Session
Organizer 1: Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 2: Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 3: Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Organizer 4: Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Organizer 5: Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 2: Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 3: Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Organizer 4: Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Organizer 5: Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 1: Ivar Hartmann, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 2: Renata Mielli, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 3: Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 4: Amélie Heldt, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 5: Yvonne Chua, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 2: Renata Mielli, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 3: Janjira Sombatpoonsiri, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 4: Amélie Heldt, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 5: Yvonne Chua, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Format
Roundtable
Duration (minutes): 90
Format description: This workshop is not intended as a philosophical discussion of the problems of platform governance or of disinformation and hate speech on social media. Rather, it builds on the extensive research and reporting on these problems and benefits from ongoing, real, on the ground experience in different countries, including in the Global South, to tackle such challenges. Solutions - legislative, regulatory, self-regulatory - benefit from multistakeholder involvement in their execution and are as nuanced as the problems they address. Our 5 speakers all have a different combination of background and region of work. We hope that they have enough time to share the solutions they want to discuss and also to engage with workshop participants. It is not about speakers delivering monologues to an audience, but rather about an exchange of experiences and how well they have worked.
Duration (minutes): 90
Format description: This workshop is not intended as a philosophical discussion of the problems of platform governance or of disinformation and hate speech on social media. Rather, it builds on the extensive research and reporting on these problems and benefits from ongoing, real, on the ground experience in different countries, including in the Global South, to tackle such challenges. Solutions - legislative, regulatory, self-regulatory - benefit from multistakeholder involvement in their execution and are as nuanced as the problems they address. Our 5 speakers all have a different combination of background and region of work. We hope that they have enough time to share the solutions they want to discuss and also to engage with workshop participants. It is not about speakers delivering monologues to an audience, but rather about an exchange of experiences and how well they have worked.
Policy Question(s)
What are concrete policy solutions currently in operation in Europe and in the Global South for the challenges of abusive online speech on digital platforms?
How do legislative, regulatory and self-regulatory solutions currently benefit from multistakeholder engagement and protagonism?
What are the pros and cons of duty of care, when compared to intermediary liability, to address digital platform accountability for abusive speech?
What will participants gain from attending this session? Participants will benefit from a rare mix of experts in academia, government and journalism from two global north and two global south countries sharing national experiences and the outlook ahead on platform governance and, more specifically, on tools that have or have not worked to increase social media platform accountability. The speakers (4 female, 1 male) will compare and contrast solutions already in place, fleshing out the detailed aspects of the main challenges to curbing disinformation, hate speech and other types of abusive speech. Participants will have access to first-hand knowledge of the insides of government entities involved in internet governance, as well as insights from academics pursuing empirical research tracking the level of success of different initiatives to improve platform accountability.
Description:
The greatest challenge to building digital trust in 2025 is ensuring safe and open environments in digital platforms. Active, well-documented threats to digital trust and resilience of online communities, such as disinformation and hate speech, are constantly evolving in their complexity and perpetually increasing in capillarity worldwide. The crucial policy debate on solutions has long moved away from exclusive private self-regulation by digital platforms, even in the United States, where legislative efforts at the state level created obligations for social media, ensuing court challenges, and TikTok was banned. Lately, many countries have gone beyond mere updates or revisions of civil liability rules for intermediaries as the debate has landed on systemic risks, such as in the European Union's Digital Services Act, and duty of care, such as in the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act. Other jurisdictions, such as Brazil, are at the verge of limiting intermediary safe harbors, either through Congressional or Supreme Court intervention. Duty of care approaches to platform governance make for more inclusive multistakeholder governance systems, allowing the current private sector and judicial stakeholders to work together with independent oversight bodies, fact-checking agencies and users at large. This workshop will draw from concrete experience in solutions or advanced debates arriving at solutions for online content moderation in different continents - Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America. The workshop will allow the audience to engage with protagonists from government, internet governance bodies, journalism and academia.
The greatest challenge to building digital trust in 2025 is ensuring safe and open environments in digital platforms. Active, well-documented threats to digital trust and resilience of online communities, such as disinformation and hate speech, are constantly evolving in their complexity and perpetually increasing in capillarity worldwide. The crucial policy debate on solutions has long moved away from exclusive private self-regulation by digital platforms, even in the United States, where legislative efforts at the state level created obligations for social media, ensuing court challenges, and TikTok was banned. Lately, many countries have gone beyond mere updates or revisions of civil liability rules for intermediaries as the debate has landed on systemic risks, such as in the European Union's Digital Services Act, and duty of care, such as in the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act. Other jurisdictions, such as Brazil, are at the verge of limiting intermediary safe harbors, either through Congressional or Supreme Court intervention. Duty of care approaches to platform governance make for more inclusive multistakeholder governance systems, allowing the current private sector and judicial stakeholders to work together with independent oversight bodies, fact-checking agencies and users at large. This workshop will draw from concrete experience in solutions or advanced debates arriving at solutions for online content moderation in different continents - Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America. The workshop will allow the audience to engage with protagonists from government, internet governance bodies, journalism and academia.
Expected Outcomes
The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee will use findings from the workshop in its internal discussions and external interactions with other stakeholders in different countries.
The session discussion will directly feed into an ongoing research project between SCLT (UK) and Insper (Brazil) framing the challenges and opportunities of duty of care approaches to digital platform governance. In the short term, researchers will use insight and knowledge gained in the workshop to engage with members of the legislative and executive branches in Brazil who are brokering an improvement on the Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework. In the medium term, researchers will publish two scientific articles leveraging insight and knowledge acquired with the workshop.
Hybrid Format: We will make available the list of main points brought/discussed by each speaker in advance to allow attendees additional information on the workshop talking points and therefore increase their ability to participate.
The workshop will convene onsite as a roundtable, not a panel. The 5 speakers will have 5 minutes of initial alloted time to increase accessibility of the discussion by attendees onsite and online. In addition to the traditional tools afforded by the IGF, we will use Signal as a tool for synchronous discussion in parallel to the workshop in a group specifically created for the workshop. This will also enable speakers and attendees to remain in contact after the IGF to follow up on suggestions, ideas and potential partnerships.