, there is also a political story that I think Chris gestured towards when you mention privatization of order, for example, utilities, watering down of cross‑media ownership legislation, and I think if you want to understand where we are today it's important to pay attention to what's happening in the White House and also the history of this. The moment we're in today I think has a political history that goes back at least to George W. Bush and the Barack Obama administration to the Blaire Prime Minister and David Cannon to chancellor Shoda and Merkel in terms of a long period in terms corporate councilization and not only accepted and endorsed and wholeheartedly pursued by establishment of political parties at the center left and center right. So for example, here is a quote. Our companies that created the Internet, expanded it, and other ways other countries can't compete. And high mind of positions and issues is just to some of their own commercial interests. This is not a quote from the White House. This is a quote from Obama in 2015. Right. There is a political story here of deliberate non‑intervention and deregulation that is across the political spectrum and across the Atlantic and in fact if we are to believe what we read in the press stood the belief of the European commission is not to respond to the hope of many events like this but allegedly deregulation, corporate consolidation and apparently if what we're told today by the Wall Street Journal about the possibility of pausing enforcement of DSA for U.S. companies, it's to make due political concessions in the interest of maintaining some sort of tie across the Atlantic so I think there is a important political story if we want to understand who is responsible for where we are today, we should probably inform as to what we hope from the same actors going forward.
MODERATOR: Thank you. Anina do you think we're too late in regulating this space? How would you describe the current challenges for the information ecology and human rights?
>> Yeah. I very much agree with Rasmus. We are certainly too late but in some ways I think lawyer's law is always too late. We're sort of trailing the world. The world goes on and we run after it and try to regulate 2 and mend the things that don't work with regulations. That's law generally, it's like that with all new technologies, even like cars and everything. The situation is different because the world is spinning fast. The Internet is fast, technology is fast, everything is going at a much higher space and reaching out to a number of more people a lot faster than in any previous ways of technology, I think, and so law is trailing the world but democracy is by the nature slow, and that's to try to get people involved and listen to what the constituents have to say about things. Obviously, we have to do that, but seeing a model for regulation that incorporates that slowness into the pace that the world is working with today I think is very difficult, so the challenge is to free speech, obviously, but particularly perhaps freedom of information I mean the big Internet revolution, obviously, it's the all people get to speak freely about what they want, where they want, in some ways at least on the mercy of big tech companies. The big influence before social media is overflow or unchecked information. So the model that we've sort of been relating to up until the Internet came was one where some fact checkers, some quality checkers, some guardians have always sort of filtered the information that we get and that's so very different today and it's really hard to envision how to meet that even with more training in digital literacy and critical thinking. It's very hard to keep up because we as human beings are also a lot slower than the machines are going right now.
MODERATOR: Yeah, so regulation is usually reactionary, right. Politics is usually national and these systems are global in a sense. So, Anya paints a kind of bleak picture of where we are today. I want to ask you, Pamella, what do you think about Anya's warning that we shouldn't rely on the U.S. to regulate this space. How is this dependency felt in the African context?
>> PAMELLA SITTONI: Thank you, Anya for that wonderful presentation. I couldn't agree with you more of terms of the rest of the world truly looking at America's opposition to regulation, America's opposition to taxation of this media, tech companies, and thinking about a solution that includes everybody else. I think for me, my question would be the how to go about it.
Because when you look at Africa situation, for example, we find ourselves in a situation where we can't really have the bargaining company against the companies. We look at Google or Meta and if they pull out of Africa, what difference would it make to their bottom line? Obviously, none. Because what impact would it have on the information flow in that part of the world? A great impact. So we find ourselves kind of in catch .22 situation. I look at what Chris said about the policies and also about creating a system where the companies are made to play by global playbook and not specific rules for certain countries. What Google does in Australia should also be compelled to do the same in Africa. Also we've had situations where companies are allowed to pick and choose, they pick and choose who to work with, which media host to work with, who to pay and how much to pay. So, this call for accountability and transparency I think should be made to apply globally and not in specific regions only. Thank you.
MODERATOR: Yeah. Thank you for that. From sort of an industry perspective, how real is this power really felt in the industry? What are the threats to freedom of informations?
>> Thank you to the two great keynotes. I think what we see, in my opinion, is that social media or the platforms, they are amplifying the weaknesses of the society in where they operate. So when we see the polarization in the U.S., it was there already. Like Philippines where we have strong and clear messages from Maria, Philippines were never a good place before Facebook either. But I guess at least we in this room share this mission of trying to foster and lighten the public debate. And depending on the problem, the answer is almost always trusted media, trusted edited media. And at this very moment, actually, VG, Norway's major private free media outlet is celebrating its 80th Anniversary, so the Prime Minister is there, I should have been there myself but I'm here. That makes it possible for me to tell thaw VG has in a population of 5‑million people, daily 2‑million visitors and 1.5‑million comes directly to VG. That is extremely impressive. Almost all the ‑‑ they were funded after the 2nd World War as democracy project and that project is still going on. They've had a very clear policy for what their role was in society and they work on that proudly. I agree to all and that is why I guess how echo chamber developed, but regulations have been too slow because assumptions are wrong. We assumed U.S. is ally for our democracy and now we know for sure that it was not. Of course, it was too late. We didn't treat the challenges seriously enough. But what we are doing it now, I think. And I think we more and more see parallel to the 1990 where the climate policy also understood that the polluter had to pay. So we are sort of copying the polluter pay principle that was established back then, and I think that has both a economic aspect but likewise it's important that it has a moral aspect of it, and I think that's fair because when we see not accountable platforms does not or are spreading pollution into our information climate, there is someone else left to clean up the mess and very often that the editor media, and to make the polluter pay, I think we can enforce those that are edited and those that are responsible. Like for instance VG adheres to the Norwegian media responsibility law, and also is part of a very beautiful press ethical system that Norway has and the Nordics share almost likewise and that I think is a great importance. In the end we cannot be lame duck facing those that are not playing by rules. It's not more complicated than that.
MODERATOR: Yeah, talking about very clear institutional differences I guess between the two sectors. Tawfik, how is UNESCO working to ensure a free information space in the context of the keynotes that we hear today?
>> TAWFIK JELASSI: Thank you, Helle. Thank for both the keynote speakers because they set the stage very carefully for us, they were very eloquent to the arguments. I'm tempting to add to the title. It's not only conditions for a free and resilient news media but as for trustworthy news media to pick on the previous panelists who brought up the issue of trust. And the previous plan is also mentioned Maria Erisa the famous quote she said without facts there is not truth, and without truth, there is no trust. And without trust, there is no shared reality happening which can impact. Today we do have a new shared reality, and as it was mentioned before, it calls us to act.
So what UNESCO has done three years ago, it has launched a major global initiative called for an Internet of trust which was an inclusive multistakeholder process involving not only the 194 Member States of UNESCO but as Civil Society, companies, platforms, operators, academia, research, technical community, organizing free global open consultations, receiving 10 thousand inputs from these stakeholders, inputs coming from over 134 countries, and what I have in my hand here is a booklet published about a year ago it's called the UNESCO guidelines for the governments of digital platforms. It calls or spells out the conditions for a free resilient, trustworthy, media. Clearly defining accessibility in terms of transparency, accountability, user empowerment, independent regulators, oversight bodies. Why do that? Because I don't think ‑‑ because the way is clear and the what is clear. But the how today is the challenge. How to go about it. We need maybe clear regulatory system.
To anchor the process in the human rights starts, because It's also about individual dignity, data privacy, about the user empowerment, as I said a minute ago, so the good news that we are now implementing these guidelines, we have pilot implementation underway, we set up a network of AT regulators from all over the world and we had last year the first UNESCO global conference for regulatory authorities, why we need them? Because of course they can't contextualize these guidelines and. They can contextualize, and they can of course take into account and they have to the specify sty of regions and countries when implementing these set of principles. So this is an effort to ‑‑ but again I stress the multistakeholder it, multilateral inclusive process because what some of you mentioned is a problem for society at large, and there is no one single country or actor who can tackle this issue successfully, we need to join forces in to achieve our goal.
MODERATOR: Thank you. Anya, you outline the U.S. is sort of isolationist now, what's your belief now of the global systems, is it going to work if the U.S. isn't able to or willing to collaborate? To pull out as you say?
>> ANYA SHRIFFIN: I think it's ‑‑ I know we talked about it during the South African hearings. It's normal for companies to threaten to exit. That is what they always do. And I understand I've heard so many people in Africa say what Pamella is saying. In terms of economics, the exit threat really makes no sense because these companies make money off news and quality information, and even if they had to share some of the surplus, they would still be making plenty of profit. Right. It makes no sense to exit.
I think sort of three things. One is clearly as Pamella pointed out, countries and publishers have to negotiate collectively, you know, the Danish example is really important. So Kenya by itself may not feel like a good market but all of Africa is a market. So that's the first thing. Second thing is let's be realistic. If these companies exit, Chinese technology will take over, so Tik Tok or whoever will just take on this job, so there is actually an alternative and those platforms know that. And then finally, eventually other countries would develop their own technology so Indonesia telecom, Brazil, South Africa, more innovation later. As I mentioned before, none of these options are great options, but that's where we're at.
MODERATOR: Yeah. Chris, it seems like most of the paneling agree with you. Are you disappointed in Chris, you're assuming I agree with myself.
MODERATOR: Do you care to disagree with yourself?
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Well, do I think ‑‑ sorry, I do think that we need to be a little bit careful about what we say. I've heard everyone ‑‑ most people talking about regulation. Different people hear different things when you say regulation. Is that better? Lovely.
The Chinese government hearsay regulation it means something completely different. Tawfik was talking about regulation, with him I agree because he was talking about multistakeholder regulation or what I would call policy, global policy that can be implemented around the world, I think there is quite a danger in talking about regulation because it needs into the narrative of some of the more authoritarian governments around the world.
What we need is global policy and what we need is the good guys and I'm not going to say who I think the good guys are, but the good guys need to actually buy into the global multistakeholder way of making policy. And what that means is that you have to take the good with the bad. It means you're not going to win every argument and what you can't do if you're a government is if you don't win something, pick up your bucket and spade and go and create your own laws to make it happen, and there is a tendency for that to be happening right now in certain places around the world and not a million miles from where we are today.
So what I would say is yes I do agree that we need to figure out ways of making sure that we maintain the diversity, we maintain an open and free and resilient media, but just by saying that we probably need to regulate isn't going to cut it. I just want to say one other thing, which is that we do have open, resilient media. It does exist around the word. It's not everywhere, but it does exist. It exists in the Australian broadcasting corporation, it exists in the jolly old BBC, it's been with me all my life and wins as independent because everyone hates it, and that's a key point. If everyone is equally unhappy, when the left is in government they think BBC is right wing and left is in government, they think it's left wing. That's how do it and it does work. Of course they're under threat too. Because of the funding. Not because Google owns an undersea platform but because of the funding model and how that works. This is a much bigger problem I think than just those ownership of stuff. And as Anya said if Google or Microsoft or that lot can't own undersea cables then the Chinese will come and put them in and so on so forth. And then there is even more of a challenge.
One final thing is we get an awful lot of stuff for free. Except it isn't, of course, free. And I'm reminded of a conversation with Tim Burners ‑‑ when was the agreement that we will get free access to everything on the Internet and a free email account that we can use completely freely and we wouldn't have to pay anything for that at all? When did that happen? It never did. There was always a price. Thanks.
MODERATOR: Can we go back to just the issue of trust a little bit? Because you talked a little bit about this, and about resilience and power of these companies and the discrepancies between the institutional ethics of journalism and technology companies on the other side.
What do you think the media can do to counter dependencies? Any way to work together in a very competitive space? What's the future?
>> Maybe I can start by addressing Chris' sort of warning against the regulation, thinking and using the word regulation, because I mean all ‑‑ everything that we're discussing has these dilemmas and what seems bright from the democracy perspective is when you go to Turkiye and then it is opposite if you are the other word, then you just run out and find another journalist that maybe has assaulted him ‑‑ so that is the dilemma, but at this time I still think that we need to take care of our own geographies so that not more and more are sort of sliding into situations which are not bearable and difficult to handle. I do think we should talk about ethics because ethics is such extreme importance and I think it's interesting, for instance, since we're sitting here to see what the Nordics has in common. All the Finland, Sweden, Norway and some extent Denmark, has this brilliant press ethical system.
I think the Danish is a little bit different because it's the ministry of justice that appoints the press council, but in the other countries it's independent. If I had one dream, dream, it would be in the media is in all the geographies, for instance, European too, they come together and establish a free, fair, and ethical system because that makes everything so much easier. It's a fast lane towards trust, I think, because then you can complain, and over years you will see that media with the ethical system, they comply and feel part of the holding up the standards like take very easy example is that how often do you think that Norwegian media has published a story that is criticized in the press council for revealing people privacy or private life. It hardly ever happens.
MODERATOR: Do you have a comment?
>> Just adding on and keep willing the local perspective even when looking at the world going backwards I think is really important, and also both to sort of be examples for other regions but as to sort of remind ourselves what is really at stake here and how far we can really get with regulations no matter what kinds of regulations we're talking about. Because if you see like some of the backsliding in the U.S. now. It's really following the books of the law, digging up really old statutes from the 1700s and so forth, but you're using laws as a pretext for doing what is contrary to both the rule of law and to democracy, so it takes really sort of God faith constitutionalism for that to work, and I think the same applies in this sector that you would have to have sort of a good‑faith approach to all of this stuff and in that respect I think the ethics dimension comes in to be really important.
MODERATOR: Yeah. And you're thinking both at the sort of local, national and global level because Pamella was talking about issues of accountability and transparency. How do you think we achieve that at these different levels? Is it a global question or can we work nationally or locally for that? Pamella, please.
>> PAMELLA SITTONI: I think it has to be both. So at the local level as the panelist who spoke before me mentioned, it's important that we have regulations or ethical guidelines that guide us, and I think that this is really for what we call legacy media, it's a no brainer, we all operate within the tenets of good journalism. The issue is really the platforms are open for anybody and everybody and there is disinformation and misinformation, and in fact I always look at this as the flip side to that is that then the credible media have a chance to form more trust with the audience because they are go‑to platform because people go there for what they find to be factual so therefore they have to operate within the rules.
So but when I was talking about accountability and transparency, for the big platforms I mean we're just looking at issues of even how they work out the algorithms, which they do not disclose, they decide as Chris said, they can decide what information to put out there and what to sensor based on their relationships with government.
The most current story from Kenya right now is a young man who put something out on X and displeased a high ranking police official, and because of that he was ‑‑ he was literally arrested and he was murdered in the police cells because this information was made available, was revealed by the platform and they were able to track him down and actually arrest him and then he was murdered in the police cells.
When you talk about these issues, it's life threaten, it threatens the rights of the people to express, freedom of expression, even to freedom to be alive, and so these are serious issues and it's important that we look at the Best way to have that accountability and to hold platforms accountable for what they do.
The other issue is the issue of media sustainability. I'm happy to see that in Europe most countries actually, the media is funded by states, but in.places like Africa where independent media used to rely on a business model that has now collapsed, transition to digital media has become very slow and painful and it affects the quality of the journalism, it affects how much information, how they can do their story ‑‑ how they cannot do deep investigative stories for lack of funding, and it's all because of how the whole ecosystem is owned by somebody who can decide how much money they can pay you for their content and they can take your IP for no pay and you literally have nowhere to go. We have a case right now where Meta is arguing on whether it should be in Kenya or not, and because don't have physical offs in Kenya and yet continue to violate the IP of Kennians or Kenya organizations, so I think the whole governance in that space is very important.
>> ANYA SHRIFFIN: Can I come in in and say. The platforms should post a billion dollar fine so when there is a fine they have to pay it, so because if too many places they say they don't have staff, so let them put down a bond or deposit and then they can be fined. Yeah.
MODERATOR: Yeah, like a rainy day fund Anine is sovereignty a word we can use now?
>> ANINE KIERULF: Well, we wish I suppose. It would be nice if we had our own ecosystems and our own infrastructure for taking care of our own data and our own information, but it seems that is a little way ahead. I think it would be very important to think like that, and we're obviously totally lagging behind. I think it was Timothy Esh in 10 principleses of free speech, he's talking about the dogs and the cats and the ice. So the dogs are the states and the mice are us, and the cats are the big tech companies in between who obviously don't obey by the rules and do whatever they like. So that's kind of the situation where we're in, only that some of the big dogs are teaming up with some of the big cats, and that leaves us a lot more vulnerable than we've been up until now, so I think there is no way outside of thinking sovereignty. I'm not a technologist so I have no idea how that would actually be able to work out in practice, and I sometimes miss in conversations like this, not like this one bhu conversations on this topic is that people interested in freedom and journalism and democracy and human rights are not always talking so much to the technologists and vice versa, so that if we could team up in a way that informs us both better, maybe that could be at least one step ahead in that direction.
MODERATOR: We're here at IGF so maybe.
I want to ask Rasmus about alternatives in a minute. But they have asked for a comment. Chris?
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Just a couple of things, just on the digital sovereignty thing. The challenge with that is does it work unless you try to go extra territorially, and that's a really, really difficult thing. The European Commission continues to attempt to regulate various parts of the Domain Name System, extra territorially and it's a real challenge because it basically doesn't work.
The thing I wanted to pick up on is what Pamella was talking about because she gave a good example of the ethics s of revealing a name. That lies the real challenge. Because the ethical judgment in some cases the good ethical judgment in some cases whether it should be revealed and the bad ethical judgment in some cases could be that you should reveal. It's hard to figure that out. At the end of the day that you should or shouldn't. But it's what are the circumstances. And that by definition depends on your definition of who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
>> I just wanted to start, I have that cat at home, and it's absolutely ignorant to all the rules.
>> ANINE KIERULF: You say you have a big tech company at home?
>> It's a cat, right. Let's go on that one because I think we have for choice. We need to develop national digital infrastructure. It leaves us no choice. We have no way working on cloud storage extremely important. We have some huge media companies like Schibsted, and I think that the policymakers need to find out who can or how does 2025 media policy on ward look like. It should facilitate tech development, broad as possible so that it sort of communicates with the framework of the free press in the world that we live today. That will leave the media free and not so vulnerable to changes in the policy making, but sort of leveling the playing field with this big ignorant cats.
MODERATOR: Rasmus, do you think there is an option to build public alternatives.
>> RASMUS KLEIS NIELSON: Of course it is. There are plenty of option. The real question is we need to hold people in positions of power to account in terms of how they understand the system and whether they act accordingly, and I think the question here is when looking at dependence on U.S. American big commercial platform companies, it's which part that have phrase you stress, right. So if you think the problem is that they're U.S. American, then the path you pursue is obvious and that is that you try to create national or in the case of Europe, regional champions, and then when they have the right passport and you're aligned rather than on big tech, then it's fine, because the companies hold to a different set of politicians and let's suppose that who is next is not going to abuse the power in the way that we see in some other cases.
Then the question is whether we as the mice can expect very different behavior from large corporations or all different passports and I think that all of those who have been at the receiving end of European capitalists throughout the world, I think you will ask yourself whether you think it's really fundamentally different from U.S. American capitalism.
The second way to think about the problem is that the problem is that they are big then the umentitive is quite clear, defernlized Open Source solutions. I think you need to be very clear that very few people in positions of power seem to think this is the problem because if they did they would pursue those alternatives already. Because they exist. There are options in this space and we have now 25 years of preference from people in positions of power that this is not what they want. So those alternatives exist but they are not being pursued. And finally of course, the analysis might be that they're commercial, and that's where we can turn to the ability of public services alternatives and I think it's possible to do this. It's not easy. We need to decide what are they going to do. There are many layers of the stack one could look at. How are they going to be funded, not going to be cheap, who is going to make the rules, content moderation decisions, imagine those only with the politicians in your country of origin making decision rather than mark Zuckerberg and his oversight board, so it's not easy but certainly can be done. The question then is question of priority, right. In Europe aless than we spend an estimated 40‑billion Euros a year on public service media. That is stacked and recent years declining but we could make investments of a similar size. Europe is a 20 billion dollar region ‑‑ Europe alone is 10 trillion dollars a year and it's a question of priorities and that's why I think we really need to be clear about you know if we are to pursue the route, do we have the means. It's a question of choices.
MODERATOR: Yes, exactly. Tawfik, did you have a comment.
>> TAWFIK JELASSI: Yes, the issue of ethics was brought up earlier. The question was what the media needs to adhere to ethical standards and norms, but the question is are these local, national ethics standards or global? I would say I think it's both browse technology and the platforms are global by nature, are borderless, and therefore you cannot only apply national policy or approach to it. Here I wanted to plague out a piece of work that UNESCO has done, which is the recommendation on the ethics of artificial intelligence. Which was approved by all 193 Member States back in 2021, and the set of principles including on the media, including on freedom of expression, including on access to information, within this ethics of AI recommendation are currently being implemented in over 70 countries, 70, 70 countries worldwide. So again we have a base, I'm not saying that's the answer to all issues, but there is a base and this is part of UNESCO work, standard setting, normative instruments in a consensus multistakeholder way, so of course we are not ‑‑ because some of you mentioned the European Commission and the DSA, et cetera, UNESCO does not have that executive power, cannot fine the bad guys or bad players, but what it can do is advocacy, norm setting and trying to help move the needle.
MODERATOR: Well you read off artificial intelligence and I also have that on my notes. How does that development sort of increase or challenge these dependencies these are many of the same companies involved in the material, in Internet, and also in the AI race. What should we really be prepared here in terms of how market power develops and ethics and regulation, and also for independent journalism in general? Maybe I can start with Pamella?
>> PAMELLA SITTONI: Thanks. I think first of all, I strongly believe that any tech logical advancement, including AI is good and not mutually exclusive to call of journalism which always remains which is to tell stories. AI is not going to replace journalism. It might replace how we tell some of our stories. But it will not create stories for us if it's used responsibly as a tool. We've seen already a lot of media houses are applying AI. But I think for me, it goes back to the whole control and ownership conversation about the platforms where now you have the tech companies, they own the companies, own the distribution network, and they also want to own the content. I give the example of the Google AI overview and what it's doing for media houses already right now. Just by gleaning all information about topics and putting it out there for the audience, media houses have done research and they've seen at that because of that traffic to their own websites reduces significantly and what that means is they cannot monitor their own content cannot monetize it for advertising either, and eventually I see a vicious cycle of just doom for both the media houses and even the Internet ecosystem because the more you staff the media houses of revenue and ability to generate independently verified information, the more you stuff the whole ecosystem of this information. So for me I think the world should be very worried about what the companies are doing with AI, and force them to be ethical and force them to pay for the content if they're gleaning content from the sites, then they need to pay the sites for what they're generating out of it.
MODERATOR: Also large global structures we're talking about how. I want to sort of end the panel or come to a discussion of what we can do with small states or role of small states in this context, and maybe start with Rasmus and also ask you, Anya after that, what is advice could you give to small takes in this context? Rasmus?
>> RASMUS KLEIS NIELSON: I mean I speak as an academic who comes from a small state so I think I wear sort of both hands. As an academic my finest way is to call it as I see it when it's also unconvenient or unpopular. When we think about small states, I'm reminded of the quote that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Which we should of course remember that he didn't write because he was a sort of inspiring mansphere and would‑be influencer, he didn't to endorse this, but as a suggestion of what he saw as a reality of power politics. And I think that is useful to keep in mind if you come from a small country, and as an academic I would just say I think we need an honest debate, a public debate with politicians taking responsibility for the choices that they are making. I don't think my personal views on how elected officials balance between the urgency of climate change of in addition that will security, of assuring a welfare system with aging populations, ensuring productive economies while also ensuring sustainability, these are the issues of digital sovereignty and technological autonomy, I don't think my personal views on how they balance those are particularly interesting.
What I will say is I think it's very important to be clear even small states as long as they're not desperately poor, have power and can make different choices and those matter greatly in terms of the outcomes. I don't think we should accept the sort of pretend helplessness of powerful politicians that way escape scrutiny and responsibility for the actions they take, and I don't think that's any different from the choices about where they buy their military hardware, deal with climate change, deal with changes to the welfare system, migration, or anything else.
So I think there are choices also for shawl states if not desperately poor and marginalized as some are, and I think we're seeing some countries exercise those choices, and then we can hope they'll be informed by all the wonderful sentiments expressioned by anation operational panel like this.
>> Accountability also toward the political system. Anya?
>> ANYA SHRIFFIN: Sure. I'm not from a small state, unless we count New York. I would absolutely agree with Rasmus, and clearly when I think about when all the island nations got together because of climate change because they knew they were going to get affected first, I think that there are regional leaders, so I think you know South Africa and Nigeria, I think Brazil, Indonesia, I think there is lots of countries out this that can play a role on taxes. I think it's been really interesting the push towards having the UN instead of the OECD, so I think it's going to have to be collective efforts to tackle a lot of this.
MODERATOR: Is there a balance here between state responsibilities and you know people? What can we do?
>> ANINE KIERULF: The mice? If you can't fix the things that threaten you, maybe you can fix how you're being threatened. Some practice in digital literacy obviously, and being a teacher myself at the university level, I seem to see a shift in students in that their critical thinking is a lot better. Which is good because these been sort of a priority I suppose, but that knowledge is a lot less. I think it was Tawfik quoting Maria Res. saying without the facts there is for truth. So just to stick to that poort of the quote, I think that's very important that we ‑‑ our focus on critical thinking is not on the ‑‑ it's not sort of going on the cost of thinking about truth and knowledge too. We need to have some basis for that critical thinking. I believe that's really important. Not just how the algorithms and things are working and how it's affecting us, but as we learn more about ourselves and why we are so vulnerable to this way of manipulation that we're being subject to right now.
MODERATOR: I think that's a great way to end the panel. We're approaching the end of our time, so I'll make a brief attempt at summarizing and concluding here. So the Internet is a material physical thing that's made of cables and servers that transmits content and connects us globally. But the Internet is not ownerless, somebody actually owns the stuff, and ownership constitutes power. And this power is growing in concentration. So we are already passed point of descend see on the fruks at the global technology providess provide, so we have to start asking how resilient our societies really are to maintain healthy information spaces, particularly with we see increasing unrest and crises, so what point does the descend see compromise national sovereignty and political and data sovereignty, and how do we regulate the space to ensure the condition for a free and resilient media that actually helps uphold the societies.
So I had three thoughts on how to maybe offset the dependency problems. The first is transparency and accountability at the front of every conversation that we have about private a as well as public maintenance of digital infrastructures. Second, to regulate digital infrastructure to make sewer that we have universality, human rights, and freedom of expression at the base of every decision. Third, to immediately start building alternatives.
With that I thank our keynote speakers, Anya and Chris thank you for your perspectives, and also to our panelists for the rich context, thank you also to the online audience and you also for being here in the room. Thank you.
(Applause).
