The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the virtual Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), from 2 to 17 November 2020. 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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>> SABRINA VORBAU: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this IGF workshoP titled, The Revolution Won't Be Televised but Social Mediatised. Thank you for joining. My name is Sabrina Vorbau, a Project Manager at European Schoolnet in Brussels. European Schoolnet coordinates the Insafe Network of European Safe for Internet Centre, who is also the host of today's workshop. I will be moderating today's session together with my colleague, Niels Van Paemel. I hope we catched your attention with this very short video clip that we just played now and you surely have understood that the lyrics of this song are somehow connected with today's workshop title. And I'm handing over to Niels now who will be setting the scene and telling us a bit more about today's theme and the connection between the video and today's discussion. Over to you.
>> NIELS VAN PAEMEL: Hello. Can you hear me well? So good afternoon from Belgium. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, is a poem and a song made in 1969. The song's title was originally a popular slogan among the 1960s Black Power Movement in the United States. The poem offered a pointist critique of the relationship between the media and the reality of change and revolution taking place in the streets and on the campuses in America.
And I hear you think out loud, the 60s. That's a long time ago. Well, it actually still feels more than relevant today. Consider the influence of television. Even in digital age. Just think about last week. And consider the power that networks like FOX and CNN continue to read over the nebulous thing, called public opinion. Even on social media, the same divide seems to be reflected in the same way.
Since televised media has almost everywhere been into the hands of the people in power and not necessarily of those who transfer. The big question of today is, is it different now? Did everything change with the rise of social media? Or are people still living in bubbles, maybe even without knowing so? With today's session we will discuss a very popular and timely issue, namely the power of social media. We'll talk about the way individual users or groups use social media platforms to influence and shape the public opinion of users and their followers.
The session will offer an interesting discussion between different stakeholders and experts in the fields ranging from Facebook representatives to children's rights advocates. Topical and interactive and revolutionary. Over to you, Sabrina.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Thank you for setting the scene and I'm very delighted to welcome a diverse Panel of experts with us today and I thank everybody for accepting our invitation to join this revolutionary discussion. I welcome Jutta Croll, advocate for Children's Rights in the Digital World and Project Manager at the Digital Opportunities Foundations also the Chairwoman of the Board. Jutta is also a member of several steering groups and advisory boards of the European and International level. She works also in close elaboration with the Council of Europe, the European Commission, IGF MEK and UNESCO. Welcome and thank you very much for joining us today. I also welcome Magdelena Duszyñska, a psychologist and trainer by passion and profession. She is President of a foundation in Poland and on a daily basis she runs her own training company and corporates closely with local authorities on projects related to cyberbullying and new technologies. Thank you very much, Magdelena and welcome. I also welcome Anastasiya Dzyakava who was appointed as Advisor on On‑line Safety at the Office of the Vice Prime Minister at the Ministry of Digital Transformation in the Ukraine. She took a leading role in the development of the National Strategy on Child Protection in the Digital Environment 2020‑2026. She also closely collaborates with relevant NGOs and industry Partners in the field at National and International levels. Welcome Anastasiya. Thank you very much for joining us.
Also warm welcome to David Miles the Head of Safety at Facebook for Europe Middle East and Africa. He has more than 20 years of executed management experience within technology, regulatory and charitable work including experiences at IBM, Compaq and the British Board of the Classification. David is also former member of the Expert Panel for UNICEF Global Fund to End Violence Against Children and worked as part of the We Protect Global Alliance and the Child Dignity Alliance. He is also a former member of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. Welcome, David.
And last but surely not least, Ricardo Campos Director of Legal Grounds for Privacy Design in San Paulo, Brazil and Chair of Public Law, Legal Theory and Media at University of Frankfurt in Germany. Welcome Ricardo. Thank you to all of our experts for joining us today and we are very thrilled to have you with us.
Before we kick off today's discussion, I'm also very excited to welcome two of our Internet for Kids Youth Ambassadors, Kathrin from Germany and João from Portugal, extremely active within the Youth IGF. I'm sure you have seen them in previous sessions already.
The next part of this workshop will be mod rated by Kathrin and João. We have prepared some interactive opportunities for our audience today to join the Panel Discussions with our experts right from the beginning. As is the tradition for the IGF.
As we are talking and we mentioned already about the role of social media today, it is important and the power to influence our opinion or possible our decision as we are in a revolution, we are also letting young people take the floor because we find it extremely important to involve children and young people into the discussion as they have been growing up with technology and unfortunately, also very often exposed to the technology.
In addition to these interactive opportunities that everyone will receive throughout the discussion, we also encourage our audience to post your comments and questions throughout the workshop in the chat. Niels and myself will be monitoring and there will be time towards the end of the workshop to flag your comments and questions to the expert Panel.
Without adieu I'm handing over to Kathrin and Joao.
>> KATHRIN MORASCH: So happy to be here. Just a short introduction on how the next minutes will go. So we want to show you some pictures because we decided that we want to talk with you in the language that young people are using, which is basically pictures and peoples and we want to show you some of them. Also our Panelists haven't seen them in case you wondered. And we prepared some questions as Sabrina said, for all of you and we would be really happy for you to participate and also we have some questions for our Panel. We want some chart answers and I'm looking forward to it and I think we can get started with the presentation of the pictures. And the first pop question.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: I'm from Portugal and will be co‑moderating with Kathrin. As Kathrin said, we will try to change a little bit the paradigm of both how we discuss this topic but also a little bit influencing the way we are doing discussions and debates at the broader level. So feel free to take some ideas from what we are doing.
I guess we'll start with the first picture. And the first question. We want to show you some briefly this example. Sabrina, I don't know if you can bring it up?
>> KATHRIN MORASCH: Yes, please put up the poll for the first picture. But maybe we just wait a second until you can see the picture because only then the question is making sense, probably.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: Can you see it?
>> KATHRIN MORASCH: Yes, we can. Thank you.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: So basically on this first picture what we want to discuss here is the idea that nowadays we are seeing these movements and trying to stay in touch with these ideas through social media. First question for you to think and look about it is just, order by ascending responsibility. What you're seeing here. So what you can see is, someone that was on the street and was just getting robbed and ended up in the death of a woman. You also see on this building, the idea of people retweeting and reposting things about it but perhaps not doing what should be doing. Briefly, you could vote for it and we would like to see the results. The idea is to have a little bit of a conversation now and jump to the question. We'll be specifically asking for input from Ricardo and Magdelena about what they saw. So social media is definitely an amazing space for spreading the word and calling to action on society issues. But how far are we from the connection between this virtual activism and, which is definitely enhanced by our comfort behind the screen, and always this changing our behavior.
The question is, to what extent can we support or say that Internet and social media is supporting or hindering actionism in the off‑line reality?
>> MAGDELENA DUSZYÑSKA: I'll start. The first thing that popped in my mind when I was looking that the picture was a bystander effect. And you used that bystander in the poll, right? I don't know ‑‑ you all know what the bystander effect is, actually. So I will just explain shortly. So when there are a lot of people present and it's emergency situation and like then the more people are actually present at the scene, the less likely somebody will try to help. So I can see all the bystanders in the windows and they actually are doing something, right? They are posting, reposting, sharing, but actually doing nothing. So when we connect the bystander effect with the social media, then we can see that there is really bad influence on the bystander effect.
I can remind myself a situation in Poland which happened recently. Three or four girls had a really huge fight outside of the school and they weren't alone there. There was quite a big crowd around them but no one helped them. No one stopped the fight. No one intervened. And why it was happening? Why no one did nothing? So then the question maybe bystander affect explain. But actually we need to think about young people are more posting something in the Internet and less likely doing something actual. So I'm thinking about maybe need for approval, which can be hiding behind that not doing anything. And when I talk with my kids on the lessons and the workshops I'm doing, they are talking about the click biting. What is the most click biting thing? I think it's violence, like sexual content, and something outrageous they are witnessing. So probably it can be bad.
And the other thing I'm just thinking about, it's like actual events that are happening in Poland, because I'm from Poland, so I'm just saying that vividly. I don't know if you all know that we have like women's strikes now in Poland, and we are like truly fighting for our right to choose about terminating pregnancy. I'm not going to talk about the abortion right now but it's a really big issue now here in Poland. It was a along for a long time ‑‑ it was allowed for a long time and now it was banned and so a lot of people went outside to the streets protesting. And there was a that comes with it and it is #womenhell, written in Polish. Last week there was like 70 million views on TikTok on that. So it's a quite big amount. The same thing happened on Facebook because all celebrities and all influencers were using the same hashtag. And because of them, there was in the culminating moment about 100,000 people on the street in Warsaw, in the Capital City of Poland. And we have a pandemic time, right? So people are afraid of crowds and now they are on the streets and all because of the hashtag.
So I can see like two sides of it. Like plus and minus. I have another bad thing with the hashtags. We have like this issue of celebrities and influencers who are using these hashtags but sending something outside of the idea, right? Not only the idea of women hell and for the strikes but actually we have these people who are trying to promote themselves because of it. So we have hashtags for calling for action, calling for movement, and now we are going further and we are sending something outside of the idea, doing something commercially.
So I don't know is it ethical for me or not? Thank you.
>> RICARDO CAMPOS: Thank you. So I'd like to thank to Sabrina and João Pedro Martins for the invitation to participate another year in the IGF with safer Internet. It's a pleasure to me.
Just to make a remark, I'm not the Chair of EA Frankfurt of Public Law but I'm assistant, a kind of lecture in the English system, the educational system.
It was interesting in both in the first picture is about the change in roles of the communication in the society. So we have maybe for 20 years ago the mass media in the middle of the communication in the society and now we have much more of the social media. So taking this place of the mass communication media.
Nicholas, a famous sociologist from Germany wrote a book on the reality of the mass media, and the first phrase of this book, the ‑‑ the book was published at the beginning of the 90s, I think '93. And the first phrase, he begins his book with this phrase, "All we know about the world and about the society we know through the mass media."
And we could, today, rewrite this sentence and say, all we know about the world and about the society we know through social media. And that is about our Panel today. When we talk about the revolution, we are not taking place anymore being filmed and communicated through the television as a mass media, but through social media. We are talking about this changing roles in the society.
And I would like to say some sentences on the picture. I think the picture shows both the limits of the on‑line communication. I think that's the point. So we have a kind of ‑‑ we are taught in last 10 years that off‑line world would be great to the on‑line world. So all of our relationships, our bank, our education was degrading to the on‑line world and we talked about the off‑line and on‑line world not existing anymore. And I think now, about all we talk about social movements, we are seeing that also the off‑line world is too important for bringing social movements into same. I think the picture shows exactly the limits of thinking of the world as only an on‑line world. That will be my point on the picture.
>> MAGDELENA DUSZYÑSKA: Can I add something? Because the first sentence in the book you said, Ricardo, is actually relates to this situation here in Poland because like people are really recording the strikes and the protests and they are sharing that on the Internet, and actually Public Television isn't doing that. So it is really all we know through social media and it's helping us.
I'm wondering if we are going to discuss about also babble on social media, right? All we see is the only truth.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: Let's hope to have images for everyone. Do you want to add something? So that is going to be really quick so we can move to the next one.
>> JUTTA CROLL: I want to say I don't think it's social media as a replacement for activism but a compliment to activism. So people act in social media and they complement their activism in real life with social media. So if I come back to that image, I would say I'm pretty sure that some of the people would have left the house and gone out to help the person. But also they would have taken a video and spread the message of what had happened in their street and what they have faced and so they would also plea for the people to also react to such a situation. So it's complementary to each other.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: Okay. So next going further in our discussion, I'll share with you again my screen. And we have another one. Kathrin?
>> KATHRIN MORASCH: Just to be clear on what happened with the questions, it seems that you get all the questions at one time, which of course doesn't make so much sense because we want to answer the question which is with the picture. So if we pull up the next question, please just answer the Question 2 and not the others so we can get your opinion. And if this is working, okay, if not, we will kindly ask you to put all your opinions about that into the chat.
So what you see is a famous picture and maybe you haven't seen it from other famous people who are doing this action a year ago or something. And we were thinking that maybe behind this there is a bigger or more serious problem because at first this is different on line personas. But what comes with that is that we have the necessity or feel the necessity of maintaining different personas on different social media platforms and because we feel that necessity, we may be at best much, much time in our digital selves, which we want to promote. And I would really like to have a comment on that from Anastasia and Magdelena.
>> Thank you very much for inviting me for this event. It's a pleasure for me to take a part. And coming back to this picture, I think it's really important to add TikTok to this picture because linked in is early for children to use and Facebook sometimes ‑‑ I'm sorry it's dated but not for children. Mostly used by adults in Ukraine it's really popular as well. For example, everybody should have dignity in Ukraine started from Facebook not from Twitter. As in a lot of countries, Twitter is political but for Ukraine it's Facebook. So coming back to this picture, I think you expect from my side comment according to children and I think it will be happy to join and discuss situation for the last 12 year I live in Ukraine but originally I'm from Belarus and in August, we hold really big initiative for Belarus watch to support protest in Belarus. So it will be really interesting to discuss as well and telegram involvement in these issues.
But coming back to this picture, I think it's really interesting how different we look in different social networks and how children has to present themselves differently in different networks, for example in TikTok and Instagram as well, but for me, it's maybe even more not according to different social networks but difference in off‑line life and on‑line reality. And we really talk with children how they appreciate and evaluate quantity of likes they receive from social networks and I just finished to write my first book for parents about the children on‑line safety and how the range of Internet is with children and I ask them, is it important for them to know how many likes they received? And most of them told yes, it's real important. And when I ask, okay, when do you feel okay? What quantity of likes? And some children told me when I receive 100 ‑‑ 150 likes, it's okay; but if less, I'm really upset. So it was really interesting experiment that Facebook hold in Australia when they don't show quantity of likes and children and parents can only see other liked photos. I think it's a good idea.
And one more point, adding fortress when children doesn't force the real photos so they add their face or clothes or anything around them. And I always ask them, why do you do this? They told because all of our friends do this first of all, and second because I know in what way my photos has to look like so I will receive more likes.
And one more point maybe the last one. It's fear of missing out or our understanding that maybe some people have better lives than I have. Then because children can see on social networks only the realities that other people would like to show. And it's no question to social network, it's question to users what we show on social networks and maybe it's a question as well to adults and communication with children that usually it's like not maybe babble in a way we usually discuss but babble of the children see and sometimes after users in social networks, they really feel upset because they think all these people on essential networks really only have this kind of brilliant life. But all of us, they have really bad days. But usually people don't show this.
So this case is when bloggers shows their reality and tell them, okay, can you see this photo where I'm really smiling? And now I show you what I really day had in this day. So it's like showing like on line on my view and reality and identity and off‑line reality. And show children that it's not like this life, it's only part of my life you see. I think it's really important because it also influences children self‑esteem and their friendships. So I think it's really valuable. So thank you David and Facebook and Instagram for this experiment with these likes. I think it's really brilliant idea and children really appreciate this. Thank you.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: Just a note from the youth. The question we put up was tricky because on line personality disorder could be a thing when we have several profiles on the same network, which I know that by some Terms and Conditions it's not allowed but it's what we are seeing children doing just to filter what they share with the audience they have. I don't know if that helps to the conversation but let's see.
>> MAGDELENA DUSZYÑSKA: Thank you. So, I will start with the question, I think, because when we see like Oprah profiles, the first question comes my mind is like what is the need behind this profile? This profile, these networks just they are on the Internet for a reason. They were made up for a reason. So when we are up loading our pictures on tinder, what is the need for it? Maybe it's the need for love. Maybe it's a need for closeness, and maybe it's a need for feeding our ego. And the same thing with the Instagram. Maybe the need for acceptance and for Facebook ,maybe the need for affiliation so there are different needs so maybe that's why we need different profiles for fulfilling our needs, probably.
But you were talking for children. I think about the youth because with teenagers and I'm talking mostly, so they are doing a lot of comparisons and they compare themselves. Probably, that is true, they compare themselves to reality world and what they can see in Instagram but actually when I think about myself, I compare to myself too when I was there. I compare myself to schoolmates, I compared myself with my backyard and when on social media there are new backyards right now right? Each social media is a new backyard and we have a lot of people to compare with. And we compare a lot.
Let's think about it why we are comparing ourselves. It's because what was said about the self‑esteem, probably. So when you're in the adolescent age, your self‑esteem is a bit lower and you're like looking for yourself. You are shaping yourself again. So that's why you need to compare. But look about that. We compare ourselves like a whole bucket with all advantages and disadvantages and teenagers know better advantages not disadvantages. This is a whole bucket of me and then I compare it with a tiny sharing reality from the person looking at the picture. So it's always a losing game because here we have whole buckets of me and here I can see only just classes of the person I'm comparing with. So, always a moving game, right?
And the second thing I'm thinking about is paradox of choice. It's like a book was written of the same title. So when we have a lot of choices, our capability of making decisions is dropping sharply. So this is a problem for us because when we have a picture and we need to upflood somewhere and we have so many profiles, it's eating our cognitive resources, I think, because we have so many options to where to put these pictures and what to write down so I think we need our cognitive resources for more important decisions. So let's be careful of that. Thank you.
>> DAVID MILES: Thank you for your comments it's really interesting. This is my fourth IGF. Very first IGF I attended was in 2009 and then social media was barely discussed. It's really interesting. It was just a very periphery issue. It was predominantly sex‑based. News feed was a completely new idea. So I think one of the things I would put out there is one of the reasons why Facebook in early stages gained ground was because it really harbored a sense of authentic profile. If you go back to that era, you have my space and other products and you could have anonymity and false names and so on. So, one of the core principles of connectedness within Facebook is authentic profile. That's really important. So that is where the origins come from.
The other thing to say, speaking to the title of this discussion and I'll come to the picture in a moment, social media is not a fixed phenomena. It's not only a Facebook phenomena. There are lots of types of social media extending into gaming and other areas. But just look at how social media is morphed. We are looking at four images of pictures. Pictures are actually fairly 2015. We now video, we are now streaming, we are now doing IGF in this format. Ten years ago this would have almost been what we are doing now would have been almost inconceivable.
And the power and connectedness of Facebook is not about just the authentic individual but of groups, of video, of free expression. And our challenge in terms of our community standards, which is about what we allow and don't allow on the platform, is to get the balance right between Freedom of Expression, privacy and safety. And then how do you apply those things across multiple cultures? Because that's the other thing about IGF. It's a global phenomena and one of the things that is really interesting is, the image you put up there for many young people in Africa, they have feature phones that wouldn't allow them, that don't have the data access to view that kind of content. So the youth demographic globally is not seeing it in the same way always as we think. Accessibility and digital literacy is still a problem typically in the global South in these areas.
I think what social media does is drive connectedness, and that's really important. I think the other thing I would say too is that as social media evolved in terms of functionality, so have the responsibilities on us as a business and technology companies. And sometimes the decisions we make about community standards or about racial injustice or about the other movements, or issues, are decisions we need to make with other people or ask governments for guidance on. So we had to form an independent oversight board with 40 members, which came into force. First case is in October, to look at those borderline issues, those issues which we can't make a decision on as a business.
So I suppose what I'm trying to describe in terms of features and in terms of the evolution of social media is that in that decade I spoke about, how quickly that has evolved. And if you look at our global user base, which is more than 3 billion people, that is disaggregated across three platforms. That's Facebook, that's Instagram and WhatsApp. Those are different communities. Some are public spaces like Facebook and Instagram. Some are private spaces like WhatsApp. And in some countries in the world, if you want Freedom of Expression, the private spaces are probably the only spaces you can have those activities.
And then the final thing I will say in terms of global is that only 13% of our users are from North America. So we are truly a global technology. And as a consequence of that, our user community is very large and diverse and it's very complex following these issues. And I think the final element too, is that young people particularly teens that are on our platform because we have a minimum age of 13, are huge drivers of innovation on the platform in terms of thinking and to look what they do on Instagram, their well‑being is very important. We experimented with the idea of hiding likes and working those kind of things. We have amazing resources, safety centers, and young people tell us a lot about how we need to evolve our product and they tell us what they want and how they need it and that's why this kind of discussion is important today because often young people are the biggest drivers in terms of innovation and technology. That the is hugely exciting. You're seeing that in all sorts of forms in terms of short‑form video, music, all those different creative areas and they just happen to come together on social media platforms like Facebook, which is very exciting.
And I just would say finally, those four images are really interesting but they also speak to something that has been happening for many years, young people want to disaggregate their profiles. They have their profiles for their clubs and for their groups and they want ‑‑ if they are 14 or 15, they probably would consider Facebook more of an adult platform than Instagram. They are making those choices. The real important thing is we have to provide the tools to make sure that they can make the right choices both in terms of their privacy, their rights and their safety. And we always have to work really hard on that because just like our business model, it's evolving constantly. So those will be my observations about the picture and this discussion today.
>> JUTTA CROLL: If I may step in with one comment before we go over to that; because I do think it's very important to bear in mind how much children's development can benefit from this somehow playing with different identities and different profiles. And I do think we have never had before a situation where children could in such an environment try out their identity and even try out an identity with a different gender, for example. And that is so important in times of their development. So I do think that is really a sure ride for children in Article 6 of the U.N. Convention on the rights of the child that their right to develop should be given.
So I do think there are really good opportunities within social media for the tryout of identities. Thank you for listening.
>> KATHRIN MORASCH: A really hard comment which was in the chat which was interesting. We need to think about the question if we have different personas in the off‑line world and I think our behavior in different social groups, on line and off line, is something which is going well with our next picture as well.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: Exactly. And more than being a space to experiment, there is also the question of how safe or how private or who are we sharing, but the time we spend there. And this is a very provocative view. So don't take it too literal. The idea here is that we are living experiences through this digital platforms and we have influencers, bloggers, very different profiles sharing experiences. The majority of young people and perhaps the adults right now in this pandemic situation, literally living experiences of others right at their sofas. And this is a tricky question given this current state that we should stay at home and we should perform social distancing. But how does this affect us? Is social life ‑‑ young people stop doing things from for themselves and are now just consuming amazing experiences just watching the bright and positive side of things.
I always give this example of taking, for instance, seeing fast forward Lego construction that took me 30 seconds on the video but this is a process of try ‑‑ trial and error that is often not showed on what we share.
The other point is of course how we are absorbing the things we are doing on social media and that comes to the norm media situation. The concept of being behind these different posts, we see the differences between advertising posts and the ones that are organically shared and how can we again bringing up the point from filter bubbles presented before. How could we envision this moving forward?
This question was a little bit pointed towards the views of David in Utah. I know there were already very involved in the last picture. So they can perhaps pick up from where they left because I know definitely there is certain things that can be brought up also to these questions.
>> JUTTA CROLL: I can be very brief on this, I would say. So of course I don't agree with that. I wouldn't say ‑‑ I would say that especially during the pandemic we have learned how social media are. We are not living in a time of social distancing but in a time of physical distancing. And social media have enabled all the social to keep the social context and of course that counts so for young people, even so they can't meet their friends in the playground or wherever or at school; but keeping their contact with people.
And I would also not agree with saying it's not media, because again, I would not say it's replacing classical, traditional media, but it's complementary to traditional media and in some ways it's more prominent. I would not say also more relevant but more prominent for people on social media. Some people only use that but other people only use traditional media and I personally prefer to have a mix of both and then I can best fill my own opinion. Handing over to you David.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: I'm picking up on a comment. It was totally provocative to hear that social distancing must be the biggest terminology mistake of the pandemic. And I have to totally agree and perhaps link it to what everything just been said. Just to poke a little bit more and obviously David will pick up a little from here. The idea of the social perspective of having 1000 followers. The idea of having friendship with a new concept, broader concept. I don't know if that makes it even more provocative of a picture.
>> DAVID MILES: I suppose a few things. First and foremost, inevitably as adults who are not what we are speaking about in large numbers, often talk about things like excessive screen time and screen addiction and so on. And if you look at the research and there is amazing research done by David Boyd in the U.S. or a Professor Sonia Livington in the U.K.
All these very interesting experts. What they say really is it's not the quantity of time, it's the quality of time on what they are doing. And I think that is really key. If you are to ask a 7‑year‑old what they were doing, they would be doing educational things, fun things and so on. And there are some prominent literally experts that believe that screens are almost a new form of literacy in their own right and they are pointing to the fact that prior to substantial screen times, it was significant evidence, for example of gender‑based level that young males in particular, they grew older and used and wrote less and read less, and actually all of those trends in terms of declining literacy as you get older, have reversed because young men and women are on line conversing, typing, messaging. They are communicating in a way they never thought was possible before. So I think we need to look at screen use in a much more holistic way, I think.
I also think when I speak to young people and I speak to a lot of young people all over the world, is that we should give them more credit for what they are doing and trust them that they really do know what they are doing and also that they are realistic about what friendships are. Their real friendships and so on. They see it as very complementary to their peer structure and the way they work. And I seen a number of examples of how young people use that connectedness, particularly under COVID, to remain close to the people that they love and the people that they are friends with and their schoolmates and their groups and their clubs, and in a COVID world as we are in now, that played a really vital role, particularly for young people's mental health in this kind of situation w that kind of relationship is really important for their development. So I think the sort of judgment‑based approach to things like, likes and fear of missing out can be overplayed at times.
I often talk to young people who are far more relaxed about this. And I think we just have to take a more balanced perspective and a more evidence‑based perspective about what young people want from technology.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: Glad we have a picture for that. I'll try to move it forward and then hand it to Kathrin while I share.
>> KATHRIN MORASCH: Yes, so we have a lot of different themes at today's session because we couldn't decide on what is the most important topic. So maybe it isn't that of a hard card going to the theme of elections and political candidates. So, of course this question maybe doesn't concern smaller children but of course young people who are allowed to vote and of course a lot of young people also very young people are political and they see stuff on their different websites what political candidates are sharing with them.
So the question for us kind of goes into two different directions. The first one would be to Ricardo. Do we have an obligation to prevent the political candidates are posting misinformation on line? And also, maybe we should ask a question if media content may be know us better than we know ourselves and maybe they already know who we want to vote and how can we tackle that problem? And the other side of that question would be to Dave, which is, what is Facebook doing to prevent misinformation by politicians, especially during election campaigns? I mean, we of course we see Donald Trump as the biggest example, but there are a lot of local politicians in our countries sharing misinformation with the people, and of course they use social media to be close to the voters. I think it's a great idea but also maybe this is having kind of like a bad side. And what obligation do we have or maybe you have, to change that? Or to ‑‑
>> RICARDO CAMPOS: Thank you. That is a really interesting question because also in the political system, they are facing the same problem of this transition from the mass media communication to platform communication. For example, just to give an example n Brazil, the election law, before the Internet used to regulate ‑‑ still today but for 20 years ago ‑‑ used to regulate if ‑‑ for example, if a certain candidate should appear two minutes or 5 minutes on the television, and for that, for gaining more time, the candidate needs to make collisions with another party and another and so on. So if you have a great collision, you have more time on television. If you don't have great coalitions you don't have time on television.
That was interesting because all this law was taught for the society of mass communication. And now we have social media. So you can not anymore control how a candidate appears on the public sphere. So now the election law is facing a new challenge, how to regulate who appears and who will not appear and we have and now this is a question for David. So we have the scandal for the Cambridge Analytica. And it was on this problem.
Now we are having the election in another field, in another technological feud, and at that time, 2016, was the problem of ad targeting. Now as I see, I think the problem is now faced by Facebook. But that time was really the problems or the transformation of the communication in the society from a mass communication society to a platform communication society.
And this for elections it is really decisive for candidates and also for society.
>> DAVID MILES: Ricardo you make some good points. I think the first thing to say is that there are elections all around the world. In fact, there will be 20 in Africa in the next year and the U.S. election as important as it is, it is one of many and since 2016, no question Facebook has learned a lot about that. But really interesting, if you look at this particular election, this year Facebook helped 4.4 million voters to register ahead of the election. So actually n some sentences, we have turned the benefits of our technology to help people register to vote. And in fact, we now have libraries, we label advertising, and we hold people to account based on our community standards.
So, that's an important process we had to go through and we learned a lot from that and conducted our activities well, I think, this time around. But we see that connectedness is very important. And people's desire to express their views around all the issues that are around elections, because elections surface a whole range of social issues. The United States racial injustice and all that emerged from that has been challenging for everybody in the United States.
The groups have formed around that, the discussions that have happened, particularly under COVID where people can't meet, where people can't travel, is part of that process of having a free and fair election. So, I think that is important and we, as Facebook, we are constantly evolving. I'm much more on the safety side than I am on the intellectual integrity side. But nevertheless, you make very interesting points and I just would make the point that I think it's an interesting election result and one that in our own way, threw voter Registration, we played an important role in.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: That's good. And jumping to our last image to share with you, we have come up here to discuss with you a little bit what were your perspectives on this very broad topic and the idea was to try to link a little bit with the title for some in the chat debating on the pertinence of the title.
For me it makes sense as I'm seeing the world through the lenses of social media, perhaps through the lenses of tell vision. Obviously with augmented impacts of dimension that social media have gone. And there were some reflecting done by or among other youth and this is part of a bigger publication that was done from youth for digital sustainability, a group of youth experts involved in Internet Governance. And I wanted to get a really brief comment and open this to all the participants a little bit.
Since youth is one out of the three active users of media content platforms, and perhaps David can pick up a little bit as well.
What is your view about the need to ensure there is youth representation in this internal Advisory Board is also ‑‑ do you have any other ideas that can contribute to improve the decisions that effect this age group?
>> DAVID MILES: I think you make some great points here. So the project that we kicked off in 2019 was what we called an age‑appropriate design jam. So we are co‑designing a youth guide, which we will publish at the Safe Internet Forum with young people. And we have done a range of workshops with young people around the world to get their input into ideas of things like Terms of Service, the way products work, features and functions. We found that whole exercise really amazing because young people are on this technology a lot. And they got very strong views on different things. So we absorbed that and brought that back inside to something called TTC labs, which is a expert. And we have written a youth design guide with their input, which we'll publish in two week's time. That is one indication of just where this is going to go.
I'm absolutely convinced young people can play a central role in the way products and services develop. They are major consumers of media. And so we see things like the age‑appropriate design jam as one of those ways getting young people's input. I think the other thing I would say too is that their tastes and interests evolve dramatically. And one of the things that came across certainly with our co‑design work with young people is not to treat young people as just one block. There are lots of different demographics of young people but also there are lots of different age groups with different developmental needs. So you have to design products and services for those age groups. They think will be a trend going forward. We have launched messenger kids, for pre‑teens based on research that we did with young people and pre‑teens, about products they want. And that's been hugely successful outside of Europe. And I think you'll see that emerging more and more on features that we develop on Instagram, and other products, because young people want those kinds of things depending on the age they are and what is developmentally appropriate.
So I do think that young people are part of that process and I think they will be increasingly so. Those young people are tomorrow's adults and they will also, as adults, make a significant contribution to the way the Internet develops and I don't think that there will be the same generational gap there has been in the past around that. So they'll skip forward, I think, much more to what the empowering capabilities are on the Internet that may be previous generations who struggle to get their head around the complexity and fast‑moving nature of those kinds of things.
And I think the final thing I would say, lots of other things need to change. Education needs to change. It needs to be much more responsive to the digital world young people are from. In many schools in Europe, we keep children away from technology in schools. In fact, that probably needs to be rethought. So I think these barriers that we have placed based on old ways of working both in terms of education and other things, will probably need to change too. And I think young people can be part of that.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: So I guess we will be asking for more questions. Kathrin do you want to jump until a little bit?
>> KATHRIN MORASCH: I see that Anastasia wants to add something. Please to the whole Panel, give us your thought about that. Maybe if you also think that something like this is possible and maybe also if it's like a right for young people to participate in that process because like content platforms are working as kind of private legislators on the platforms. So I think it's so important people who are using it are included in making the terms of it.
>> ANASTASIYA DZYAKAVA: I think it's really important for us to take apart and the develop such tools use and during development national strategy of children alliance safety, we worked closer with U.S. because Ukraine we have National Council of children who take apart in national solution and government position development. And also I'm Founder of the First in Ukraine, educational project about women and extortion and sexting. We work closely with this council.
When we developed a chat board for teens or some lessons, we really usually show them and receive their feedback or when we develop social advertisement and our main audience is teens, we usually consult with them because we understand that we don't know even these children will love. So they have to consult with them and show them and ask them.
I really like example of U.K. organization child net when they teach children how to teach other children because ‑‑ about on‑line safety of course. I really think that children, it's more interesting for them to be taught by children, not by adults who they sometimes think that they just don't know how to use WhatsApp or Skype even; especially before a COVID lockdown. So I think it as well is a good trend to teach children how to teach other children because by this way, other children are more involved and teach children who teach other children and receive more knowledge. And I think that as well involving children into taking this decisions, we show them that they have this voice and we really listen to them. And I think businesses can be really useful because if invite children to take a part, first we can make it more safety but if maybe not good for children but it is easier to make how children will use it more. So it's a question of screen time, of course, but ask children what you like to use.
So yes, I think it's really important and during my interview with children, I really often asked what would you change in social networks if you can do so? And in Ukraine we have a little bit problem with Instagram. When girls really, pre‑teens, girls, 9, 10, 11 girls ‑‑ sorry they usually come from Instagram. But they told me if it would be possible, I would like to do my best for adult men from other countries not to be able to write to me. So it's really big question in Ukraine with this and communicate a lot with maybe girls, with audience and I think sometimes social networks can do nothing with this. But it is really important to raise awareness about these issues and talk to the children about communicating with strangers.
And one more point maybe last point about taking children to participate it's when parents overuse technology. And sometimes children come to me after lessons and say if you can do anything in this on line world, can you please do something with my parents? And I'm like what would you like me to do? Could you please stop them from using smartphone as much because they don't spend time with me. They spend all their time at home with smartphones. So why the heck they don't spend time with me? So sometimes it's a question not about children overusing consumption on line time but more parents as well, especially in this lockdown period. Thank you.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: And quick to Magdelena.
>> MAGDELENA DUSZYÑSKA: Just speaking about the time of initiation of using technology when you're a child, because of the touch screens, we have like really six months of children who are actually seated in front of screen and like forced to watch something. So the time of initiation is very early. And because of the touch screen, the tablets and iPads. And then thinking that we don't teach kids in the kindergartens. We don't teach kids ‑‑ at least in Poland, like really preschoolers what is Internet? How to do Internet, right? But kids already know what Internet is because they look at their parents. They see that their daddys and mummies are doing something, texting or whatever. So I think that is the time to teach technology should be earlier. And the second thing, I think that we should teach not only about technology, but about empathy and emotionally intelligence and this is the thing. And also critical thinking. Because the fake news they are going to read on the Internet when they older, so these are things we shouldn't forget about. Thank you.
>> ANASTASIYA DZYAKAVA: Just one sentence about early childhood. Last month with the fairytale for children about extortion where torture of animals, communicate on zoo book. And one animal ask another one to send a photo of like animal clothes. So I think for smaller children, we should be really creative and find some lessons and really creative solutions.
>> JOÃO PEDRO MARTINS: Thank you. I don't know if anyone else wants to briefly comment on the challenge we raised and offer any other solutions? If not, I don't know, I haven't seen the signal. If not, I just want to thank you for first of all taking the challenge to speak with us, to come up with an open mind and see the images for the first time and try to really engage on the big picture. It was really a broad discussion. So we did not try to focus much on one specific issue because as many of you said, this is a broader discussion. This is a very pertinent and large debate. So, of course I have to challenge David to take our challenge of having a seat on the Advisory Board, of course, but also reflect on the other ideas of bringing and where to focus in terms of education, in terms of the skills we want and the age we want them to be learned from youth and children. From that end, I think that leaves my moderation role that was a little bit too interactive as well. Kathrin, I don't know if you want to say thanks as well and I will leave it to you.
>> KATHRIN MORASCH: I want a short thank you to our Panelists and also to all of the people who are watching. I can't see you but I saw a lot of comments in the chat and I think they were really interesting so far. And if you still want to discuss with us, I don't know, I think we can have a discussion on the topics with the IGF 2020 or something. We will see that and I'm happy to hear what your questions are in the Q&A are.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Thank you very much Kathrin and Joao for preparing this interactive part, which we believe also supported inclusiveness and also gave our participants today the chance to join already the discussion from the beginning of the workshop and as you said, indeed a lot of conversation took place in the chat already. We do have some time for questions now. So reminder to everyone who would like to ask a question to our Panelists that you can do this in the Q&A section or you can also simply raise your hand and we will surely be able to unmute you. I will just start.
One question addressed to David and this is linked to the picture we have seen concerning the elections. So the question is, Facebook is encouraging people to vote. Are they encouraging people from all sides of the political spectrum? Because when you only doing this aimed at one particular side this may negatively effect the elections in order to make sure that this does not happen, isn't it better for Facebook to strictly act against election interference and besides that try to keep out of this debate as much as possible?
>> DAVID MILES: Great question. Thank you very much. And again, I must reiterate, I'm not from the electoral side of Facebook. I do the child safety and other areas. So all I will say is that the ability for people to register to vote, which is really important. This year was the highest level of Registration ever in U.S. history. So I think we played a role in that and that is done through the news feeds without any political alignments. So I would say that from my perspective, that seemed to be a fairly objective way of ensuring people have the opportunity to have a free and fair vote in what is or was a very challenging election. And that is probably the main thing I would say.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Thank you very much, David. There was another question in the Q&A section which is not addressed specifically to one Panelist directly so I'm just voicing into the group. Which was about raising awareness because we have heard a lot of things that the different experts have been doing but people are asking as an individual adult, for example, what can I do to support this message? What can I do to raise more awareness and help children to not only be safe on line but also to be aware to develop critical thinking skills and also empathy as we heard before? Any tips or recommendations from the Panel?
>> DAVID MILES: I would make a comment. Facebook a technology player, ultimately. But we rely on the expertise and purpose of lots of amazing NGOs and some of the individuals here have been involved with amazing resources and guidance on line. To give an indication, we have almost 400 partnerships globally just in this area. People who specialize in peer‑to‑peer mentoring in the U.K., programs in Germany which we have seen through Click Safe and other programs. So there is a wealth of resources out there for young people. I think sometimes as a point was made earlier, I think some adults could benefit from the that guidance as well but I think on the whole, there is plenty out there and it's very exciting. And I think within the IGF context, you see a lot of those NGOs here talking about the amazing resources they developed and the young people they work with.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Anyone else from the Panel?
>> JUTTA CROLL: I have already posted a link to the National Academy of Media and screens in the Netherlands. And I do think they do a lot of work in this regard. They have a huge programs also for teaching digital literacy in schools. So I'm not sure what background to the question that she says there is barely any attention in education about it to literacy in the Netherlands. So maybe she can explain a little bit more what against what backdrop she posed that question.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Maybe there is some opportunity we can unmute Daphne to join this conversation?
>> NIELS VAN PAEMEL: And maybe add to that there is always a possibility to contact your local safe centre. In the Netherlands there is also one. And they will always ask people who will lobby towards both issues to change things like for example, I live in Belgium. So it's always good to know where you always have a local safe centre.
>> DAPHNE: Thank you. Can you hear me? First of all, thank you for very interesting discussion that has been going on. It was very interesting. I have a lot of things to think about. Where may plan of where I came from is where I'm talking about children living on my street and with my nieces and nephews who go to primary school and started high school. I just noticed they have such little awareness and when I ask them if they get taught on school about it, they always say, no. And we just learn it ourselves and we just talk about it with friends and stuff.
But it might be that it is just very limited and it's only through the schools that those children go to that I talk with. So, that's basically what my question was based on. But still thank you for sharing the resource. I'll definitely look into it.
>> JUTTA CROLL: I'm not from the Netherlands so I don't really know about the situation in your country but what I learned from a lot of research is that media literacy training, media literacy teaching takes a lot of different forms. It's of course not only learning about how to use the technology. It's also about critical thinking, about ethical thinking, and it comes in very different ways and I do think that all of the people who do digital literacy education do need to be really careful what messages they convey to the children, because many of the messages that we as adults have developed and decided for media literacy training, turned out in the end they are just not comprehensible for the children. That they have a different way of thinking and sometimes when we think okay, that's very clear and obvious what they should do or shouldn't do, and we try to educate in that way, a lot of these things are missing their target, therefore I do really appreciate approaches where ‑‑ I have understood from Anastasia that she is planning for peer education. I do also think that another way of doing it is let young people participate in the development of such training, of such educational resources, so that they are more addressed to the target group we want to reach. Thank you.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Thank you very much. I'm checking with Niels if he has any additional questions as we are coming to the end of our workshop.
>> NIELS VAN PAEMEL: I was getting the chat and I think we have tackled everything.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Okay. Very good. As we are coming to the end of our workshop and we have about five minutes left, I would like to give the opportunity to our Panelists for our final closing question. And also looking towards what is next, looking into the future, possibly future IGF discussions.
As we orangey have five minutes left, we have picked a yes and no question to answer. I think we have understood, based on the discussion, and we also agree that by now the revolution that is started already, that is ongoing, is clearly social media ties but the question to our ‑‑ the final question to our Panelists would be if it's also already democratized. And starting with Anastasia. The evolution of social media ties but democratized in your opinion?
>> ANASTASIYA DZYAKAVA: I would like to believe so and especially the example of Ukranian relation in dignity and revolutions that happen now in Belarus that all of them started through social network in the Ukraine from Facebook and Belarus and telegram and also actions that we have organized at the support Belarus in August through Facebook thanks to Facebook, we were able to contact people all around the world more than 30 cities all around the world to support this initiative. So I think that social networks really allow us to involve power of people to send for their rise. Because no T.V. channels in Belarus show reality what happens here. And telegram and social networks only opportunity to receive this information. And according to telegram, in Belarus, you can receive for fire or throw them in jail, if on your phone you have telegram. So it's forbidden channel. I think social networks and social like communication messengers the only opportunity for revolution in some countries to stand for their rights and to at least have a chance to bid Democratic. Of course Belarus is not Democratic country for last 5‑6 years. So I think it's opportunity to become Democratic country thanks to social interests.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Thank you. Magdelena?
>> MAGDELENA DUSZYÑSKA: I was listening to Anastasia and I agree. And I'm thinking about Poland right now. We have some cases when students are actually ‑‑ they are forbidden to join the sacrament of confirmation because they use hashtags, or teachers it's like they are investigated because of they are having like layouts on the picture of profiles on Facebook with the lightning sign, which is a symbol of women's strikes now. So I'm totally agree with Anastasia. I see that in Poland and I really believe it will be democratized also.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Thank you. Ricardo? Is the revolution democratized?
>> RICARDO CAMPOS: So I think the question is much more complex than one way answer. And of course, we have had democratization of the communication of social media but we have another problem with that. Also discussing that is the problem of misinformation. And that will be the negative effect of this complete democratization of this information because you can not trust anymore an organization. Because Facebook do not produce a content now. And in Brazil I'm still working on content moderation, the transferences obligations for the platforms and so on. And I ‑‑ it's really important to focus in this two pair. So you have Democratization of information and other side we have also another problem that we need to face, otherwise we don't have a public sphere, we don't have discussion, we don't have people informed because democracy pre suppose good information. Without good information cannot vote.
And now we have new intermediaries and now we are talking about what is the obligations of the new intermediaries.
And I would put focus on this new ways so we don't only one way democracy is democratizing but we also have another path on that that we need to discuss much more than only say democracy for information.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Thank you, Ricardo. Jutta.
>> JUTTA CROLL: I would say yes but there is still room for improvement and that's all.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Thank you. And it was great and last but not least, David?
>> DAVID MILES: I think Facebook is about building communities and bringing the world closer together. I think social media has been revolutionary in that process globally and there are huge responsibilities that we absolutely understand but as I said earlier on, our technology will evolve to meet those challenges. It's in our interests to make sure that people see information that is accurate and reflects the decisions they make and give us Freedom of Expression and gives them right to activism and has them and connects them to the ones they love and run businesses and do all the things they need to do. In other words to be a mirror of the real world we are in. And I don't doubt the channels of that but given that is only happened in the last decade, we have come a huge distance and I think things like the oversight board and many of the other things we do are indication of the fact that we take those responsibilities very seriously. And I believe the benefits far outweigh the challenges we sometimes face but we are up to those challenges and we believe that more long term with social media as it sort of evolves and people really embrace it as they do around the world. It can only be a force for good.
>> SABRINA VORBAU: Thank you very much, David. And to all the other Panelists, I believe this gives us some food for thought and surely it was not just a simple yes or no question. And I believe has opened a Pandora box of future discussions that we definitely hope to continue at this IGF but also at future IGFs because we do believe that today's workshop also touched up on very important key pillars of the IGF. We talked about trust. We talked about inclusion, privacy, identity and last but not least, surely also youth participation. So big thanks also again for joining us today and to all the key Panelists for taking the time out of your busy agendas and to the audience and we do hope that today's workshop was interesting and fruitful and you also felt like you were able to participate in a similar way as we would all be together face‑to‑face in the same room. Please everyone, stay safe and healthy and we do wish you good continuation of this workshop IGF and very good evening from Brussels and I do hope to see many of you in person very soon. Thank you very much. And good evening. Thank you, everyone.