Relevance to Internet Governance: Whether and how to regulate user-generated online content is a key issue at the heart of Internet governance. This session will explore the various modalities of Internet governance, including laws, company policy, and user behavior and norms, and the roles of different stakeholder groups, including government, industry, and civil society. We will focus on how the decisions made by these different actors, through these various mechanisms, directly and indirectly affect people’s enjoyment of their fundamental rights.
Relevance to Theme: People’s ability to enjoy their rights to freedom of expression, access to information, freedom of association, and privacy online all depend on trust. We must be able to understand the laws and policies that will be applied to our online speech and to trust that they will be enforced fairly and transparently. We must be able to trust that we will know when governments have been involved in restricting our speech and access to information, or obtaining information about us from private companies, so that we can hold our governments accountable. Companies must provide clear and honest explanations for how they determine what information we do and don’t see online, so that we can choose whether to entrust them with our speech and personal information. Ultimately, a lack of trust can exert a strong chilling effect on people’s willingness to participate online and can disproportionately affect already marginalised groups and individuals. A clear understanding of how governments and companies should act to promote people’s rights to free expression and privacy is essential to building and restoring trust in the Internet as our predominant communications medium.
