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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>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Good afternoon, everyone. It is organized by a hiring institute in Brazil and Sussex in the United Kingdom. My name is Beatriz Kira. Id also like to thank our online moderator Phoebe Li and Ramon Costa.
The central challenge that we're going to gather here today is one that define fist 2025. How to build (?). Offer abstract or distant that include this information that can swing elections, hate speech disputes from screens into the streets and coordinators that could silence marginalized voices.
For a long time, the debate on how to tackle issues reinvolved around inadequate solutions. We have now moved away from relying solely on self‑governing bio platforms into more regulatory model. Around the world, the ground is shifting and we see, for example, the union has digital services act which addresses systemic risks. We have seen the United Kingdom based on the alliance safe act which pioneers the duty of care approach and we have seen countries like Brazil where the Supreme Court is currently repurposing intermediary liability within the Internet. And what you are seeing here is not only a new approach to regulation, but different approaches all together, different strategies and duty of care which is a topic of workshop today is one of them. It represents the traditional models ask rather than solely focusing on platforms should keep up or take down, it asks what can platforms do to create and to promote a favor environment online. With the shift of new opportunities for a new space for more stakeholders and institutions and Civil Society and uses have the opportunity to play new roles and these are things we want to discuss with you today. But I think the crucial question that is motivating us is precisely: What does adopting a duty of care approach apart from governance actually mean? This question sits at the center of a research project that I coordinate my colleague Ivar Hartman which is funded and it compares experiences in the UK and in Brazil. Last year, we hosted a multi‑stakeholder workshop in Brazil to explore the questions and the insights that were discussed led to the publication of a report earlier this year where you can find the main findings that we published. It is really available and I really encourage to you read and to download. Building on that discussion and building on the findings from this report, one of the key issues that we learned is the importance of learning from different restrictions not only Brazil and the UK, but how other restrictions and other actors also considering in terms of duty of care approaches to platform governance. And this led us to organize this workshop here today and we are very thankful to IGF for hosting us.
Today, we have five speakers that bring to the discussion something very valuable, which are real experiences from different continents, different countries, different regulatory environments to tell us more about what it means for duty of care approach to being in platform governance and regulation. We have representations with public sector experience, Internet governance bodies in academia.
So just rounding up the introduction and housekeeping for the session, we are going to start with a Round Table session with each of the speakers making the initial remark for around 7 minutes. They will introduce themselves about 7 minutes and then I'm going to open the floor for discussion for debate. I really hope you can engage with us and make this a really compensation and engaging conversation and not only me talking to you or talking at you. Thank you again for being here. Let's begin.
We have the first speaker today. Amelie. Amelie is joining us. I will give you the floor. You can introduce yourself and tell us more. Thank you.
>> AMELIE HELDT: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yes. I'm joining from Germany online today unfortunately. I work at the federal chancery, but I am here on my personal capacity as an affiliated researcher for media research in Hanoi burg. I am gladly talking about this situation in Germany and Europe. We can go into details later on.
So what the German situation is that we already have a general duty of care between contractual partners. That is something in the B2B. Our civil code here in Germany. It is something used in the past to test terms and conditions of online platforms to be specifically also to see to what extent platforms can be bound by freedom of expression. So in the frame of the horizontal effect freedom of expression. So that's like the starting point that we had.
Then as you're probably or maybe aware, there was the e‑Commerce directive here in Europe that's the predecessor law of the DSA. And Germany then adopted in 2017 a law called the network enforcement act which also obliged platforms to implement a system of notification for users so they could flag content as being illegal.
Later on or now that we have the DSA, this obviously replaced the net CG and in the DSA, we have much more duties quite specific duties for platforms to act against illegal contempt. One thing that I would like to highlight today what I think would be interesting for the discussion is the role of trusted flaggers under the DSA. Trusted flaggers have ‑‑ are in article 22 DSA. As you're maybe aware of an instrument that's been used by platforms in the past. So we can assume it is a best practice of online platforms that's then been integrated into the digital services act and the digital services act contains rules meaning that the regime of trusted flaggers is the following. They can notify or flag content but only illegal content. So they have to ‑‑ or it's under the provision of article 16 DSA. And how do you become a trusted flagger? There will be a process of certification with the digital services coordinator and that's the main public authority in charge of the digital services act in the respective member states. The flag ‑‑ they flag the content and then there will be a speedy check by the platforms which then decide whether they want to remove it or not whether they think it's illegal or not.
So it's a multi‑stakeholder instrument and as I mentioned, it was already in use before the DSA. And the discussion has been going on around this is the question how to ‑‑ how to evaluate actually the role of Private Sectors that organizations that can be ‑‑ that will be trusted flaggers under article 22 in a way some people say they have been ‑‑ they act on behalf of the state. So they can be considered state actors which would make ‑‑ well, which will change illegal status in a way they would be bound by other rules and will be closer to state action and that's relevant for anything that goes against freedom of expression or against user content.
There's also the question of how to deal with organizations that are mainly focused on a private interest such as intellectual property that's often in a context that's commercially used. So this is the big discussion. Obviously it helps when it comes to hate speech because the removal will be more speedy and that is something that has been advocated for a long time. I'm happy to dive a bit deeper into this use case later on, but what I wanted to highlight here is to sum it up is sort of the hybrid governance that we have here between a law like the digital services act that's not only about platforms being compliant and the states in charge of reviewing their compliance but also private actors such as NGOs also that can be funded by the state taking an active role in the implementation of the DSA. And it makes the whole context more difficult and it needs to be assessed carefully how to jungle with these new instruments. It's quite complicated to untangle the legal relationships between all these actors. Yeah. So that's quite specific. I'm happy to also talk about the DSA more generally. I thought this could be interesting for our discussion.
>> Thank you so much, Amelie. It was a really good opening to highlight what the model or the ground of (?) but also super national model of the GSA. We will continue in some form of this national, super national perspective now bringing in the perspective from south and southeast Asia. So we have Janjira that will tell us more about that. The floor is yours.
>> JANJIRA SOMBATPOONSIRI: Thanks so much for having me. High name is Janjira. I'm a political scientist working at the university in Thailand and areas based in hamburg. Over the past years, I've been doing research collecting data on legal tools used to tackle this information problems in southeast Asia and at the same time, in Thailand, we also survey experts views on the impact of this information on electro integrity, social cohesion and information integrity.
Before we jump into the conversation about platforms duty I of care, I want to begin by share something preliminary fightings from our survey from the project in Thailand. So the surveys explore experts views. As I said, we launched this in Asian countries. Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. What is so interesting is that the majority of respondents around 65% expressed distrust in government regulatory frameworks. I'm not really surprised to be honest. Governments genuinely came in and protected citizens. I think that's why we want to move towards multi‑stakeholder approach. I find the results quite telling and the political content shares platform governance and I think when we discuss this issue, we have to look at various forms of threats that online users and citizens face. So it's not only this information. It is always ‑‑ we also have trends in (?). So the issue in the region isn't whether governments can legislate, but whether they can enforce these laws in ways that uphold the rule of law and due process. So public mistrust is further enforced by increasing misuse of such laws and there are plenty of laws in the region to suppress freedom of expression as seen in a host number of countries and including Thailand, Cambodia and especially the Philippines and due to administration. So online critiques face harsh penalties while there is pressure to remove politically sensitive content under the guys combating this information.
So my point is in practice enforcement often becomes participant at least in southeast Asia and in the context where today's opposition might be tomorrow's government, these laws can be quite conveniently weaponized. My point is while legal and regulatory tools are important, they are not a silver bullet. I don't know if this point would be considered contradictory to a lot of folks at IGF, but my research shows that public preference leans towards a multi‑stakeholder approach, but synchronization across initiatives to improve the integrity of online information. I would like to call this approach as a (?) approach which is lightly divergent from multi‑stakeholder approach not completely new. So the approach includes not only regulatory frameworks grounded in platforms duty of care, but it also moves beyond the legal sphere to have fact checking structured pre‑banking efforts and community moderation initiatives. So I'm going to spend the last 2 and a half minutes giving you some sort of examples of how this approach has been trialed in the region. Each of the kids that we study doesn't have the comprehensive package of this approach. So one example comes from each country. So it is fragmented still.
Now regarding the participatory fact checking, in Malaysia, after the repeal of the entire news act in 2018, journalists and Civil Society actors began advocating for the creation of the Malaysian media Council. It is an independent body task with handling public complaints, countering this information and engaging with tech companies. And in Thailand and the Philippines, Civil Society organizations have collaborated with platforms and Parliamentary committees to flag an approach very similar to what the previous speakers suggested. So this has collaborated with platforms and Parliamentary committees to flag accounted suspected of coordinating this information campaign. So the idea is not only to flag and target false content and I highlight content, but also to address a deeper political economy group of online influence operations and to disrupt their financial incentives.
Last but not least, the (?) approach helps ensure they are anchored in initiatives driven by broad based segments of society. This idea of an approach to platform governance is so important because it is about creating Democratic legitimacy from such frameworks for society to adopt, accept and pursue the goal of combating in information together. So I will stop here.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you so much. It was interesting to hear how information of trust for users in government and platforms is now uniformed across different settings and jurisdictions and how that does things. If you contrast it is more of a regulatory driven efforts. It is more of a Civil Society driven but similar in a way trusted participatory initiative. Thank you so much. Wonderful.
We are going to move around the globe effort overview. We have now to my right. There's a lot going on and there's a challenging position. Thank you, Via.
>> Via: Thank you so much. It helps to organize this activity. So thank you so much for everybody being here. I'm a journalist and I'm speaking on behalf of a Civil Society that I belong to called communication rights and democracy. Its member of a huge coalition net right in the network coalition in Brazil. It gathers more than 50 Civil Society organizations that struggles for different rights online. A Civil Society representative of the Brazilian Internet committee. I will try to begin by summarizing the current state of discussions due to care in Brazil and 2 million perspective and present contributions that we have at Brazilian Internet committee, the CGI. The idea of duty of care has been discussed in Brazil and visited the proposal by the government inspired by the UK, which included this concept on the bill in transparency, freedom and responsibility on the Internet. At that type in 2023, the governance proposal was to establish care for social media in relation to the circle and harmful content that could promote hate speech and violation of children rights and Democratic rule of law. It is important to remember that this happened shortly after an attempt that our countries had the elections at the end of 2002 ‑‑ 2022. Social media would not be sponge for individual content but rather for the responses to the general circulation of such content. At the same time, the bureau spoke of the duty of companies to mitigate systemic risks generated by their services. This presents the two different concepts in different articles of the text. In my opinion, the proposed duty of care would resulted in practice in a change of the civil liability regime of platforms proposing a duty and remove such content in automated manner. This position has been enforced by different government actors including contents of the trial taking place in the Supreme Court. There are two cases. Today we should hear the opinion of the less justice on that. There are 11 justice. And in the cases analyzed the liked and it has been if place since 2014 framing work. In his ARTICLE 19 states that application providers all of them and I will go further on that, can only be held liable for damage caused by third‑party content for a court order to remove it. The Brazilian Supreme Court has a majority of votes to change this regime. So 8 out of 11 justice have been cast in this direction and the content of duty care has been mentioned many times by the justice. The court will completely change and consider social media as publishers given to the media outlets responsible for everything that is published or whether it would apply to content, illegal, harmful that must be proactively removing it. As this is a case that deals with civil liability, that is liability for individual content and not just a systemic risks, there is a reinforcement of this interpretation that the concept of duty of care is related to civil liability. It is also unclear how the Supreme Court ensures implementation of its decision. Consider that under Brazil law, civil liability must be determined by the courts and consider that Brazil does not have a regulatory authority to deal with this topic. That is why a significant part of Civil Society including organizations that part of the rights on the network coalition, which I belong has raised important concerns about idea of duty of care especially in lines of abuses that have platforms that silence voices and struggles of minority groups in Brazil. There is no doubt that abusers will multiply and if we are to have as we hope a slightly healthier environment, in terms of removing illegal content, we will have an environment in which critical voices where journalists and human rights will have a private censorship. That is why this part of Civil Society advocates that Brazil move forward with regulation through the ‑‑ regulation through the Parliament. There is process, algorithms and mechanisms rather than individual content in a perspective close to the risks of this service. The ruling is important and where the Brazilian Parliament been unable to make progress on this issue. It was blocked in 2023 by pressure from big tech companies that was anything but Republican. Depending on how they conclude this trial, we may have a situation where this decision is not implemented or even worse were impacted on all application providers. This is why the Brazilian internet steering committee has the constitutionality because it is applied to all providers has provided a technical note proposing to provide this for the Supreme Court. It is based on the level of innovation and companies of distribution of third‑party content. There is a need to model it and accountability of agents according to their functionalities proposing appropriate and proportional liability. The analysis of ARTICLE 19 should observe the following distinction. Application providers whose functionality does not interfere with the circulation of verified content, those that operate as a simple means of transport or storage such as website hosting or providers.
A second topology would go for applications provided whose functionality has low with the circulation of third party. There's a website specializing in articles and entries. And application providers whose functionality has a higher circulation of third‑party content constitution risky activity. This interference includes profiling, mass dissemination, stretchers to continue engagement, paid content, targeted to advertising among others. We believe Supreme Courts should apply to these providers which are far from being neutral intermediaries. Finally, reinforcing for multi‑stakeholder for balancing and Democratic regulatory proposals. I would like to share that looking at the task assigned to Brazilian Parliament, the steering committee has launched a public consultation to the media. The protection of freedom of expression, private and human rights online, the protection of information integrity and prevention and harm and account act. I am finishing. I promise. In a sense, propose for debate the idea that social media should make their best to prevent and guard against potential harm and rise from their activities especially those arising from the circulation of content and understand they are sponge for the harm arising from systemic risks in order for services provide. Should we repair or mitigate them. It is understood to be caused by network environment resulting from its policies of transparency and moderation, recommendation and content boosting. Thank you very much and I will be happy to go further in the debate.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you so much. It is interesting to see how in theory, the same concept of duty of care has been mobilized differently not only across (?) but by different stakeholders. So the Supreme Court understanding and interpreting this from one perspective and more linked the idea of intermediary liability whereas the efforts have seen in the past in terms of legislative efforts being more systemic approach in a way in the UK and (inaudible). I think in this and how Parliaments have been trying to embed the legislation, we're now joined online by Yvonne Chua who will bring us a perspective from the Philippines. Yvonne, I imagine it's quite late for you. Please go ahead and introduce yourself and you have the floor for your remarks. Thank you.
>> YVONNE CHUA: Don't worry. It is still early evening in the Philippines. I'm Yvonne. I'm really glad we're having this conversation because in the Philippines, we have been stuck for some time. Our lawmakers have been focusing on pushing users. Primarily wrapping up cyber liable and proposing stiffer penalties. But we have seen where existing laws have led citizens and journalists and even silenced and the platforms that enable virtually untouched. That's why a report by a house or Congressional tri‑committee released a few weeks ago feels like a turning point. It recognizes that platforms have a duty of care and that duty can and should be regulated. Now, just a bit of context. The cyber crime prevention act in the Philippines combined with colonial era have put hundreds of citizens including journalists through liable. Liable is a crime in the Philippines and more than 3800 cyber liable cases have been filed since 2012 when the law took effect. This law has significant reliance on criminal liable against speech online. And it doesn't stop there. We have anti‑terrorism law of 2020 widening the state surveillance powers and introducing vague speech restrictions. No Philippine law holds platforms accountable. That brings us to the house or tri‑committee on public order and communications technology and public information. After months of hearing with government agencies, academia, Private Sector, fact checkers and even influencers, the committee concluded and let me quote. Our punitive toolkit (?) well funded ecosystems. They proposed something new, at least in the Philippines, 11 recommendations that addresses three major themes. Platform regulation and accountability and literacy and enforcement. In the interest of time, I will focus on those highly relevant to today's recommendation.
Prescribed penalties for their participation in content related offenses and incorporate provisions on disclosure data, parameters for auto blocking of content and preservation and retention of data. In the case of access to platform data, this is really intended to address the problem. When platforms keep refusing to accommodate requests for data by citing American laws or U.S. privacy laws in particular. Closely related is another committee recommendation to enact or pass a new law that would establish a comprehensive legal framework against false or harmful online content. It seeks to authorization government agencies to take down and block accessors. Now that's the problem. Both recommendation emphasize intermediary obligations, the proposed provisions on content blocking or take down could easy to overreach without clear limits.
In the Philippines a similar take down clause was struck down by our Supreme Court several years ago for bypassing judicial review. We don't opportunity have Singapore's (?) in the Philippines. As worrisome as the franchise proposal, the tri‑committee recommended foreign platforms maintain in country office that can be held liable. No problem with that. It makes sense to clarify jurisdiction and ease enforcement. But the committee recommended that platforms secure a Congressional or legislative franchise just like broadcasters or certain utilities. This is deeply problematic. We have seen this before when ABS and once our country's largest network other the allies refused to renew the franchise. It was political retaliation. So franchising platforms risk turning into a participant weapon and any accountability build that includes a franchise requirement must guarantee ironclad due process and political pressure or better yet, just shove the whole idea.
I want to point out if platforms can meet these? They have shown yes. They have responded to crisis, elections and coordinate the harm in the Philippines and elsewhere where expectations are clear just as they are in the EU, UK and platforms adjust. They take down harmful content and illegal content and they would treat their algorithms.
So where do we go from here in the Philippines? At noon of June 30, lawmakers will assume office so the tri‑committees work will be archived. But it is finding a path. We can continue to criminalize users and chase trolls or follow a path. And finally hold platforms to account. Duty of care is not a silver bullet, but it shifts burden upstream where the harm begins. We have seen the work during elections and emergencies, but we need to build in safe guards. We need to make sure our laws protect free expression and human rights even as we build a healthier, more trustworthy information space. Thank you.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you so much. I think activity heartening to hear how difficult the situation is not only in Brazil as you heard but in the Philippines is an example where we're trying to balance the very important goals and promoting safety and trust while upholding freedom of expression and not really giving government of the turn power to overstep and kind of interfere with this right. Good to hear from you in terms of course our ways of doing that. A mix of political will and collaboration compliance, but it is not an easy task to put together the legislation or regulation. Thank you very much for that.
With this, we move into our final speaker for today, my colleague Ivar Hartman who will bring a summary of the challenges that we heard today as we prepared the floor for questions. So just kind of let you know after Ivar, you will open the floor for questions. Think questions you will ask our speakers and pick up different points and ask them to impact something. Think of your questions while you hear Ivar's presentation. Ivar, the floor is yours.
>> Ivar Hartman: Different panels here at IGF have different strategies to making sure that it is actually a conversation, a debate and not just different people speaking in isolation. So our approach was I will try to sum up, not 100% of all comment asks contributions, but make an enter to connect the realities in all these four jurisdictions that were discussed here trying to take a shot at interpreting the valuable information and lessons that we heard from all the four jurisdictions. I will do that by looking at this from different perspectives. One is what have been the challenges to creating and enforcing duty of care mechanisms and regulation in different jurisdictions and what have been the concrete solutions that our speakers have shared with us have been at least proposed, if not attempted or have worked in these jurisdictions. One thing that I think unite, if not maybe the European union and the jurisdiction that Amelie talked so kindly about, tieing Philippines and brass sill there is a perception by Civil Society and many stakeholders there's a delay by congress to offer to provide to actually create a framework that will address the more pressing issues that maybe everyone knows about how problematic this information is for at least 10 years, but the more current versions of this and how it trails money trail, that sort of thing that regulators in the countries have not been quick enough with that. That certainly has been the case in Brazil as Beatriz has hold us. Basically the main challenge is that because of the delay by congress, as soon as the Brazilian Supreme Court steps up and strikes down the current rule for intermediary liability for platforms and offers in its place an unclear description of duty of care supposed framework that this will create a fear on platforms and therefore on to users that instead of the old regime, which was not strict liability was based on a trigger, there should be a court rule in order for a platform to be responsibility for illegal content. The court comes in and strikes down that rule. What is left because of a void of congress legislation is an unclear framework and that probably might lead to strict liability. The solution that's presented to this version of duty of care, which is obviously unwanted for everyone here would be a new build that Civil Society is building in its entirety. It would separate providers based on rules. So it should make clear, which is something that it seems the Supreme Court creating the framework will not do. Creating platforms to advertisers a topology that would make predictable and safe for each company to understand what the law requires and then decide their course of action. Again, in the Phil fines and in Thailand ‑‑ Philippines and in Thailand, Civil Society does not find the current frameworks as useful as they need it to be to ensure safe and protective online content moderation. It seems as Janjira brought to our attention a survey of four different southeast Asian countries has shown that a majority of people distrust regulatory government frameworks. So 88ing a new law such as a DSA is clearly not enough. So she tells us of a pluralist approach, one that would ensure representations from all segments of society creating multistakeholder roles within embedded in the regulatory framework because at end of the day, it is about creating Democratic legitimacy for content. She tells us about citizens fact checking, independent self‑regulatory, body tests with engaging platforms. So there is an intermediary to the government and users. To my understanding, it seems we have similar concerns also in the Philippines as Yvonne has told us. She tells us it seems legislators have been stuck for many years. Overall platforms are virtually untouched in either their failure to remove problematic content or when they do ‑‑ when they oversensor. She brings to us news of this important report by a Congressional authority that is basically identifying one of the biggest problems with a version of duty of care framework or government framework, which is the excessive or let's say undue use of government oversight in such a framework to actually whereby government as in the past in the Philippines, she tells us would retaliate digital platforms by forcing them too remove content that is not illegal. The concrete solution would be to guarantee in the law due process, to also guarantee access to platform data to do a full review of cyber crime law to avoid interpretations of liable loss that would mean let content gets removed even though its legal just under the guise of defamation.
And lastly, that would prevent against content blocking that is an overreach by platforms.
So in summary, of course not identical challenges, but challenges in the four jurisdictions that are very similar in their roots because as we know, the problematic, model is a worldwide business model of all recommendation and advertising. And the solutions are not exactly the same. So the DSA to the challenge as Emily has brought to us, the challenge of the question of if you have a duty of care framework and you hope that Civil Society does fact checking as well and identifies hate speech as well, well then how do you figure out who becoming's flagger or a trusted flagger? How do you evaluate those that take on this important task and are they a state authority now or can they for the purposes of the law be considered a state representative because that would mean state action that restricts freedom of speech. This has immense consequences. So the solution there has been in the DSA and obviously we don't have many, many years of enforcement yet. We have some type of enforcement and just to finalize and I think this is an important place to end because this is where it is perhaps most advanced in terms of how far the implementation is going. Government certification for the flaggers such that there are rules on the DSA obviously as Emily has told us that decide and establish what needs to happen, what are the rules for someone and the private entity to become a trusted flagger so that we can avoid abuse whenever very specific commercial private interests are involved. Once again lastly, thank you to our four speakers and I apologize for any misinterpretation that I might have made here.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you, Ivar. I know we have a keen diligence that opportunity ask questions. Open the floor for questions on site and online as well. Use the flat chunks and then we're going to be monitoring that. For people in the room, that is a mic to my left‑hand side. We already have one question, two questions on the floor. Let's take them in rounds perhaps. Is that okay? Start with your name or your organization and let's try to make the most of this. Thank you.
>> SPEAKER: I am David Sullivan. We work with companies on best practices and standards for trust and safety. My question for all the speakers is: How are different legal frameworks that have been presented defining systemic risks? And how do you approach trying to identify risks that are not illegal content but somehow would not wind up restricting access to information and freedom of expression? Thanks.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you. Yes. We have another one from the floor. Please.
>> SPEAKER: I'm iron tech freedom. I run a think tank in the U.S. I am here to thank you on the potential are it abuse. I'm glad we're talking about that. I would suggest when it comes to franchising, there are new due process safe guards for franchising. We have seen views to extort whatever they can get from the licensees. My question is: When should we have confidence in due process protections and what kinds of skew process protections do we think will actually work in the face of increasingly lawless governments? The Trump Administration clearly doesn't care. They'll run whatever due process requirements are in place. I'll give you two concrete examples to frame my question. One article 732 in the digital services act doesn't get enough attention. It says before the commission can issue a finding of liability, it has to explicitly say what the platform should have done or should now do. So I'd like to hear your thoughts about that as a due process safe guard. And then just to close in the United States, we had this debate over the kits online safety act. Republicans have been very clear they think the bill will be weaponized against transgender content. The Democratic sponsors think the safe guards they put in place are adequate. I want to know what kinds of safe guards concretely you think would be adequate to ensure duties of care can be used for particular kinds of content.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you so much.
>> SPEAKER: Recently, we have done a huge study on implementation or the countries. It turned out and my question may be shifting a focus, but also I understand the relevance of due care platforms, but I want to shift the focus on the states and the previous colleague asked more about the safe guards. The DSA itself does not have the safe guards for the rule of law and skew diligence. I want to understand better whether your research and countries you can provide us more understanding of the due care of the states when implement these laws to prevent any forms of abuse? That should be detriment to citizens, but a Democratic setting leaving aside the platforms and how it will affect their business models.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you so much.
>> SPEAKER: I work at legal Council before. While we see there's a lot of progress in irregulating issues like illegal content and disinformation, I have the feeling that some issues with the platform governance that caused by the core business model, like attention grabbing platform such as, for example, endless scrolling, for example. Some feature that really is building a dopamine system and causes addition. I didn't see the current regulation touch much on the core issues. I am curious if there's any thought from panelists with the direction of resolving this issue or address the challenges. Thank you.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you. I will close the floor after the tall gentleman over there. Yes. Last two questions.
>> SPEAKER: Hi. I am trustee with a foundation, but I'm not speaking for them. First, it is really encouraging it hear this discussion. You consider the immense harm approaches like section 230 in the states are doing around the world. So this at least shows hope with appropriate guard rails as the speakers have touched on. And my question now is an aspect that perhaps you haven't mentioned, I believe a general duty of care on platforms provides a lot of promise to cover new technological developments which otherwise have to be mentioned in legislation. There are various sessions this week talk about how does legislation keep up with the pace of new developments. I think general duty of care in my view is a way of doing that. Putting the platforms to show appropriate risk assessments before they deploy new technologies.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you. Final question, please?
>> SPEAKER: I was wondering this is maybe more of a question to the other panelists, but I would be interested in hearing the thoughts. The enforcement has question ask under the Trump Administration. developing regulation this is something that is playing a part as well whether you guys feel pressure with the U.S. administration to take on that.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: We have a wide range of questions. Please don't feel compelled, all of you to answer them. Welcome to pick and choose. I will give each panelists and speaker 2 minutes. I know it is challenging, but again, pick a favorite one or couple favorites. Let's start in the same order we had the panel. Maybe Amelie, you can start with 2 minutes and maybe also make this the closing remarks. We can't hear you.
>> AMELIE HELDT: Yes. So there are many questions. Regarding the system definition, it's a tricky one. There is a definition in article DSA. I mean, this is only one side or one definition of the legislator. There are whole Ph.D.s being written in that matter not that I can't sum up here. I think it is something we have to look at quite intensively also. In the context of the second question regarding safe guards because anything that is not clearly defined can then also be misused and these are ‑‑ there's a very thin line here that can be crossed.
I would like to address the question of the business model which is a relevant one. Digital services act actually contains a lot of rules to ‑‑ regarding content moderation mainly. And then there's digital market act addressing power of the market power of big tech basically. But there is actually no rule that really goes at the core of the business model of social media platforms. That's why there's a discussion that the European Parliament on a digital fairness act or an act that would look at closer addictive design of online platforms or apps, but that's very much under discussion and it's difficult and that bridges or goes to the last question in the actual context where Europe is ‑‑ there are a lot of legislation coming out of Europe and of e U and we are thriving to only be the regulators but also to develop and take ourselves. A lot of people are asking for less regulation. I'm not sure we'll see much more regulation in that space over the next month. We have to start implementing what we have right now.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you so much, Amelie. Janjira, the floor is yours.
>> JANJIRA SOMBATPOONSIRI: I will speak broadly because of the 2‑minute limit. Two issues. One is risks, right? In southeast Asia, I mean, the collective efforts to curb this information is very limited unlike the EU. So far, there are limited frameworks to govern platforms together. Individually in each country on different definitions of what poses risk in online space can get tricky. The notions can be very vague. Non‑political issues like public health, child pornography, gambling, you know, violent graphics, this can be clearly identified and agreed on across different countries, but when it comes to political issues, each country comes up with its own identification or definition of what constitutes risk. I mean, and this again varies across political context in Thailand and I think we go to the Philippines as well. Cambodia, Vietnam. The notion of defamation of political elites are part of risk in online system. Therefore, it leads to abuse by state actors to impose laws and curb this information. I think the definition when it comes to a collective identification of what constitutes risks and fragmented in the region and I think it leaves room for politicization. Oh, that's it? Oh.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Hold that thought because we can follow up during lunch maybe. Yes.
>> I'm not going further. The problem of the lack of definition because I think it is everywhere. Not only regarding duty of care, but risk assessment, system and everything. So this is one of a pretty important step of regulation that has to be considered in each situation and the contest of each country. Regarding the due process, the provision that we had regarding due process in the Brazilian build on transparency had to do with the right of information of each one content. The right to appeal to that moderation. I think that at least it is something we have to guarantee in any regulation that deals with social media platforms. There are risks, but clearly, I think the situation now is not working. We have pretty much evidence on the negative impact. It is enormous. Each country needs to consider its own reality including the strength or weakness of the institutions to propose specific things. But one way that I think could help regulators to not abuse their power is make this I stakeholder process. Brazil has models of deliberative Councils that establish rules for implementations of law or public policies. That's why we as a Civil Society perspective are not Brazilian Internets because we have not arrived at that point. We understand that any Brazilian authority that takes on this task necessarily has a moot stakeholder body to ensure protection of freedom of expression and equality of implementation of the law independently of the governments in power.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you so much. Yvonne, you have a couple of minutes for final remarks. Thank you.
>> YVONNE CHUA: This is so difficult. Right now, I really don't have a definition of systemic risk. I wouldn't be surprised if our lawmakers would be looking to the e Us digital service act for inspiration. They really have to because law makers are really so bad at defining news, including fake news. It was a revelation during the Congressional hearings that academics, fact checkers and everyone had to take time out and explain to them the difference between disinformation. It took ours just to get terminals light.
As far as due process is concerned, it is so messed up in the Philippines especially with implementations of law. We have a strong independent judiciary that we can rely on whenever things get rough. The general duty of care forever platforms, the provision, this is really something that the tri‑committee is trying to work towards because the recommendations cover existing problems but also AI and emerging technologies. Perhaps a well crafted legal framework would be able to address that. Thank you.
>> KIRA BEATRIZ: Thank you so much. But yes. Just take a moment to thank everyone for participating. I do want to take on the questions about general duty of care, specific duties from the gentleman from IWF. We can do that offline. For the time being, please join me in thanking our panelists, speakers and those of you for engagement. We do hope to continue this conversation. Speaking on my behalf and perhaps Ivar, as we continue to work in our research project, I think and I'm pleased, correct me if I'm wrong, all panelists are going to look at issues around platform governance and regulation and duty of care. So reach out to us if we continue this conversation. Thank you, IGF, for having us. Have a good afternoon and see you next time.
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