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In the Name of Free Speech
Mark Zuckerberg has come under fire for his address given at Georgetown University last week. Zuckerberg’s speech centred on freedom of speech, citing it in defence of Facebook’s recent policy on political ads. He took the opportunity to reference Martin Luther King Jr’s imprisonment as an example of previous backlash against free expression, much to the dismay of Luther King’s daughter who said that disinformation campaigns launched by politicians “created the atmosphere for his assassination”. Interestingly, a BuzzFeed investigation has alluded to the possibility that Facebook may be circumventing its policy on political ads by removing the ads of U.S. presidential candidates for breaking other policies on profanity and fake buttons.
Democracy vs. Profit
Last week, in the EU Council’s conclusions on democracy, Member States noted that, while “the internet has been a positive force for democratisation … the economic model of digital platforms has also contributed to these challenges (i.e. disinformation and hate speech online)”. In related news, in an op-ed for Harvard Business Review, Dipayan Ghosh affirmed that it’s precisely Facebook’s business model that will prevent its Oversight Board from being effective. This is because the company profits the most from pushing the very same content that it would likely make rulings on.
In the news
- Which government censors the tech giants the most? Comparitech has collated data to find out which governments censor online content the most and which channels are targeted by each government. For instance, India and Russia take the top two places based on their overall number of content removal requests across all channels.
- Mozilla has begun publishing anecdotes of YouTube viewing gone wrong. This is part of Mozilla’s campaign to prod Google for more transparency. In particular, Mozilla argues that researchers should have more access to YouTube’s algorithms to figure out how the video site makes its recommendations.
Good reads
- HuffPost has reported on how Canada has fallen victim to the global playbook of misinformation during elections. Specifically, conspiracies and falsehoods have become ubiquitous; harassment of journalists has increased, and far-right groups have attempted to hijack Canada’s public sphere.
- How Hitler pioneered ‘fake news’ A historical piece by Timothy Snyder for the New York Times, which argues that the ‘fake news’ (or Lügenpresse) rhetoric for discrediting journalists was first utilised to its full potential by Hitler.
Studies
- Disinformation campaigns in the MENA region: Using case studies from Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, and United Arab Emirates, DFR Lab examines the origins of the disinformation campaigns and highlights similarities in the disinformation strategies.
- WhatsApp Vigilantes: An exploration of citizen reception and circulation of WhatsApp misinformation linked to mob violence in India — one key finding of this London School of Economics report is that misinformation spreads largely due to prejudice and ideology—rather than out of ignorance or digital illiteracy.
Events and Announcements
- In case you missed our webinar with Michael Bossetta on ‘Digital Architectures, Social Engineering, and Networked Disinformation on Social Media’, you can catch-up here.
- Verifying Online Information: In its second helping of a new ‘Essential Guides’ series, First Draft outlines the questions that journalists should ask themselves when verifying online information.
- 7 November, 17:00 CEST @ Online webinar with Ecole Européenne d’Intelligence Economique: Open Source Investigation Techniques on Facebook (in French).
- 12 November @ ECAS, Brussels: Online Disinformation: Finding the silver bullet in the digital world. Our very own Clara will be speaking on behalf of EU DisinfoLab at this event!
- 13-14 November @ Brussels: Virtual Insanity? The need to guarantee transparency in digital political advertising hosted by European Partnership for Democracy.
Image found here.
