The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Paris, France, from 12 to 14 November 2018. 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 to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Ladies and gentlemen, we're about to commence the Media & Content main session. The working title of today's main session is Media as a Cornerstone for Peace, Assault on Media Freedom and Freedom of Expression. We're very privileged this morning to have quite a distinguished panel, one of whom is not able to be here because she happens to be an expert witness in a death penalty case, and she's been subpoenaed, but thankfully, thanks to technology, she'll be able to stream in through WebEx.
We'd also like to apologize for the brief intermittent lack of connectivity earlier this morning. We've been -- we had a DDoS attack I've been told, and that just shows the IGF is the place to be that someone would want to bother to contain our capacity to express ourselves through the IGF.
So without further ado, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro, and I'm your chair and moderator for this particular main session, and I'd also like to introduce the remote moderators. Could the three remote moderators please stand up, led by Adama Jallow, Mr. Mamadou Lo, and -- yes, with us also is the panel. If I could just get them to please stand up as I introduce them because of the lack of placards or name cards.
So Ms. Shmylah Khan. She's from the Digital Rights Foundation in Pakistan. Privileged.
Also have Dr. Rasha Abdulla, who's a professor of journalism and mass communication from the American University at Cairo -- in Cairo. Not too long, you remember, we had the Arab Spring in the Tunis Square, and so we'll be looking at some really interesting -- at the evolution of media and content.
And then, also, we have Ms. Ankhi Das, who happens to be the director of public policy in Facebook.
We also have Mr. Giacomo Mazzone. Buongiorno, Giacomo. Could you please stand up to let people see you. He's the head of institutional relations, and he happens to represent the European Broadcasting Network Union and the World Broadcasting Union.
Our remote participant or remote speaker is Professor Luz E. Nagle from the Stetson University College of Law. She was a former judge in Colombia. She had to flee because of death threats from some of the criminal trials that she headed, and now she's teaching law, and she also happens to sit in some of the distinguished committees in the International Bar Association, a very distinguished expert.
And we also have none other than the lovely Dr. Yik Chan Chin. We're very privileged to have her here from China. She's a lecturer in media and communication studies -- I hope I pronounce this right. I apologize to all Chinese speakers if I mispronounce this -- Xi'an Jiatong-Liverpool University. Okay. She's smiling, so I must have said it right.
So those are our speakers.
What we'll be doing is instead of the panel talking down or talking down to the audience, we'll be engaging in a very interactive dialogue. Are we okay with that? And so we'd like you to participate in this dynamic session, and it can only be dynamic if there's a two-way communication, which means feel free at any time to intervene, ask a question. We'll be canvassing some of the public policy issues, some public policy questions, and I'll just read out some of them.
The first one is: Is the media an appendage of established power?
And is the media adequately able to act as a mechanism to keep governments and businesses accountable?
What is the necessary policy environment to ensure media freedom?
Is media freedom absolute or are there limits to freedom of expression?
What are some implications for abuses of freedom of expression and media freedom?
Is there such a thing as responsible journalism and irresponsible journalism and instances of fake news?
What are some best practices and Code of Conduct or does a Code of Conduct exist?
What protections are available for media? How should it be protected?
So what exactly is fake news? How should it be defined? Is it a pressing social problem that warrants government intervention? Is self-regulation instead the answer? Where do freedom of expression and press freedom fit into the equation? What are some policy controls to deal with fake news?
What are the roles and responsibilities of governments and other stakeholders, like private sector, Civil Society, and individuals in ensuring media freedom and promoting responsible journalism, if responsible journalism is, indeed, a legitimate concept?
And what are some appropriate -- or what are the appropriate international organizations, frameworks, and fora to tackle these issues?
So with that, I would like to please invite Professor Rasha Abdulla to start us off with her perspective on some of these questions, so we'll be giving them three minutes each before we ask for intervention from the community and also from the remote participants, so with that, thank you, Professor Rasha.
>> RASHA ABDULLA: Thank you, Sala. Good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be on this panel. These are a lot of questions that you just asked, so I'll try to make just a few very brief points in three minutes, if I can. And I'll start with a few key things. I mean, can the media be a watchdog still, which is the function that we've kind of grew up knowing that the media should be doing, or is it now an appendage of those in power? I think the answer depends on the political system that you live in, so there are varying degrees of freedom of expression all around the world, and, obviously, the more a society enjoys such freedom, the more the media can do what it's supposed to be doing, which is, you know, act as a watchdog.
Unfortunately, I have to say I think we're witnessing a huge crackdown on media freedoms all over the world, even in societies that we have sort of upheld to be more democratic than others, we're seeing that come up from the very top levels, from those in power, from the heads of states, and that's something that we should all be really worried about, not just in the societies that we know to be repressive but actually in the societies that we know to be more democratic because that's a slippery slope that once you get on, you can just lose it very quickly. So that's one point that I think we should be -- we should all be very worried about.
The other thing that I'll introduce very quickly in my three minutes is a proposed definition of "fake news," which I actually proposed about a year and a half ago at a workshop with a UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye, the Special Rapporteur on the Freedom of Expression, and I propose that we look at fake news to be something that at least has to have an intent to deceive, so, it's not -- you know, a piece of news that had some kind of a reporter's mistake in it that can be corrected by the news agency, but it's a news item that is meant to deceive, that has the intention to deceive.
And the other thing is it should be of some consequence, so intent and consequence are basically my two big things for me to consider something that -- you know, worth discussing as an item of fake news. I think that would give us some distinction from -- you know, from the loads -- you know, the millions of tweets, for example, that are posted every day to what we can pinpoint to actually hold somebody accountable if they -- if they do that.
All right. I think I'll stop here. Thank you.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: So whilst Professor Rasha has just raised that, I thought we'd go to the crux of the role of media, which is essentially entertaining and providing an outlet for imagination. If you look at the history of media, it started off as entertainment theater and drama. And the second one being education and informing. The third one, serving as a public forum for the discussion of important issues. The fourth one, acting as a watchdog for government, business, and other institutions, as Professor Rasha raised.
Now, before we go to our next speaker, Giacomo Mazzone from the European Broadcasting Network, yesterday happened to be World Armistice Day, right, World Armistice Day, and when we looked at when the allies in World War I in Germany, when they signed the Armistice in France, as the nation commemorated Armistice Day and we were celebrating the Paris Peace Forum and as they're convening that, we're looking how media was used here in Europe as a tool for propaganda, so with that, please let me invite Mr. Giacomo Mazzone to give you his take. You have three minutes, Mr. Giacomo.
>> GIACOMO MAZZONE: Yes. Thank you for inviting me. Yes, the Armistice is the reason why the Public Broadcasting Service exists in Europe. As you probably know historically, before the war, the state television, radio at that time, were the main tool for creating hate and inciting countries against the other, and at the end of the war, there was an agreement in Europe that there will not be any more state broadcasting or public service broadcasting. That means there is a distinction between the state control and the independence over broadcasters that can structure national debate in a way that is not dependent anymore from the government, and then there was the Cold War, a lot of other things happened, et cetera, et cetera.
But today I think that we are again in a similar situation because we are in a situation which there is this discrepancy in society that has been caused by the digital transformational society in which there is a refusal of mediators, and everything can see as can be said by everybody to everybody without any mediation. We believe this is profoundly wrong, that a need for remediation still exists and that you don't go if you have a sickness to somebody that is not a professional doctor, so I think that if you need to understand the world, you need professional mediations that can help you.
Of course, the difference between the previous system and today's system is that there is the interactivity. Once the broadcaster was one voice to many. Today it's not anymore like this, and this is a big opportunity because you can interact directly with the citizens and you can get the feedback and you can even develop cooperative and collaborative journeys and constructive journeys and a lot of other things that we are trying to do in order to intercept this change for the good of the society and for a sense of developing a society together, but the function of the watchdog remains essential because a power that is not counter-power tends, even with a better intention, to abuse of his power. That's quite normal in history we have seen, so the function of watchdogs remains essential and essential -- attached to this is the safety of the journalists because we know that the easiest way to short a debate -- to cut short a debate is to kill the person that is provoking that debate. So these are all linked together, and I think there is -- we need to act simultaneously on the safety of journalists, that UNESCO is the house for this, to the watchdog function in the society and to strengthen even the business model of the media because at the moment, it's under very huge pressure. Thank you.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Mr. Giacomo.
And with that, I'd like to ask the tech support team if they could please be ready to broadcast Professor Luz, who is streaming in from Miami. Luz, can you hear me?
>> LUZ NAGLE: (No audio)
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: To the WebEx support team, just in case you didn't hear me, if you could put Luz up, Luz Nagle. So while we're waiting for that, Mr. Mazzone raised some very important and interesting points, one of which was the evolution of the medium of broadcasting and how that's changed in terms of capacity to reach the masses, so it started from -- you know, from theater to the printing press, from the printing press to all kinds of -- to radio and radio to eventually television and the capacity for it to reach the masses, and so with that, I'd like to -- whilst we're waiting for Luz to come online -- she's already online, we're just waiting for the WebEx team --
>> LUZ NAGLE: Yes.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: I'd like to invite Facebook director of public policy, Ms. Ankhi. You have three minutes.
>> ANKHI DAS: Thank you, Sala. I think this is a very timely and important topic. The way we think about this at Facebook is how do we mount a collective and cohesive effort in terms of combating this information. That's how we think of it at our company, and essentially, we have a three prong framework which is focused on improving quality and authenticity for news which gets circulated on our platform.
So the three-prong test there is we remove content that violates our community standards; we are focused on reducing distribution of content that violates or undermines authenticity; we inform people about the news pieces which they're seeing by providing more context, so it's a combination of enforcement activities on the platform as well as product innovation and product changes which help -- which helps our community to understand what is -- what is fake news and what is awe they can news.
If something gets flagged, we also work very actively with our partner community, which essentially is our third-party fact checkers who are experts, who are approved -- who essentially work very closely and are approved by Poynter, which as you all would know, is the international certification body in terms of -- in terms of fact checking, and we rely on our community of fact-checking partners to actively down-rank news which is fake news, which effectively means that you will not see distribution of that particular checkpointed fake news on our news feed. It essentially eliminate -- reduces substantially 80% of that type of distribution on the platform.
We also feel that capacity building is a core competent in terms of building awareness, in terms of this authenticity paradigm, and, therefore, we are investing a lot of resources across countries worldwide to use traditional media to run public service education campaigns, it's combination of print media ads as well as on-platform ads where we are highlighting what are the attributes of fake news so that people can teach themselves and then they can teach their community in terms of identifying what these attributes are and actively disengaging -- like, there's a community level of awareness of engaging in terms of -- in terms of their -- the way they consume fake news or they distribute fake news.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: So Ms. Ankhi, while you're there, one of the questions people may have is -- is the fact that the publication about the -- you know, the exposure in terms of the Cambridge Analytica saga, would that have had an impact on Facebook increasing its social responsibility in terms of clamping down on fake news and misinformation?
>> ANKHI DAS: Thanks for that question, Sala. We are learning a lot from our experiences and taking that input in terms of our enforcement efforts as well as how we are looking at our integrity efforts in terms of making sure that we're making the right kind of product adjustments. The way our APIs are accessed by third-party developers, also having a big push in terms of transparency, particularly ads transparency, insofar as elections is concerned where people can see who are the groups who are running a particular type of advertising. That is something which can you see on the dashboard. So we feel that more transparency is there in terms of making this information available, both in terms of ads as well as taking a lot of this input in terms of our enforcement function will help clamp down on distribution of fake news.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Just very quickly, in 30 seconds, how much of it is self-regulation and how much of it is regulation from -- I noticed that the European Commission recently were talking about the regulation of fake news and that sort of thing, so what's your -- what is Facebook's take on self-regulation and regulation?
>> ANKHI DAS: So this is -- like we say, that this is an ecosystem responsibility; right? Of course, there is -- we are at the core of it, we are a tech platform, so we will take appropriate measures to make sure that we are looking at enforcement in a very deep way, but there's also an equal amount of load sharing which needs to be done by the community, which is essentially both consumers as well as producers of news. We think that as we enhance capacities as a community, this -- even if you regulate, you will regulate off of today, you can't really regulate for tomorrow because it's such a moving target in terms of technology evolution, so we believe that self-regulation working with community models would be the best way to make progress on this issue.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Ms. Ankhi. So with that, if we could get Professor Luz Nagle. Thank you, Luz. Could you in three minutes sort of give us a high-level summary of your take on the public policy issues and we'll get back to you after the three minutes. Thank you, Luz.
>> LUZ NAGLE: Hi, Sala. Can you hear me?
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: We can hear you fine, Luz. The room can see you and we can all hear you fine. Please go ahead.
>> LUZ NAGLE: Well, good morning. Thank you for having me this way. Let me just emphasize the role of the media. We've got to remember that the media is the fourth pillar of democracy, and the role of the media is vital for any democracy. The media is supposed to be safeguarding transparency of a democratic process, and the media is to supply political information, is to identify any problems that exist in the society, and it's supposed to be also the -- the way for everyone to have healthy discussions.
One of the things that we see is the erosion of the faith in the media, and I think that has taken place in great part because the fast pace that we have had with the media has triggered in a lot of the mediums to try to be the first ones on publicizing any type of information, so when the media makes mistakes, sometimes those mistakes go unfixed, and that has caused a lot of faith on the media. So that is a big problem that we have.
And on top of that, we have all the social media that has been triggering a lot of this dissemination of misinformation and mistakes, so I think that we have a lot of things to look into.
Adding to that, it seems that there is a type of censorship in the media that comes from the companies that pay for ads or companies that are in charge of the media, so in a way, those companies kind of impose certain type of censor in what the media can say or how the media says certain things.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Luz. We'll get back to you. We've just had a brief technology disruption.
So whilst we're there, if I could get Shmylah to please briefly relay the assault on -- on media as far as the Pakistani situation is, and Luz, we'll be coming back to you. We have a few questions for you, Luz, after this.
>> SHMYLAH KHAN: Thank you so much. Thank you so much, everybody, for being here. I think in terms of the landscape regarding media and these sort of new issues that technology has brought to the fore, we sort of vacillate in our discussion between either overregulation or underregulation, and in terms of -- in order -- I'd just like to contextualize sort of what we mean by "freedom of expression." A lot of times we have this idealized version of what freedom of expression should be which is encapsulated in a lot of these international agreements that we see, but on the ground, for example, in terms of a lived reality of what freedom of expression is, it is how it's practiced sort of in daily life and then the theoretical concept as it exists, and in a lot of societies even that sort of idealized theoretical concept, for example, the constitutional sort of framing of freedom of expression in the Pakistani context, for instance, is quite limited, so even the language of the Constitution itself and the parameters that it draws for media includes phrases like anything that goes against the glory of Islam or against national interests, those are the parameters within -- from sort of like the starting point that we have.
So a lot of that framing from the very start is very restrictive, and then that is sort of compounded by a lot of legislation that we see in -- especially of late regarding social media but generally of electronic media and news media.
So there's that sort of legal sort of touchstone that we usually see as that sanctified space, but then how freedom of expression plays out in everyday life, there are obviously inequalities and political realities, which mean, for example, certain state actors, like the military, for example, would bypass even the very restrictive sort of jurisdictional concept of freedom of expression to sort of force a certain additive or a point of view, so in terms of when we -- in that sort of environment, we sort of -- where even the concept of truth is so heavily regulated, for a very long time -- and now I think the sort of -- the west is coming around to this concept -- it almost doesn't mean anything, so it used a forced truth, but even in very heavily regulated societies, there's for a very long time speculation, a lot of reliance on rumors, so fake news isn't a very -- a new concept to that extent.
And we see when -- in terms of the media and how that plays out, fake news and the sort of -- now the sort of moral panic that we see around fake news is often sometimes weaponized to clamp down on the media, and the phrase is often thrown around by powerful actors to also enact new types of censorship, so that sort of -- while it is -- it does have a lot of consequences and we see that it has a lot of consequences for minority groups, it translates -- we've seen it translates into riots and violence for minority -- religious minority groups in the Pakistani context, that part is usually left unregulated, and in terms of sort of political news, that is where fake news is sort of playing out, and that discussion is continuously happening. Yeah.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Shmylah. So Shmylah raised some very interesting points in terms of the parameters of freedom of expression and the restrictions within, much I which is enshrined within the Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, with the three exceptions, and a lot of it is known to the global community.
One of the things that she pointed out that I'd like to just ask her is the -- the statistics on journalists who go missing in Pakistan, if you could just briefly comment on it for, say, 30 seconds before we get the next speaker.
>> SHMYLAH KHAN: So in the past, I think, two years, there are over 150 sort of activists and journalists who've been sort of speaking of what we call as enforced disappearances, and that is basically sort of a euphemism for the state picking up activists and journalists who are sort of not towing the narrative in the -- and that sort of a very violent demonstration on the clamp-down on freedom of expression.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Shmylah. We'd like to bring Luz back on, please. Luz, can you hear me?
>> LUZ NAGLE: Yes, Sala, I can hear you.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: While you were speaking, you mentioned points in terms of the media makes mistakes, so we'd like to explore the two extremes of the media being persecuted and also in terms of, you know -- in terms of media making mistakes and whether the concept of whether the media should be responsible, whether that's a legitimate expectation and your responsibility of media, and in the context of the U.S., could you please speak to us about the context of the United States? Thank you, Luz, before we go to Dr. Yik Chan.
>> LUZ NAGLE: Thank you, Sala. The media, just like any other way of expressing, yes, we make mistakes. It may be mistakes of fact or it may be just because -- usually there is a lot of competition, so the media is competing for being the first one to put out any type of information, so when the media puts out information that is mistaken, they often try to fix it, but when the fix is done, sometimes it's either very small or sometimes they don't fix it at all, so that brings about the loss of faith on the media, so that is one of the problems that we seem to be facing, and I think that that has allowed the labeling of fake news to be so broadened, to include when the media makes mistakes.
So we are in such a heated environment here in the United States that any type of mistake is presumed to be intentional, and that presumption of intentional mistake pretty much is being -- affecting a lot of the free debate that we ought to be having, so we start labeling each other, fake news, fake media, fake information, and that, per se, has created this animosity in this society.
So we also have a lot of irresponsible leaders and ignorant public that tend to just see anything and everything in ways that they either enhance or they manipulate for their own purpose, and everything has been seen in light of one's own political point of view, and that has --
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: That's very interesting, Luz.
>> LUZ NAGLE: -- and that has enhanced more what -- the environment in which we are here in the United States, so we -- what I perceive is we are having a democratic erosion just because we are not having a healthy debate on anything, and once again, it comes from how the media seems to be rushing and competing for putting out the information. It seems that money now is the one that is ruling the environment. Why? Because it has become about ratings.
So you could have CNN competing with Fox or Fox competing with CNN for ratings, so each one is trying to put out the information or is trying to rush the information without checking properly the facts.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Luz.
>> LUZ NAGLE: And that, trying to gain some type of notoriety and being the first ones putting out the news and being the ones that pretty much have the most amount of ratings has made these -- these media pretty much (No audio)
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Luz. And you raise some very interesting points, which is critical to --
>> LUZ NAGLE: Hello.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Yes, we can hear you, Luz. We'll get back to you. We just need to pause for a moment and sort of reflect on some of the things that you mentioned, the capacity for media to be bought or biases or opinions it may have in terms of the capacity to influence or sway how the public feels, whether it's consumerism or whether it's political beliefs or whether it's movements.
So with that, we'd like to explore another -- another geographical perspective -- perspective from China, so, please, Dr. Yik Chan Chin.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Okay. Thanks for inviting me to join the panel. Okay. Actually, I think the media, actually, no matter in which part of the society, no matter if it's in Europe or in USA or in China, actually is facing similar problems. I think there's three challenges the media, transitional media or responsible journalism are facing.
The first one is the political issues, you know. As we know, in the U.S., we have post-truth kind of claim, and in Asia, for example, in Hong Kong, I was teaching there for a couple of years, so the journalists is talking about advocacy, journalists advocate some positions instead of to be neutral, objective, which is the core value of the public service media, you know, so I think that is a political challenge, what is the role of the journalists and what is the role of the media, no matter in what part of the world.
Second issue I'm thinking is about financial stability or sustainability of media. Because of the new technology, which is actually shared, a lot of the revenue from the transitional media to the new media, you know, so which -- which actually causes a lot of financial difficulties for transitional media. For example, in China, a lot of newspaper, quality newspaper, was not closing down, maybe merged because of the financial difficulties.
Also, in other parts of the world we witnessed similar situations, for example, BBC, you know, also has a question about their legitimacy of the public founding.
The third one is a technological challenge, how the new media and transitional media cope with, like I said, artificial intelligence or the citizen journalism. So for me, I think in order for us to have quality journalism, there's some necessary policy environment which we call enabling policy environment, so I just want to point out some of these important policy environments.
For example, the first one is I think we need to minimize the political interference to the media, okay. That is the basic agreement across different societies, even in China.
And the second one I think is we need to have a kind of fair playing field. We're talking about not only the transitional media but also the new media, the platforms, the big platforms, like Facebook, Tencent in China, Google, you know, for example, the monopoly of the big platforms has imposed a significant challenge for the transitional media and also for the diversity of the voice.
Secondly -- thirdly, I think, is about financial, how do we make the quality news media to be financially stable and sustainability, for example, decline of the revenue.
And thirdwise, the technology challenge.
And the last, I think is most important, is how do we keep all of these forces cultivated, the talent, the journalists. For example, in Asia -- in Hong Kong, the statistics shows that 80% of the journalist students, like in my school, you know, when they graduate, after they work for the news media for five years, they will move to the PR company. Why is that? Because the salaries is well-known, you know, so we need -- also this happened in China as well. The loss of the good quality of the journalists, the talent, how do we cultivate those talents is also important. Thank you.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Dr. Yik. With that, we'd like to open the floor to remote participants and anyone in the room. Would you like to weigh in at this stage of the discussions before the panel goes to the second round?
Yes, I can see somebody in the background. Please state your name, your surname, the country, and organization you're from, and then please make your remarks.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: I'm Hanna (?). I am from Brazil. I'm a Civil Society MAG member, and I work with an NGO in education and technology, education media and technology. I related very much to the comments of the panelist from China because Brazil newspapers are always struggling with economic difficulties, but most of all, it worries me very much that a way to circumvent those economic difficulties that the newspapers are going through is to relate themselves to the fake news media, and so a lot of newspapers have really dissolved into commentary based on -- actually led on by the Internet.
So I wonder if liabilities apply or -- and I mean Brazil is much less strict when it comes to publications, I believe, than China, but I wonder if there were responsibilities called from publishers who prefer to publish Internet rumors than real news?
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: So, thank you, Hanna, to you. Your question's hip to the heart of the public policy issues that we've put in our working document.
For those of you who've accessed the programme and the interactive calendar, you'll see that there is also a live document, and the Twitter feeds, the Twitter hashtags are IGF2018 -- #IGF2018 and #mainsession, so if you have any thoughts on any aspect and you want to tweet, please feel free because we'll be creating a story board and working all the comments into the working document, so this session, even after it expires, will result in a living working document that will be sent throughout the globe for further substantive contributions.
For the sake of time, if we could ask other people who want to comment to please make brief remarks, say, try to keep it within a minute. Is there anyone who wants to comment, Mamadou? Yes, I can see a hand right at the back.
>> MAMADOU LO: Yes. I'm Mamadou Lo, MAG member from the private sector, the online moderator of this session. I have no questions, but I have one question of my own. I would like to know how our panelists see the lies of online hate speech and online extremism? I think that it is with respect to news and disinformation one of the main issues the world is facing right now. Thanks a lot.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Mamadou. I see another hand right at the back. I can't see you, sir, to call out your name, but please introduce yourself and make your point.
>> JULIEN ROSSI: So hello. Thank you. I'm Julien Rossi from the University of Technology of Computing. I have a question regarding the whole question of regulation of the circulation dissemination of news on platforms. It's related to basically when you're trying to limit the organic reach of certain news on platforms, like Facebook, you're using certain algorithms. How transparent are these algorithms? Is it possible for citizens to understand why a content's dissemination is being limited, how is it limited, but also, what is the legitimacy, actually, of such type of new artificial intelligence censorship in a way? At least it could be perceived like that also by the groups, you know, that are using it, like perhaps censoring some news and limiting the reach of some news could be also seen as a way to legitimize that news because some people will perceive it as they're trying to censor us, so --
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, sir.
>> JULIEN ROSSI: Thank you.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Yeah, I think the point's well made, and I think it hits to the issue of legitimacy and the transparency of the algorithm, and it's something Ankhi could respond to, but before we do that, we'd like to take three more interventions from the floor. Now, please understand because of brevity of time, we'd like to you ask you strictly keep it to one minute or less, and if you go beyond the one minute, I'll call you on it because we'd like the panel to then respond. Does anyone else? Yes, I see a gentleman over there, and two over here. Yes, please, could I take the two in the front, and then I'll get back to you, sir. Yes, please.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Off microphone)
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: We can't hear you. You need to speak loud --
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. Thank you. I'm from Hong Kong, representing YMCA of Hong Kong, so I would like to ask -- sometimes fake news is about how do journalists interpret the news but not about governmental intervention and political issues, so how should journalists actually interpret news in a more objective way and to organize the facts into objective news to let people know, like, without their subjective feelings and other comments? Yes. Thank you.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you. Did you have a comment as well? Go ahead.
>> BELLA: Hello. I'm Bella, and I'm also from Hong Kong, and you have mentioned some acts that can be done by organizations or citizens, but fake news is very hard to spot and there's still some unable to identify, and when those fake news are spread and maybe -- because the Internet is very fast, so it's hard to stop those fake news, so what can the government actually do to regulate these fake news?
And as implementing, like, those legal ban on legislation is a hard measure which is more effective when dealing with fake news, so do you think that is possible if we can trust the government instead or will there be a bigger possibility that the government itself can actually produce fake news?
And also --
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Intervention is noted. Please keep it under one minute.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Sorry.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you. But I must say very impressed with the youth participation from Hong Kong, and I think it deserves a round of applause from everybody.
(Applause)
That's youth participation for you, but for the sake of time, because there will be a security sweep, we're trying to shorten the interventions so that we can have a robust dialogue.
The gentleman in the middle, please.
>> WESLEY GIBBINGS: Yes. My name is Wesley Gibbings from Trinidad and Tobago with the Association of Caribbean Media Workers. I think the experience in my region has been that governments with respect to public policy are improvising and making things up as they go along and that what has been happening is they've tended to err on the side of prohibition as opposed to erring on the side of freedom, so I just wanted to get some perspectives from the panel on that.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you. And that leads us to Professor Rasha, if we could weigh in from the Egyptian experience.
>> RASHA ABDULLA: Thank you, Sala. There's been quite a few interesting points made from the floor, and, basically, I'll try to synthesize, and it has to do with, you know, hate speech, how do we regulate hate speech? How do we regulate, period, you know? Should Facebook be regulating through their algorithms, should the government be regulating, Pink Floyd's big question, Mother, should I trust the government? And the answer is no, a big fat no, all governments all across the world, not just in one region. I think that's opening the door to a lot of trouble. I think governments would love for us to say, you know, we have a problem of fake news, please solve it for us, and the answer is very simple. The answer is censorship, and I don't like that just as much as I don't like Facebook censoring anything in the name of protecting us from fake news because who is making the judgment and based on what? These are questions that we need to be asking ourselves.
I'm not saying necessarily that anybody has bad intentions, but, you know, corporations, just as governments, are after their own interests, and if the interests of the user -- if there is a conflict of interest between the user and the corporation or the government, guess who's going to win? Those in control, and not that we have much to do about that, actually, other than talk about it and raise our voices because that -- that goes down a very dangerous road, a road of censorship, a road of, in some parts of the world, also penalizing those who -- journalists or social media users who post online in the name of posting hate -- hate speech or in the name of tarnishing the reputation of a country or a government or a religion or some sacred entity of some sort, and that takes us down a very bad route, people making decisions for us, people telling us what is hate speech and what is fake news, what happens to be fake and what happens to be true. That's very dangerous.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Professor Rasha -- so, Professor Rasha, you raise a very interesting point at this juncture, and I thought I should ask the question. Given the exceptions the Article -- given the exceptions within Article 19 of the ICCPR in terms of the exceptions to freedom of expression under international law, knowing that not all countries have ratified the ICCPR, so it doesn't apply to all countries -- there are countries who haven't ratified the ICCPR -- and the exceptions are public morality, hate speech, xenophobia, and national security, so with that, I'd like to ask you just very briefly, in 30 seconds, what's your perception of governments or states or countries, national states, who may have codified these exceptions within their Constitutions or within their legislative instruments? 30 seconds, Professor Rasha, before I give it to Luz Nagle.
>> RASHA ABDULLA: Again, I think the danger is that those in power tend to define things to their own interests, so they will define what is hate speech for us and they will define what is national security for us. At this point, in some parts of the world I don't see much that we can do about it other than talk about it; in other parts of the world, people can actually do something, and I -- in these parts of the world where you can do something, please do something before that kind of freedom is gone. It's a dangerous thing. I think education is the key. That's the only thing that we can be doing right now is to educate ourselves, educate our families, our friends, our students, our whoever, you know, just spread self-awareness, spread good educational messages, teach people how to differentiate between facts and opinion, basically, is the answer to your question, how do journalists separate -- you know, separate their opinions from the story? Teach people how to separate fact from opinion. You'd be surprised how many, you know, adults with university education cannot separate a fact from a piece of opinion. That's -- you know, that's something that we can and need to work on, I think.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Professor Rasha.
Just before I get you onboard, Luz, I'll just ask Giacomo Mazzone to make a quick intervention before we get Luz on. I realize it's very early in the morning in Miami, Luz. Apologies.
>> GIACOMO MAZZONE: Thank you. Yes, first, a methodology suggestion, this is about the use of the words. I -- in Europe we have discussed very much about that, and we don't like the use of "fake news." Fake news is just the part of a larger phenomenon that we call -- we prefer to call information disorder where there are many, many components. If you -- you go into the fake news debate, you risk to be trapped in I don't like what you said, so this is fake news, et cetera, et cetera. This is not a rational way to approach the debate.
About the regulation or legislation -- for me this is a personal opinion -- we have to go to regulation. I don't believe that self-regulation is enough for a very simple reason. The business model of the Internet platforms is -- tends to make money out of having the maximum number of people, the maximum number of accounts, and with the maximum number of everything, so if -- despite whether they are fake or not -- even if they're fake, you make money, so there is a problem in the economic model that for me it's incompatible with the search of the truth as we suppose this has to be media -- traditional media and journalists.
The long-term solution, as Rasha said correctly, is a question of enhance the people to understand. When many politicians go to Twitter, they go to Twitter simply because they don't want to have contradictory, they don't want to talk with the journalists that could raise hard questions to them. They don't want to talk, so they send a tweet. Then the journalist is trapped in this digital era, and I'll report about that even if I cannot raise questions because this message raises a lot of questions, but I cannot raise the question, or I don't report, and then the people say I'm censoring or I'm not covering that event, so we are in a trap that only through -- when the -- when the citizen will understand that this is a shortcut not to answer to the nasty question and to -- so to make the journalist do the watchdog work. Only until that day it will be very difficult to solve the issue.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Giacomo. Before we go to Ankhi, who will weigh in on the APIs and relationships with third-party vendors and algorithms that was posed by the interventions from the floor, I'd like to invite Luz to please weigh in for two minutes. You have two minutes, Luz. Go ahead -- ahead.
>> LUZ NAGLE: Can you hear me?
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: We can hear you. Please continue.
>> LUZ NAGLE: Okay. I think we need to add to the debate the role of corporations in the media because at least here in the United States, corporations have a lot of influence on how the news are received and what types of news gets put out, and we know that there are very few corporations who are in charge of the media. I do agree with one of the speakers that it is crucial to educate the people because lack of education facilitates more manipulation of the citizens in the way that they can perceive the information that is presented to them, and it also goes to this label that we have given to maybe misinformation or have information as fake news.
If we were to educate citizens so that they could differentiate between facts and opinions and manipulation, I think that that will be very helpful, but going back to the role of money and corporations and media, I think that that is something that we all ought to think about when we try to look at policy aspects because, again, it has become all about making money, and all of you have seen what has happened in the United States. When we have all these political debates, it's about entertaining people. It doesn't seem that the reporting is serious. It has become entertainment. Everything has become a show, so why the entertainment, why the show? Because people seem to be wanting to be entertained, and we need to bring back the role of the media as the fourth pillar of democracy, so I think that that would be something important that we ought to take into consideration.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Professor Luz. We really appreciate your streaming in this early in the morning. I recognize you've been up since 1:00 a.m. It's probably 6:00 a.m. in Miami, so we really appreciate your -- your participation and your contribution.
So with that, I'd like to ask Ankhi if she could weigh in for two minutes before I'll ask Shmylah to give interventions.
>> ANKHI DAS: So, one, in order to -- I think there were multiple themes in the questions which came across. I'll try and respond -- unpack it one by one. Yeah, of course, I'll make it within your two-minute deadline.
One particular factor which is very important to, you know, sort of acknowledge and understand is many times fake news -- fake accounts are behind fake news circulation, and you have to act against fake accounts because then there is an accountability problem. You just don't know who these -- this is a huge quality issue in terms of the news which is getting circulated by these spammers, essentially, spam operations, and you -- there is no way that this can stay on the platform, and we act against them because if we don't disrupt such networks, there is going to be very limited success on combating the fake news on a platform scale; therefore, we've made a huge focus against fighting against fake accounts and taking them off the platform very rapidly because that does disrupt both economic incentives for spammers.
Second theme point which I think was raised was broadly a point about transparency, and I would like to respond to it in two ways. One is that we have made our policies in terms of third-party developers, how they build on Facebook, how they access our API transfer, and this is now listed on our website in fairly great detail in terms of what those policies are.
The second element is anyone can now view ads on Facebook, like you can go and see page ads and essentially see what those ads are, who are these people who are running these ads, et cetera, and that also helps in addressing the legitimacy concern because a lot of that is also what we've seen in the previous -- in the previous era when fake news was circulating on the platform and there was no real strategy to combat it, that there was misuse of ads and also there was existence of fake accounts on the platform. There was a combination of these two fundamentally, which was leading to a lot of spread of fake news, and that's something we dealt with on the Facebook side.
On the WhatsApp side, and this again is very true in the region which I represent, and what we've done in India is that we've introduced a limitation on the forward feature on WhatsApp, limited it to five forwards to stop, you know, sort of bad viral spread of fake news which can cause real world harm in terms of violence and rioting, et cetera, and that has proved to be fairly effective in combating viral spread of fake news, so we'll have to look at technical measures, transparency, as well as capacity building, and we think that can be done through public service education campaigns and also partnering with real experts in the field, including news organizations.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: That's wonderful, Ankhi. Those are comments by Facebook Public Policy director Ms. Ankhi, so with that, I'd like to ask Shmylah to weigh in for two minutes.
>> SHMYLAH KHAN: So broadly, I think we've been discussing the issue of regulation and sort of along the spectrum where we should lie, and it's important to us when we talk about regulation who is doing the regulation, and first of all, we see this trend of the -- this real privatization of the sort of determinations of what is speech, what should be legitimate speech because we have a lot of governments working with social media companies and making these determinations, not along lines of sort of constitutional limits, along lines of legislative limits, but sort of within these privatized developed rules, which are not sort of compatible with the larger framework of democracy. So our remote panelist was talking about the role of corporations, and it's a very real role which leads to decision-making regarding regulation.
And the second one is sort of in the traditional model, the regulation regarding speech is being done by the state, and it's important to remember that the state is not any political entity, and determinations of what should be considered legitimate speech are then decided by sort of national interests, and that is a very old question that we sort of have to deal with, and the -- there is this sort of -- I think time and time again these, like, clear redline rules have failed in terms of sort of questions regarding that sort of outlier questions regarding hate speech and fake news, and I would like to agree with sort of my panelists, and education-based campaigns are very important, and we should also be focusing on sort of developing and having a counter speech regarding when it comes to hate speech, and there's been a lot of work regarding that, and that does need institutional support as well, not just sort of -- because even in terms of hate speech, there is an imbalance between those who are producing the hate speech and the counter speech which are usually individuals and citizens.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Shmylah. With that, I'd like to ask Dr. Yik Chan for two minutes.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Okay. Thank you. I think I agree with my panelists about whether self-regulation is sufficient. From my point of view, I do not think self-regulation is sufficient for various reasons. One would of the reasons is actually, for example, the fake news in China, for example, many fake news actually was financially and motivated -- people used artificial intelligence, you know, to generate the fake news in order to make profit out of it, so -- out of the -- whether self-regulation is sufficient.
I think from my point of view, to tackle these fake news issues, we need a kind of co-regulation, maybe multistakeholder approach governance, you know, in the work platform, news organizations, transitional news organizations and platforms and the government because the government actually contributes to the fake news in China because they're lack of efficient response once there's rumors online, but they could also play important role to facilitate the refuting of the fake news. So in China, I think there's a kind of policy. Yeah. Thank you.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Do you want to finish that comment, in China there's a kind of policy?
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: Yes. In China, there's some policy regarding how to regulate the fake news, for example, such as they have a criminal law, you know, which I think is -- may not be necessary to have a criminal law, and they have licensing for online news providers or online news provider has to have license in order to provide the news, and they -- the platform, of course, has an obligation, you know, to remove anything which is defamatory and also request the platform ISB to collaborate with the end user to tackle the fake news. I think there's a policy control on this, but as I said, it's open to dispute or discussion. Yeah.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Dr. Yik Chan.
So with that, please allow me to ask the remote moderator, are there any comments online?
>> MAMADOU LO: No, Sala, we have no comments online.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you. Is there anyone who has a burning comment to make from the floor? It's obvious from the panel that -- oh, yes, I see one hand. Please introduce yourself and a one-minute intervention, please. Thank you.
>> LEONID LEVIN: Thank you. Leonid Levin, Russia. I'm from the Russian Parliament. I wanted to support what these speakers said regarding the fact that self-regulation is insufficient because it's the major corporations that are engaged in self-regulation, corporations which own the media, which own the social networks, and they're the ones deciding on these principles without taking into account the national context in different countries, which is most important.
Turning now to fake news, I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to regulating this particular sphere. We already have common principles which are already in force which work, which apply to major corporations, to search engines. These are algorithms. What I mean is this: First and foremost, we need to see which companies are most popular, which have a lot of subscribers when it comes to social media. These are the ones that have their content shared often, which are recommended often, and these are the principles which we need to take into account when we seek to combat fake news, and what we need to combat first when combating fake news are the people disseminating this news. Thank you.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you. That was a very excellent intervention. I hope you were listening, Luz. I hope you saw the transcript for that particular intervention. It was sort of in line with some of the things you raised in terms of putting the focus back on corporations and the capacity to monetize content.
And I note that in 2016 at an APEC officials meeting in Vietnam, noting that the APEC meeting is happening in Papua New Guinea right now, that's probably why the President of China is not in Paris for the Paris Peace forum. I think he's there.
Anyway, it was said that $1.9 billion -- was it 1.9 trillion or billion in terms of global e-commerce sales, and what would be interesting is what component of that is actually media and content and that sort of thing, and it's a very interesting intervention by the gentleman in terms of his take on regulation.
And you notice that the panel had quite a diverse view on capacity to regulation and not regulate, self-regulate, not regulate, and there have been intermittent questions and interventions from the floor in terms of transparency of algorithms.
And I note that the last intervention from the floor also said that, look, there are common principles that exist, so that's one of the things we'd like to invite you to do is to contribute to the living document that's online on the IGF website. If you have any views or perspectives on those particular instances to please feel free to reach out to any one of us. And whether there's room for potential intercessional -- potential Best Practice Forum, particularly in this particular thematic -- subthematic area.
So with that, is there any other intervention from the floor? I see one hand up -- two hands up. Please, go for it. Keep it to a minute. Thank you. Yes, and after that, Madam.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just a question. I was hearing the intervention from China. What worries me -- what worries me is what is the point that if you are trying to fight fake news, actually you are curtailing freedom of the press, freedom of speech because in many countries -- and mine was one of those -- the government was the main spreader of fake news, and journalist investigations that were well funded -- were fundamented with a lot of documents to back what they were saying were labeled by the government as fake news, so it worries me these kinds of limitations. I know that fake news is a problem. I believe in -- but I worry about censorship.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you. The point is well noted. If you heard the panelist from China, she mentioned that she was encouraging less restriction on -- yes, Dr. Yik Chan for 30 seconds before I go to the next.
>> YIK CHAN CHIN: I'm happy to answer this question. I think that's an excellent question. Actually, as you said, you know, the Chinese government actually restricts freedoms of expression, and that's why I said, you know, the government contributes to the spread of fake news as well as they have a role to play in -- rebuttal the fake news. One reason, as you said, you know, sometimes why the fake news was -- why they respond in China is because of distrust of the government, but at same times, many fake news is not necessarily politically related. Maybe it's other social issue, economical issue, so, therefore, that's my point. Thank you.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Thank you, Dr. Yik. Gentleman from -- yes, please go ahead.
>> ARSENIY NEDYAK: Thank you. My name is Arseniy Nedyak. I'm from the Russian Federation governmental sector. We heard from the panelists earlier the main course of the fake news or international disorder or whatever it's called is irresponsible media and irresponsible pardon actions, so the question is maybe it's time to draw a line between professional journalists and so-called new media actors and not mixing them up, you know, as some regulations are trying to impose now, for example, in Council of Europe some international organizations, and to impose some transparent international framework for these new media actors because traditional media -- I mean, professional media, they already have this legal network in their home, in their nationals.
And the second thing that I just wanted to mention, we already had a question about the extremism in the first one, and it was left without answer. Thank you.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: So just a very quick point, and it's a counter-question, which is what happens to countries where all the traditional media outlets are captured by the state and you have individual journalists who sort of act in the role of the -- what the traditional media's supposed to be? So that -- that's something to think about.
And I note that you mentioned that you felt that one question left -- was left unanswered. Would you like to repeat the question? The counter extremism.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: It was the first one.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: Okay. So Giacomo, would you like to give our concluding remarks before we officially wrap up this session?
>> GIACOMO MAZZONE: Very difficult to conclude all this debate so fast, but just to answer what has been said, we have already definition. At UNESCO, UNESCO has defined what is media, professional is media practitioner, and the protection extends to all these forms of media practitioners, so if you want, I can share with you this information. Council of Europe also has, but it's less defined than the one at UNESCO. And I think we need to stick to that because there are situations in which the traditional media roles has been played out by other nontraditional media because the traditional ones are under control.
About extremism in general, I think that, again, we need to come to a regulation, we need to make this regulation not only in case where there is a crime -- already a crime that has been committed through the media or through social media in this case, but also, we need to find rules that reduce the risk to have this made possible. Today the system as it is is open a highway where they want to trick the game and to cheat and to introduce extremist views, hate speech, or even fake news simply for making money out of the change.
We need to have responsibility of all the actors in order to reduce this risk down to an acceptable level because we had this level before. What is different today is that something like that could in seconds reach millions and millions of viewers or, people everywhere. It's not a final answer, but I am giving an answer.
>> SALANIETA TAMANIKAIWAIMARO: So with that, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to make plug-ins. The hate speech workshops at this IGF 2018, I think there are three, Workshops 80, 81, and 83. The fake news workshops, there are four, Workshops 95, 161, 333, and 415. And there's a workshop on local content, 186. There's a living and working document that's available online, and the Twitter hashtags exist, so whilst we're concluding this panel, the document will still be live, and your contributions are valid, and we'd like to invite particularly the youth participation from YMCA in Hong Kong -- to invite you and your peers and all other youth IGFs that are represented from Europe and Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and have I forgotten a region? Eastern Europe and Western Europe to please cross-pollinate the working document. With that, please allow me to thank the remarkable panelists, distinguished panelists, who have given up their time to contribute to fascinating dialogue, but most especially to Professor Luz Nagle who is streaming in from Miami. Please join me in giving them a hand, and also thank you to the remote moderators and those who are streaming on YouTube and Facebook. Please put your hands together.
(Applause)
With that, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude the media and content main session, and if I could please ask you kindly to pack your things. We need to exit the room. They need to sweep the room for the French president who will be opening the IGF, so with that, thank you very much. We're calling it a day. So to those of you who are streaming in from the Pacific, from Latin America, Caribbean, from Eastern Europe, Western Europe, South America, from China and all across the world, we thank you for streaming in. We realize it's very late. We appreciate your participation.
So with that, until next time, adieu.