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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>> DANIEL: We're looking forward to a very engaging discussion. So just hang tight for just a minute as we let those people filter in. As Michael mentioned just a couple minutes ago, we do want this a relatively engaging session. We are using the webinar Zoom format and we encourage attendees to use the Q&A function, use the chat function, if that's available to you. We'll have a number of presenters and we'll be assuming you have some questions. So please be very actively allotted with our attendees. So hope to learn from our presenters, but also from our attendees ‑‑ presenters, but also from our attendees. Okay am I think we will go ahead and get started. First of all, welcome. My name ‑‑ welcome to the session on the Dynamic Coalition on the sustainability of journalism and news media. This is our 2020 session at internet governance. My name is Dan O'Malley at the center for international media assistance. I am one of the co‑coordinators along with this coalition. And Hebson Owilla in Nairobi. Now we're really pleased to you have join us today. We have a really stellar line up of speakers who have contributed to this year's annual report. In just a couple machines, they will be briefly sharing their research analysis they have done over the past year.
First I want to talk a little bit about the history of our Dynamic Coalition. The coalition was officially recognized by the IGF last year in 2019. Thing on thive was to serve as a platform for stakeholders, diverse stakeholders from across the Internet Governance system to engage around media sustainability, which we mean both in the economic terms as well as in the broader forces that uphold independent journalism in society. And it was born out of recognition that, you know, virtually all elements of the production dissemination were impacted by Internet Governance decisions in some way. This includes issue from content moderation, to Data Governance, to algorithmic policies, revenue sharing and the digital economy, the list goes on. Let all too often, these types of impacts on the news ecosystem are not necessarily fully taken into account by other Internet Governance stakeholders. So we wanted to create a space where that can happen. Traditionally, news ecosystems have been managed and regulated at the national level, but now the predominance of the Internet has a platform, a global one means the decision being made in Silicon Valley are having enormous impacts in countries around the world. I'm sure we have all read some of the tragic horror stories. What comes to mind is the situation in MIAMAR. The ecosystem has been really impacted by the global Internet Governance decisions and it is something this Dynamic Coalition seeks to shed a spotlight upon. Back in 2019 when this coalition was formed, the issue of media sustainability was a pressing one, a concerning one. I don't have to remind you that in 2020 the pandemic hit and that added urgency to this issue. The economic down turn meant that many independent media were struggling just to survive. Some have called it a potential extinction of that for independent media in journalism. However, at the same time, citizen demand for news and information increased significantly. The need for this independent reporting went up. And anecdotally, we have heard that along side this demand, traffic to news websites has also gone up. So this is a kind of a very challenging time on number of ditch fronts. It's a very precarious situation for news media and journalism in general. And but I think there are opportunities coming out of it as well. In all likelihood, one thing we'll see going out is there will be a larger reliance on digital platforms for the circulation of news, information, economic forces, et cetera. That means the work of this Dynamic Coalition is likely to grow in importance. So I think it's a good thing we got this started and we can continue to grow. I'm going to explain a little bit about how we will run today's session. That is we are going to be launching an annual report which we'll go live later today. But today, we're going to have presentations by all of the contributors of this report and my co‑coordinator Courtney Radsch will be leading that discussion and that will be followed by an open discussion and question and answer with all the panelists. That's going to be the primary thing we'll be doing today.
Before we move to that though, I'd like to give the master of the chair. She's willing and able and she wasver generous with our group to write a preface. We're very excited to share later on. Anriette, are you there?
>> She might have already left.
>> DAN O'MALLEY: Once we release this, I encourage you to read that. She doesn't need an introduction, but as a former director for progressive communication and now the chairman of the MAG, she's an incredibly influential person and is deeply committed to overall media development. We're pleased to have her contribution to this report. I will now pass the boughton over to Courtney Hadsch who will walk us through.
>> COURTNEY: Thanks to everyone who is joining us today for this discussion. We are disappointed not to have enryet. I want to talk briefly as we get into this discussion. A couple of the three main points that address this report that the Dynamic Coalition focused on this year is the fact that the access to high quality news and information is a fundamental component to all development goals. I think that one of the ‑‑ that is one of the thins that the creation of this Dynamic Coalition really emphasizes and we'll get into specifics of that as you'll see in the following discussion.
Also the technical and policy decisions that are being made by tech companies and governance treat the impact on the ecosystem as an afterthought rather than thinking about how those decisions will ripple through our information ecosystem and cross‑borders. And finally, the IGF is a critical venue for discussions on media, sustainability because of its global multi‑disciplinary and multi‑stakeholder scope. Without further adieu, we are going to kind of take a view of some of these issues at theth section of Internet Governance and media sustainability by going and looking at specific case sampies and case studies and then widening out to some of the broader systemic issues. So with that, I would like to invite our first contributor who wrote for Burn from Serbia about the impact of how algorithm removal of news content in Serbia is having an impact there. Tanya, I will ask for you to kick us off.
>> TANJA: Hello, everyone. It is always nice to participate in IGF. I want to thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the coalition report and I wanted to make a couple of key points about the algorithmic removal of the content in Serbia which I think can be very easily transferred to the Bullkin countries and the countries of global south because I feel that problems that you're facing are some what similar. So basically what I wanted to raise is an issue forum is actually how can we preserve the news content, public importance, reporting, investigative reporting in this situation where digital environment is hampering us in a way. The situation on the ground in our countries is not shiny as well. So you can only imagine that we're working in hostile environment in media systems that are quite captured by authoritarian or as we call it liberal government systems. The only way to bypass the limitations of this system is to be heavily engaged on Internet, heavily engaged on social media platforms. That means that we need to basically learn and obey the rules that social media platforms are imposing use and that we have to go along with the algorithms and content duration that is posed by social media platforms. As you will see from some of the examples that I'm going to present now, that is not always going to have public interest and public informing, but what goes more into the monetization systems. So basically in the period between 2014 and 2020, our monitoring efforts actually mapped 23 cases of algorithmic removal of the content in Serbia, which is fortunately not much, but these cases are quite pivotal in their essence. So we are talking about 23 cases of removal of the content coming from independent media outlets, coming from social activists, coming from artists, human right artivists. Among those three cases, you will hardly find case of content with our related to hate speech or spreading of this information. But more often, you will find cases that are, for example, critical governance or some of their (inaudible). So you will see that this is actually the part of the society that is long due reporting and prone to content removal. In these 23 cases as far as the media goes and their sustainability goes, we found two let's say two models of content removal. One is related to copyright issues. And that is sort of content removal that is easier to handle because in that case, social media platforms simply cancel the monitorization with others.
In other cases, we're talking about much more sensitive issues. For example, in our cases, Serbian case, those are the issues, for example, it will make it to Serbia (inaudible) disputes and (inaudible) case. So you will see all the very sensitive topics but which are still crucially important for our social dialogue. So they are ‑‑ I mean, obviously quite (inaudible) still quite important for social dial up. We actually had the case of removal of our two videos which are basically proof of closed ally and closed friend minister material, bribing people in ministers name. So that video was taken down in one day from the YouTube. All the ‑‑ these two mechanisms like officially male, like official contact form that don't work or the e‑mails bounce back to us. So basically we have no mechanism to dispute this decision from the YouTube and we actually have to ask for help from our international organization mart partners to help us to return the content online and it took more than a week. If you know the media system and how it works one week (inaudible). So the reach of this video was smaller than it would be if it was published on the time and similar time as the original article was. So in the coming steps in the coming conversations, I would actually like to see ‑‑ to see media and especially to see media outlets coming from the small markets such as Serbia, coming from the languages that are not English that we would like to see more partnership relations with policymakers on one hand and more partner relayings with companies running storm media platforms or other companies that are actually running the algorithms. We would also like to see how the new policy framework especially the ones that is now quite heavily debated, you can be transferred to the Bullkin countries and to somehow try to close this regulatory and gap because as you can see, our domestic regulation has proper (inaudible) to this case. Social media platforms as private activities, private companies don't have proper answers to these questions. So we would really like to see somehow being more on board on this conversation and being more visible as an actor in this conversation. In the long run, this is ‑‑ more and more people are relying on social media as a source of nude. We would really like to see how can we sustain our work in that environment and how can we actually expand our stories which have the public importance which are important for social dialog, for political dialogue in our country. How can it be more expanded through the online. So I will stop here because I don't want to tame up much more time, but I'm here for all the other questions that you might have.
>> COURTNEY: Thank you so much, Tanja. You can see the bull kin visitative research network and the impact of political topics being removed from social media platforms. The challenges as you say the smaller countries andinize organizations without access to the big company are not seeing as critical markets for them. And that the impact of removal can have a detrimental impact on independent media like yours, like the others that you highlighted which makes it harder to sulticate an audience. It obviously has an impact on sustain act. I would ren courage everyone to take a look at that chapter when it is oil because there are a series of recommending as to dimple stakeholders and I can think we can get into a discussion of recommendations from that chapter and from others later on. I want to move next I have a friend on from RNW media. It takes a look at the love laters global network and again looking at issues of removal and what this means for their work. So with that, let me hand it over to Anastasia and Ana.
>> DANIEL O'MALLEY: Actually, I think it will be Fiona presenting.
>> I would love to share my screen and the brief presentation we have prepared. I'm unailing to share the screen. I think I'll just go ahead with the ‑‑ just presenting.
So with more than 70% of the world's youth online digital technologies play a central role in young people's easy is with this information. Independent media and media development organization such as (inaudible) media play a very crucial role insuring young people have easy is to diverse, reliable and quality content that is reflecting young people's needs in order to love, sex, relationships as well as hopes and ambitions they have.
>> We're not seeing your screen. I I don't know if you're (inaudible).
>> Thank you. Thank you.
>> Yes. Wonderful. Thank you.
>> Yeah? So doing back to the presentation just a brief understanding of what level of matches is ‑‑ the love matches available network is part of the HRSI where organizations in India, Mexico, (inaudible) and Nigeria. So the ‑‑ young people can easy is information and discuss the sexual reproductive health in a safe space. This is evident and especially when it come to the inter60ive rates. People easy is this on social media. So we focus on the online communication channels to empower and go the few people. The changing Facebook builts have the type of con10 we're able to offer them. The ability to reach the audience is all the really decreased in receipt years. Again, due to Facebook change and policies. So in order to be able to insure why they teach on our cop tent or
>> We rely heavily on paid sad very tightments and Spencer onship on the content. Even the content is not have the will Facebook policies.
So the content moderation policies often run the risk of sensorring content and limiting the right to access information especially when it comes to sensitive topics. So from 2015 until 202020, we had the total of 1 again, majority of need advertisements took place in the countries where the program is located and DRC Egypt and Kenya, but then again in the instances of advertisement rejection in Nigeria and Mexico. Look at naming system. It produces one or two. Majority of the reasons they give is because the content is considered adult content. So this seems to be like mischaracterization at hand. It is social media platforms are a safe place for freedom of expression. Last year, it got blocked unfortunately. And during this period, we really had to rely on organic reach in order to reach to the young people and just be able to inform them on their SR HR. Another limbing factor is the nature of our content. So somebody ‑‑ this can't be easily addressed or modified fors saypack adher ticement. I see this covers roughly 80% of what we share. So we talk about making love to sex pressures and LGb TF content. Of and how much ‑‑ further more, several studies that have Facebook regulations on sexual and adult content this affect women and result in censorship. So this varies from region to region if you see the examples of some ads that got rejected the results tend to vary and also previous research and add rejection on platform established that adds tell you that women were frequented ‑‑ but they all the perceived this impact something that was observed in our work. For this reason, we as the editors for love matches adapt to find creative ways just to be able to try and escape this approval of ads and continue to be aim to be performed on the SR ‑‑ there are not any clear conclusions to why Facebook does this. This lack of clarity around the content moderation builts including application of the community guidelines, terms of service and advertising policies. Facebook should insure their approximatelies are clear in line with international human rights standards especially with regards to HR. There's need for transparency that's why advertisemens are rejected and certain tools such as the article go rightm play in this process. The global network call up on social media platforms just to insure the builts of human right space is clear and trans parent and they have an effective appear in place. Thank you for your time.
>> COURTNEY: Great. Thank you so much. Seems there are a couple of similarities about how these removals are applied and framework for those removals and certainly a lack of access to remedy any meaningful way to contest those. I think that the fact that such public interest content is being blocked by the social media platforms because they have labeled it sexual or adult in nature. But it has a public interest goal should be something that everyone in the Internet Governance community should be concerned about. And the fact that, that can back on the public information ecosystem. So thank you for sharing that.
So I am now going to talk about the 30 chapter in the annual report which is one that I wrote coming out of an article I did to protect journalists called politics of labels and how tech platforms regulate state media. So one of the things that this chapter looks at is how three mange platforms, Facebook, Google and Twitter have rolled out state affiliated media, state controlled media. They're all using different terminology. Extensive as an effort to fight this information and propaganda as a way to increase visibility and, um, information for media and information literacy of their users, but what I find is that these labels unsurprisingly are being rolled out in an inconsistent and often less than transparent way. So for the past two years, you have unimplemented new policies for the state linked media outlets. And I have a chart in this chapter which I'm not sure I can share my screen. I will not try to do that. So if you loom at the way the dit platforms have taken the approach, let's start with Google which ‑‑ stabling it state controlled media. Sorry, state funded media and publicly funded media. My analysis when they first rolled this out showed that it was rolled out first in the United States, but then even had ‑‑ if you went into the about section for the channel, there was no information that would link why it had gotten the label because those secs were attended by the outlet itself. So Google wrote this out. Neigh decided to make the decision based on the wicked media article. Those people and organizations are not identified and CPJ was included on that. But one of the challenges with that is, of course, that Wikipedia is etch ‑‑ and will fact that it wasn't rolled out consistently and they're not collecting any data to look at how that impacts media information literacy or traffic to those websites.
We then saw over this summer specifically in the lead up to the U.S. elections and as well as in the wake of the protests in Hong Kong that both Facebook and Twitter rolled out labeling on their platforms within a few weeks of each other. Facebook initially was going to roll out their labels back in November, December of 2018, but it paused after I think lot of organizations including media pushed back on their initial thoughts and they did 6 more months of consummations. They did a pardon me list on who they consultd with. That included CPJ and myself as well as several others on this call. They opted for the term state controlled, which has a lot of baggage this comes with it and a lot of the news organizations that feard it. Get the label especially Al‑Jazeera, RT objected forcefully to that label and nonetheless, they did adopt that terminology. They have a long list of the factors they look at in terms of making that determination including editorial independent standards, looking at how what is publicly available in terms of that information it is sentive and there is a team on Facebook that is doing that assessment, but it is not global and it isnology consistently applied to all media. In fact, one media organization called mathic which runs several Facebook and of everyone ‑‑ they filed a lute saying that Facebook's designation was inaccurate and defamer toy. And so that lawsuit is still ongoing. And interestingly when I spoke with the director there of the CEO, she wanted to find someone who will touch the ammendment for then. So then we saw Twitter roll out a label to its users, but it decided to focus only on users in the main ‑‑ in the permanent numbers of the court council. so it gives them more wiggle room. They roll that out to the the stayed media and state journalists and some politca actors who have a represental roled thatha person for that government? The reason they focus on those countries is because they have an outsized impact on the global conversation. These were labels I would apply to institutional accounts as well as (inaudible) for state affiliated media, which was a different approach than all of the other two. Now both Facebook and Twitter also included limitations on amplification and advertising four new organizations that. Can impact their visibility, their reach. I think a lot of the ‑‑ some state media don't advertise much. So it's still unclear what the impact is going to be.
One of the billing take aways from the research that I conducted is that we just have no idea what the impact of this is going to be on these media outlets other than them being very concerned about the rollout of the media labels because the platforms are not collecting the data that could potentially be used if they were to share it with other ‑‑ with researchers or journalists. So I was really locked sufficient not collecting data go engagement, visitation, anything about perception to allow us to see whether it's hag the intended project. Facebook and Twitter did not have any plans to either that data east. That meet that the tech lock forms are roll will out builts that have the form term to have a series impact horizors perceive media as well as that able to monitor IRT said it doesn't see any impact on visitation and it likes to say that it is one of the most visited sites on social media, et cetera. We're relying on self‑reporting by these media outlets which is problematic in itself. Again, I have a few recommendations and included in here. I also include greater transparency and access to remedy. So I think we'll get into those in the organization and I want prop there and touch to this next chafter which is by stellar group, who drafted a chapter and how big tec machine is promoting to ‑‑ threatening democracy. But we felt it was so important to the issues that we're discussing here that we asked they adapt it for this perforation. We have elly to discuss the main points of the issues of media sustainability and how the reporter lying correctional disabilities of ‑‑ ain't to understand how target the adrear ticement (inaudible). Turning it over to you.
>> ELLERY: It is good to see old colleagues and meet new ones. I only wish we were all together in a room somewhere in the world. One day.
So that was a game introduction, Courtney. I will jump right into it. I would love to share with everyone and I encourage to you read the two reports we did this past spring in which we took a critical look at the social and human rights implications of what drives profit at Facebook, twitter and Google. This was ‑‑ although we're a global research organization, this was a focused project. But the implications and serve everyone I am going to talk about here are completely as relevant. If some cases, I would argue more so outside of the United States. Much so all three of these tech giants have built their, models on targeted advertisement that can determine the reap of a message by targeting users who are most likely to share it. As we all know, this can influence the view points of thens or even millions of people. This group here I am so great of the surfaced ample evidence of how they have content for civil seedia, media as we put something some into that situation, this information about hill, can literally mean lifer ‑‑
So our first report lays out the problems at hand and shows how simply raining in content were trying to develop this seemingly unreachable perfect policy for content is not going to lead to better outcomes for the digital public sphere or for human rights. Using algorithmic systems to filter content it won't solve the problems and it will create others as our colleagues have shown. There is sort of endless collateral censorship of really important messages. On this note, we also in our pain every urged U.S. policymakers to preserve section 230 of the communes decency act which protects platforms from legal sponge posted by users. Our argument is that instead companies need to be held accountable for how content is amplified and targeted. What we do know and colleagues here like Tanja and Fiona of helping us see is how content shaping algorithms actually affect what kinds of information people are able to see and access. What is driving these is actually profit. Companies use ‑‑ show users viral content, serve them ads and collect more data about them among the way. This helps companies target or in their words personalize content and more ads and what becomes anentless iterative process. In the targeting systems and general rely on these and other invasive data collection practices to create detailed digital profiles of users. We all know that anyone who can buy ads on the platform to target specific groups of people in any number of ways including with manipulative or misleading messages that can result in unfair and sometimes illegal discrimination. Reliance on revenue from targeted advertising incentivizes companies to design platforms that are addictive that manufacture verrallity and maximize the information that a company can collect about its users. Our data shows that companies are unacceptably opaque about how the systems work as well as how political actors are using these systems. As many of my fellow panelists have made clear, this lack of transparency makes it impossible to have an informed discussion about solutions and about how best to regulate this industry. So our bigger call here is actually for government regulation in the U.S., but we still build in recommendations for companies. We urge them to undertake corporate due diligence on the impact of these systems to set and enforce rules to prevent mallicious manipulation and have transparency processes to understand who is influencing what kind of content they see online and why they are seeing it. So on the question of regulation, we know think we can drastically reduce the power of harmful content if we focus on regulating companies underlying data driven and money making technological systems of the soy we argue they should adopt an international human rights framework for holding the companies account automobile. And will we were again focusing on the big companies in the U.S., such a framework can be as applicable in many other jurisdictions. Part overemphasis is using international human rights standards can allow law makers to determine how best to regulate the companies while prioritizing users rights to private and free speech. We proposed a few areas where wed like congress to act to mitigate some of these harms. First is transparency and accountability for all types of online advertising and requirements we have in the U.S. that currently only apply to print and broadcast political ads. We argue those should just be due to the impossibility of question fining what is a political ad these days is just apply those standards. And lastly, we're pushing for corporate governor an reform that would require companies to disclose information pertaining to social and human rights impacts of these systems. Where we put our work and emphasis is passing a strong data privacy law. If this were to happen and if it were effectively enforced, this could really make a big difference in the degree to which Internet users are protected from the types of discrimination inherent in automated content optimization and could also go a long way to limit the viral spread of harmful messages.
Communities around the world paying the price for companies failures to make credible efforts to understand and track their social impact is so clear from this group and to take responsibility for preventing and mitigating social harms that their business can cause or contribute to. It is time to adjust course and design a resilient and equitable information environment that protects human rights and civil liberties especially in times of crisis and change like these.
>> Courtney: Great. Thank you so much, Ellery. I think that's an important summary. We'll delve into more ramp aidings, I think, again we're seeing definite themes here. And as your chapter focuses on some recommendations for how U.S. policymakers might think about regulating platforms which are based largely based in the country that they have jurisdiction over, I want to turn now to the EU because it is also looking at how to regulate the platforms which though not necessarily based there. They have operations there. Nonetheless have a huge impact on their met ecosystems. I want to turn over to Olaf Steenfadt. This is based on a report hey did over the summer as well. OLAF is looking at how social media has turned our ‑‑ any discussion relatedy the clean up tech companies and looking specifically at the European Commissions, plans for the digital services act and new that can be used to foster sustainability. I want to turn now to Olife AF. If you can give us a git of an overview on the chapter, that would be great.
I think as a point of departure, we look at the whole situation currently as a big window of opportunity in many, many ways as it was said before, definitely the COVID situation provides a bit of a reckoning for all of us in many, many ways. Particularly also at policy levels where currently I think trustworthy information is revalued again because it can literally save lives as it was mentioned earlier. At the same time, quite synically, it pushes media outlets and operations further to the cliff edge economically as well. At the same time, we see digital services act materializing which will become one way or the other quite significant piece of platform regulation. Not only at the European level, but also for member states. And in the inception of the digital services act, we also see a few platform and understanding of multi‑laterallism in this particular field particularly involving I would call them miss powers. So countries like Canada, Australia, Japan and some of the EU member states looking at these issues with much more priority. When we speak about legislative policy approaches, I think the trigger term is always market failure and obviously I think everybody would agree that we look at I think a range of different market failures along the value of change in the digital economy. And this also interestingly and maybe also programming coinsides with the mandate off the European Commission off the field of competition. So this is I think very, very important to keep in mind. We speak about approaches and solution. And when we speak about anti‑trust competition and trade irrelevant points here or approaches, in the end, it will come to one way or the other. It will come through redistribution mechanisms and, of course, also concentration on measures against concentration, market concentration as well. As this will happen, we are asking ourselves how we can help to get it right or at least not totally wrong. There was a lot of caveats and RSF we see this quite critically with lots of fun evidence that this is also limiting freedom of speech and human rights in some cases scientifically if this way of thinking is enforced in other places. Move forward to more ‑‑ the legal technical term is due prominence logic and even regulation in this field. Interestingly, particularly on the end of the European Commission, but also member states does have Legacy. If you think of traditional must carry rules in broadcasting, which would oblige cable operators or EPGs to carry are for example, public service media or local media prominently. Another example of due prominence is stipulation for a quota for European works in the auto visual network. So this kind of affirmative action, if you wish, has already a Legacy. It must be found kind of thinking in the digital world and how to do it technically. What we are proposing and what we believe is kind of condition to get this going first of all is to have a unfeed list of criteria what we mean by the good and obviously this is not so much looking on individual pieces of content because we would believe this is terrible idea to try and rank and rate and judge content because it can asly be misused and turned into censorship, but rather look at the process level, the manufacturing level of journalism. This is what we have tried to propose and publish actually as a European standard called the journalism trust initiative late last year. So that exists already. Publish another professional norm because an abundance of professional norms exist already, but to add additional level of compliance. And as a journalist, I might say that when I speak about wreckonning that the whole situation we face is also a deep look into the mirror right now and as we all know a look into the mirror is not always pleasant. So the underlying question here is: Do we stick as a community to our own norms andma happens if we don't? So this is what we mean by a compliance mechanism tied to unified criteria. The third requirement would be to turn these cert fixing a or compliance level into machine readable signals, which then can inform both algorithmic and human decision making and the fourth and then I'm coming back to net governance and legislation. The force let's say make use of these instruments. This is what we're currently proposing particularly if you want a co‑regulatory approach which is a European especially. EU policy instruments exist already to describe what we mean by co‑regulation. And I'm not a lawyer or legal expert, but in very broad strokes means that you have a shell and out of shell of hard law, a legal obligation. And then a core of self‑regulatory standards. So to bore an example from another industry, you would have a law that tells you that cars must be safe, but no law in the world would explain or tell you what a safe car looks like. You have industry standards that would deliver or provide technical specs and also because technology changes all the time and you don't want to change the law all the tie. So the law references technical standards. If as a manufacturer you sticky to those standards and you're in compliance with this and you prove it and get audits, you are automatically basically in line with the legal obligation. If you choose not to in industry standards are volunteer, then your liability is much higher. So this is in a nut shell how this logic works and this is what we saw to translate into the field interestingly, we got I think promising feedback and a level of:eration with advertising sector which also ‑‑ it shows quite a significant demand of the signals. They call it brand safety which means to identify safe environments online. And if we can manage to tie and spend to compliance with professional norms, we believe it can essentially help to remonetize trustworthy sources. This is not only the ladies and gentlemennic and policy, but also the I would say fungallity and technical infrastructure we would like to propose and to implement in. I think I will leave it to you.
>> Sure. There are lots of questions about that.
>> Thank you so much and interesting in getting this into conversation without thinking about how we could bring together an approach that would cross the Atlantic. Before we do that, I want to turn to our last but not least chapter. I also wanted people to get ready for questions. Put them into the chat. Raise some of the issues. We'll have 15 minutes after the final presentation, maybe 20 depending on Mike and Murrah. We definitely could not make this work without Michael and the organization to keep us on top. A little thank you from me and the other co‑coordinators.
You guys wrote the final concluding chapter on threats to media sustainability and freedom of expression, the digital age really taking a global look at some of the major issues facing journalism today, the pathways for addressing some of the core issues with financial sustainability, economic viability and the digital age and arguing for a wider more robust legislative conversation on the digital economy which sounds like it builds right on with what we're hearing. With that, I will turn it over to Michael.
>> MICHAEL: Thank you for that kind introduction, Courtney. It's been such a pleasure working with you as well. It's great to see how this was just an idea that came about at IGF2017. And here we are. It's launched and has co‑coordinators and excellent ones at that. Now we're about to launch our first annual report. This is the culmination of essentially a dream of ours, which to make this happen. So thank you and obviously to everybody who made this possible. I really am not going to speak long because I think the chapter ‑‑ I almost wanted to stand almost like a reference for the community going forward. It's a bit of a depasture from the rest of the case studies and analysis featured as it takes a broader and maybe wholistic, but laying out the lay of the land but that is specifically understanding how media sustainability and freedom of expression are closely InterConnected. If you can take one thing away from my intervention, it should be this. I personally really love this axium that's being developed. It's not my axium. It may have come from the international center for governance. You cannot have press freedom without the press. It's almost irrelevant if we have strong protects for press freedom. If the press and journalism and these nudia in general cannot sustain themselves in the current market environment that exists around the world or even non‑profit media were not able to sustain. I want to be as brief as I can. That's over two decades changing in the political and social and compromised sustainability and the independent of nude media globally and and then the ability for journalist and news media to even survive survive. With COVID‑19 with ambiifying the crisis, the coming years will be for the out of and one of the main pillars for many news rooms advertising it goes a little bit into this what we it guys into this problem exploring not just advertising revenue, business models which Ellery and OLAF go way into more detail, but we give an overview of some of those threats, media consolidation, media capture. Obviously and then there are certain things that we don't necessarily mention by name. But we ‑‑ we essentially of of much ‑‑ strategic litigation against public participation. Something like Slaps are being used to essentially force or bring resources that coulding asd for investigative journalism to now face, you know, long drawn out court procedures. That undermines not just press freedom, but also sustainability of journalism. Something like right to be forgotten. Something very close to my heart that I worked closely with Dan on. We are now seeing how right to be foretten cases or being used again of there's already been closures because there is not the ability for news orals to sustain themselves especially going up against people that are very well financed and very well have many, many lawyers on their team. The point of this is these are just examples of how ‑‑ we cannot separate one from the other. So with that said, there's a lot more that I could be saying. But I think that's a gad place to leave it for now. I want to thank everybody once again for making this possible and I look forward to the discussion.
>> COURTNEY: Thank you so much, Michael. I think the fact that you pointed out the right to be forgotten which was really seen as regulating search results, but as you said, it has been weaponized against journalists and media. It was a really interesting case in Italy why a media outlettend up shutting down because it could not comply and local authorities interpreting the right to be forgot tone then many the source, the journalistic sources are not then able to keep theirars up. So loots to dig into here. I want to invite people to stick a message in the chat if you'd like to to again, put that in the chat. So while we wait for people to engage, I want to bring together a couple of things we heard here. So the journalism trust initiative. The idea of labels on media and political adds. You have a comprehensive ad database. All these aspects that could increase transparency. One of the things that stanes out to me in these chapters is that there really is a challenge with national level remedies because they're unlikely to be effective and we really need to look at something that's broader because of the global scope of the technology platform and the Internet. So I want to turn to Tanja and Fiona to get some thoughts about what you heard from some of the ‑‑ in the centers of power that are regulating that have the power to regulate and impose regulations and legal frameworkses on the tech platform. So the United States are U.S. and the EU. If we think about this co‑regulatory approach, if we think about increase efforts, increase transparency like this and using existing instruments, do you think that will have an impact in improving the situation on the ground for the type of media outlets that you guys are working with and the issues that you're seeing with content removal? Let me turn first to op‑‑
>> Thank you for your question. Yeah. It is a bit tricky to say yes. The correlation (inaudible) for it all. But I think that some sort of regulation and some sort of policy dialogue really needs to kick off. Somehow we are in the shadow of all these processes that are launched at the EU level as OLAF explained and theus explained it a little bit earlier. So we are really open to all discussions that somehow see us as an actor. If there are no regulatory mechanisms that are now ‑‑ that could be put in place and could be effective, let's try a different approach. Let's try increasing our transparency and industry regiumer toy mechanisms and let's try to negotiate with the platforms to take a little bit more responsibility on their side. So I'm not expecting that this correlation is going to be (inaudible) but I think that's one step towards the some sort of social.
>> COURTNEY: RNW media is working in countries with problems with the exception of India which has probably more influence than some of the other countries where you guys work like Mexico, Kenya and Nigeria and Egypt. What do you see? Especially these countries do not tip really have a place at the table in a lot of these conversations over how to regulate, co‑regulate, et cetera.
>> FIONA: I will say the first thing is give these countries a place at the table just for us to also have a better understanding of what is expected of us when you use such platforms. As I mentioned before, each region has its own reasons as to why it adds up and being reflected. Just having that better understanding by having also a chance to explain ourselves and say this is what we say for country. If that level of transparency is maintained or increased, then even for us within the countries we would know this is good for us to post or I just saw a content in a way that would not have the the policies and at the same time, bible to provide this information to our target audience.
>> COURTNEY: A lot of cases you have raised would be interesting ones. I want to turn to Rachel from Unecessaryco who has ‑‑ who wants to ask a question. Please go ahead, Rachel.
>> RACHEL: Hello. Hi, everyone. I think I was there at the meeting in 2017 at the pre‑event. And Daniel and we talked about ‑‑ really fan of thetic and Courtney is always a former colleague who is just brilliant everywhere that I have seen her. First, this topic is so relevant and I think it is getting more and more attention and also within Unecessaryco something one the work on freedom of expression, development costs freedom. We're being look more at media socioenact. Hope of there be some aspebbles about that in the spring.
And also Courtney is familiar with heedia trends and we will have a focus on journalism as the possible good. And information as a public good. I think we can continue that. In terms of questions, I probably only have time for one. Maybe I'll throw out about three or four and you can decide which one you have time to answer. Look will at the last year, it seems that there have been a lot of developments in this area of business mots and the platforms. So I'm thinking first of the hate for profit movement seems like a long time ago now police violence and racism and the role of some of these platforms. So I wonder what you think the capability of that was or could be of those kind of simp society mobile vacation and then now ongoing the discussions about anti‑trusts violations and the practices of various platforms and whether they may be regulated and new ways. There's a side of the antir‑trust as well as viability for content and section 230. Again, what impact do you think that might have? Civil side or regulation.
On the issue of targetd advertising. I read the report was moved toward back targeted advertising. I don't know what your thoughts are on how likely that might to be pass. And then as I said ‑‑ transparency and there are many different forms of transparency or aspects of transparency that we can talk about. What sort of forms of transparency do you think are the most important are important and feasible and actually getting change in the near future? So thank you.
>> COURTNEY: I want to go to Olaf to give us some thoughts and we have a question about what we would have to do to convince large advertisers to show more responsibility in their ad spending and whether imposing more transparency is a necessary prerequisite. So Olaf, take a first stab at answering Rachel's first or second.
>> OLAF: I think they have not voted on a law but just passed. I think initiative report will then feed into digital services draft and discussion. On targeted advertising, I can give you my personal take. I think this is obviously the business model of large parts of the internet and taking this away just so it might have unintentional consequences. I think the targeting is probably not so much the problem, but transparency and folds are misleading incentives. I think the task is more to reverse the logic of incentives in targeting and personal. You can always say personalizing the Internet that's right than just abolishing it at large. I was just reflecting from what I hear. It might be easier to reign in just Facebook rather than having 10 Facebooks and race to the bottom of lowering the standards and dealing with them. Maybe a more of so just basically of these ‑‑ so for example, shops and other services that Uber provides that integrated and treated preferentially in search, this is an anti‑trust issue. Not so much having six search engines attend as a consumer. Yes?
>> Let me go to Fiona on the issue of the advertising because I could see how something like stop for hate if they say we don't want our content to show up next to sex or anything to do with love or, you know, sexual reproduction, et cetera. Is there the wreck of an unattended consequence? What are your thoughts about this approach to paid advertising and the power of what the issues that Rachel raised in her question.
>> Fiona. I would say like Facebook would be clear. We don't want to see words such askings is. We make sure that we don't violate such policies so that we make hour is our ads are approved and we share much needed information. Even as much as we try to sensor our content and it's not that our content is completely explicit, but every time we try to sense our content, it still gets disapproved for some reason. So the one thing we are asking for one thing we're hoping to see improve in the future is just the ‑‑ making sure the policies are sufficient and clear enough. I feel like they're a bit vague. Again, reach on base ‑‑ region focused something that would initially benefit my region would ideally be different from some of the region, but for Facebook to make that clear and again in regards to that need for transparency, I would say the most burning issue for me working a lot with Facebook ads is figuring out how much human content moderation is used while determining which ads are valid and which ones report. We have no idea whether it's ‑‑ a content would not fit and then be disapproved and just also trying to understand what is the process of an ad being disapproved would know very helpful for us shaping our.
>> COURTNEY: Thank you. I know there's a lot more in Rachel 'questions, but I would encourage people to read the report. I think there are some potential responses to that. I do want to get to some of the other questions in the chat. There are two related ones. What role might NGOs and entities that support independent media worldwide, what role can they play? That question comes from Laura Davis. Just the consideration of whether, you know, are there alternative platforms that journalists and activists and front liners need and this is coming from Esther. Are there other existing platforms? I want to open it up and I will ask panelists that maybe I will go to Ellery to get your thoughts on that as an NGO yours. And if you want to provide some input on that.
>> ELLERY: For the next years before, I was the advocacy director at (inaudible) where we were encountering these kinds of issues both in a variety of ways, you know, the kinds of cases that Fiona and Tanja have raised and writing about. But also, we're always struggling to keep up with the rules and the changes and algorithm so we can make sure people can see our stories. And I just think that it's so important for journalists to report on exactly the kinds of issues that you two are raising. And to find screwed, strategic ways to do that reporting when it will ‑‑ when it can be loud and heard by powerful actors. I think the example of Miramar is one of them. It's huge and has particularly horrifying characteristics, but the fact that in the congress in the U.S., there was a moment in these hearings where suddenly everybody knew about this role that Facebook had played in a genocide. That's series impact that was achieved because of journalists and activists in the country working together and making sure this message was received. And so I can't stress enough how important I think that kind of pressure is because the companies ‑‑ I deep know what is going to happen with regulation, but they hate bad PR. They hate to look that bad and it is sometimes up to journalists to find the way to put on the pressure publicly.
>> COURTNEY: Thank you, Ellery. I want to talk to Mira that will address the issue if you wanted to jump in on the advertising question. Please go ahead.
>> MIRA: Thank you, Courtney and everyone. I didn't want to speak much, but just to follow up also on Lauren's question what organizations can do and then reflect and advertising as well. One of our great achievements as international non‑profit community that works in this area is to establish this coalition. And together, we have created many conversations that had fed into very important policy discussions over the last couple of years. So for instance, all of it has been involved together with ranking digital rights and also CPJ in Europe upon with coordinate. There was also a very significant contribution on the question and we have all signed a powerful submission calling for universal at transparency. So this Dynamic Coalition has contributed to that and we feel there are so many other conversations that we are having at the moment where groups like this and also having information from all around the world including Kenya and Bullkins is allowing us to feed a better quality information into these discussions. On the asf unfirstly, the brands have been named and named and it went to the of the direction, but back listing a lot of content they consider to be tricky to be next to. So pored‑‑ it had created some the guidance included a lot of journalism as a risky category. So there were so many fights and hills that we need to climb in this conversation. So just to kind of cut this long story short in the future, we have top ask as the secretariat of the Dynamic Coalition from all of you. First, let us know how we can also make all these conversations more inclusive. So what are the ways and channels except from Zooming things where we can bring more of the voices from around the world into all the policy conversations. And the second ask is forever all of you to send us contacts of organizations and experts in your countries and your regions that it involved with informing also international conversations. We can have more exchange of best practices and ideas. So that's so much for me. Thank you very much.
>> COURTNEY: Well, thank you so much, mira. I know we are coming up on the understand of our time. There are other questions including Facebook oversight board. It had not yet become operational, but I have very little doubt many of us will be discussing about how we are going to leverage that new entity. So we are out of time. I want to thanken for a really interesting discussion. I think we can go on much longer and with that, I guess I'd like to ask Ehesbon if he would like to say a couple of concluding remarks. I know he's also ‑‑ go ahead, Ehesbon.
>> Thank you ever have much, Courtney, and all participants and the panelists. Is this is a great experience to join in and listen to the names behind the reports. It's been great working with Michael and with tire marks Anja and Courtney. Still learning a lot about IGF. It is God to meet all of us. Could have been much greater if you were in Poe land, but they say technologies of a group (inaudible) because we can easily meet at a very interesting time of the COVID pan dimming. We look forward to directing with this of all I can say right now is thanks to all of you and take it back to Courtney.
>> DANIEL O'MALLEY: Apologies there. If you hear something, I'm fine. But yeah. We're going to have to wrap up. I want to thank a couple people. I want to especially thank the global form media for being or secretariat mira and Michael in particular along with their assistants. A also want to thank our captioner and our technical assistants from the IGF who are helping us make this happen. We can't be there in person. So they're making this work virtually. Because we can't be there virtually, people are interested in turning on your video. We can take a really quick screen grab, a picture to show that we were here and we have had really engaging discussion about needed sustainability. If you want to, go ahead. Fix your hair, turn your camera on and we'll take a quick screen grab. I want to also just say we're planning this work to continue. We'll be reaching out to you as the co‑coordinators to hear what members of the Dynamic Coalition want to do. If you want to join the mailing list, join the website. I will ask Michael if he can put the website back on the chat. You will get an e‑mail from us soon as we think about what type of activities we'll be doing next year and also it sounds like world press (inaudible) day might be an interesting place where we can take some of this information and engage it. And, of course, we'll be working on an annual report next year. So if you are identifying new topics at the I. section of guarantee governance and media development, we encourage to you submit and become part of the conversation. Now I will go ahead and take a couple screen grabs on the count of 3. 1, 2, 3. Okay. And now page 2. 1, 2, 3. Great. I think that we have to make do with what we can. We're able to have a lot more participation. It's really great to see your faces and have you all involved. Thank you very much for attending today.
>> COURTNEY: Thanks, everyone.
>> DANIEL O'MALLEY: Thank you so much to our authors as well. We'll be circulating it very shortly.
>> COURTNEY: Bye.
>> MICHAEL: Thank you, all. Take care.
>> Bye, everyone.