IGF 2020 Inaugural meeting, Dynamic Coalition on Data and Trust

Time
Thursday, 5th November, 2020 (10:50 UTC) - Thursday, 5th November, 2020 (12:20 UTC)
Room
Room 3
About this Session
This interactive discussion is the inaugural meeting of the new Dynamic Coalition on Data and Trust. The speakers will briefly set the scene on the vision for the Dynamic Coalition, the linkages between data and trust within the domain name industry and online content environment. The discussions will be framed around the effectiveness of industry responses to the Covid-19 pandemic within the domain environment, web environment and social media.
DC

Dynamic Coalition on Data and Trust

Round Table - U-shape - 90 Min

Theme
Description

The session will explore issues of data and trust through the lens of industry responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, including:

Self-regulatory actions by registries and registrars to combat disinformation or scams relating to Covid-19 in the DNS. The broad ecosystem of actors whose services are used and abused by websites that systematically publish disinformation (including disinformation relating to Covid-19). The objective is, through inclusive discussion of the issues involving all relevant stakeholders, to deepen understanding of the issues, build consensus, identify good practices and other actions to improve quality of data and information, as well as raise levels of public trust in industry self-regulation.

Relevance to IG

The scope of this Dynamic Coalition is kept deliberately broad, so that over time it can accommodate a wide range of discussions relating to data and trust in response to emerging issues. Typically, issues relating to content and infrastructure are examined in policy silos. This Dynamic Coalition will fill a governance gap, by encouraging an inclusive policy dialogue among all stakeholders who are interested in exploring issues of data and trust in the online environment, and the extent to which actors in one segment of the ecosystem can take effective actions to curb abuse in other segments.

Relevance to Theme

It explores issues of Data and Trust

Organizers

Emily Taylor, CEO Oxford Information Labs Limited, UK Giovanni Seppia, External Relations Manager, EURid

Speakers

Giovanni Seppia, EURid

Pablo Bello, WhatsApp

Lisa-Maria Neudert, Oxford Internet Institute

Antoan Shoratov, EURid Youth Committee

Alberto Rabbachin, European Commission

The meeting would have been held in round-table format, and the organisers will welcome floor points from all participants.  Graeme Bunton of Tucows and Polina Malaja of CENTR have indicated a willingness to provide interventions on the theme of industry responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Onsite Moderator

Emily Taylor, Oxford Information Labs Limited

Online Moderator

TBC

Rapporteur

Emily Taylor, Oxford Information Labs

SDGs

GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
GOAL 17: Partnerships for the Goals

1. Key Policy Questions and related issues
How did the domain Industry respond to the Covid-19 pandemic?
Covid-19 trends in social media, and self regulatory responses.
Covid-19 a perspective from the EURid Youth Committee on the dynamic coalition.
Covid-19 misinformation in the web environment.
What regulatory interventions have been successful in limiting the spread of Covid-19 misinformation online?
2. Summary of Issues Discussed
  • Covid-19
  • Misinformation
  • Regulatory interventions to limit the spread of misinformation online 
  • Industry approaches to limiting the spread of misinformation online
  • Data leakage and data breaches associated with covid-19 data
  • Covid-19 related DNS abuse
  • Existing procedures for sharing information on DNS abuse in crisis situations
  • Measures taken by registrars to prevent the Spread of Covid-19 related misinformation
  • Need for continued dialogue between community of registrars
  • Movement of offline problems online
  • Closing the digital divide
  • Messaging services and online platforms as critical infrastructure
  • Importance of encryption 
  • Encryption ‘backdoors’
  • Partnerships between tech companies and health authorities (International and domestic)
  • Search engine optimisation and the spread of misinformation
  • Third party links and misinformation
  • How platforms are helping spread misinformation 
  • Advertising and misinformation
  • Cybersecurity risks generated by working from home 
  • EU Code of Practice on Disinformation
  • 1 Year review of EU Code of practice on Disinformation
3. Key Takeaways
  • A number of domain name registries and registrars have been actively working to limit the spread of misinformation during covid-19
  • EURid and Tucows reported that the quantity of new domain names registered during covid creating a risk of harm by spreading misinformation was relatively minimal (<1%).
  • There is a need for reliable information to be shared between registrars regarding DNS abuse during crises. 
  • Partnerships between tech companies and public institutions (international and domestic) have been crucial to stemming the flow of misinformation during Covid-19
  • Misinformation is not only spread by hostile actors, it can be spread by 
  • It is not just any sort of hostile actors that are spreading false information,  different culprits such as algorithms and big data enabled tools that are optimized for junk news are also to blame.  We have alternative media outlets that are doing very well over these social media algorithms and that are also having economic incentives.There is also a mainstream problem with misinformation.  During the politics of post truth, political leadership both in authoritarian regimes, but also in democracies, is disseminating all sorts of conspiratorial or deceiving information.
  • Traditional techniques for professional search engine optimisation are also being employed to spread misinformation such as boosting domain authority, backlinking, and markup and advertising.
  • The EU Code of Practice on Disinformation has led to tangible progress in the major platforms approach to addressing disinformation, but this has been limited by the scope of the code and the fact that it only applies within the EU and to the major tech companies.
6. Final Speakers

Giovanni Seppia, EURid

Pablo Bello, WhatsApp

Lisa-Maria Neudert, Oxford Internet Institute

Antoan Shoratov, EURid Youth Committee

Alberto Rabbachin, European Commission