[kictanet] [thoughts & predictions] Christchurch Call

Thu Apr 25 05:52:17 EAT 2019

 Good morning Ali,
Oh my... I have not blamed "everything" on Big tech. Unless the meaning of the word has changed. :-D

If you can highlight the sections/paragraphs/ideas where I have gone "overboard" and share your thoughts on why they are overboard, I will certainly consider your inputs for next time.

I don't understand the "slay queen" comment... haha are you fully awake Sir?

Rather than relying on sweeping generalizations and/or unwarranted ad-hominem attacks, I welcome you to offer a well reasoned rebuttal to balance the ideas that you feel are one sided and to offer a different perspective. It will certainly enrich the discussion!
Have a great day!Patrick.

Patrick A. M. Maina[Cross-domain Innovator | Public Policy Analyst - Indigenous Innovations]

    On Thursday, April 25, 2019, 5:14:35 AM GMT+3, Ali Hussein <ali at hussein.me.ke> wrote:  

 Patrick
Have we reached the stage now to blame EVERYTHING on #BigTech? Surely humanity has a role to play in this chaos that is the world today? 
I'm all for tighter regulation and holding platforms responsible but I think you are going overboard? 
Reigning in sharing on social media wouldn't stop ISIS, the CIA, Mossad and the rest of them from doing what they do in the name of whatever God they worship or for that matter a Slay Queen posting her status on her facebook as 'Complicated'.
Let's address these issues in a balanced way and not throw the baby with the bath water. Reading Amazon's Anti-Trust Paradox  got me thinking. Perhaps worth your while to look at it too. One thing I've learnt in this world is that not everything is black and white, shades of grey are usually the nome and pragmatism is not a bad thing at all.
My two cents.
Regards
AliHussein

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On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 4:54 AM Patrick A. M. Maina via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

  Dear Alex, Listers,
Perhaps an apt analogy for this upcoming summit is FBI/Interpol calling the Mafia for a brainstorm on how to solve/reduce organized crime. The outcome is fairly predictable. 

If the platforms could offer a solution, it would have been implemented by now. They don't have it because the problem is deeply woven into their product. To solve the problem they have to dismantle their core business model or wait until competitors emerge with better and safer business models (which they can then rush to copy - leveraging their existing scale and resources). 

This entanglement was aptly captured by UK lawmakers (link below) when they slammed social media platform proposals as "bandaids on systemic problems" while asserting that "extremists are using the services exactly as they were meant to be used: to spread and share content, ignite passions, and give everyone a platform."

The social media companies know regulations are imminent and they want to influence them in ways that will suit them. One strategy that they are using is calling for taxpayer subsidized partnerships with governments - despite their notoriety for going to great lengths to avoid paying their share of taxes in most countries. The audacity behind such suggestions is simply mind boggling! When corporations aggressively minimize or avoid their share of taxes, it is ordinary people (those who can't hire armies of tax/legal experts or leverage cross-border tax treaties) who end up bearing the brunt of financing government expenditure. This lowers disposable income, which contributes to increased hardship that could, over time, contribute (in part) to the kind of frustration, and anger, that makes young persons vulnerable to radicalization by extremists.

Social media platforms could be inadvertently highlighting a bigger societal problem that has been simmering in the background. Is there a link between the increasing corporate efficiencies (doing more with less, which results in suppressed wages and job losses) and the rise in "unexplained" extremism (people just snapping and going berserk)? What if the problem is bigger than social media? What if it goes right to the heart of capitalism as an ideology and its present day flavor? I think this is an area that needs more analysis and research.

I am trying hard to find a sense of hope/optimism for the summit but it has all the makings of a grand PR show for public appeasement and closure, so that things can quickly go back to "normal". Keeping in mind that NZ is a 5-eyes alliance member and very likely has been leveraging the same social media platforms for intelligence gathering - so it is a meeting of collaborators (not adversaries). 

I will even try to "predict" most (if not all) of the recommendations:
1. A universal regulator body to be proposed, with multilateral membership but funded by the platforms, preferably based in New York or Carlifornia (or worst case in Brussels).
2. The regulator will be tasked with setting "global rules" whose dual purpose will be to narrow the scope of social responsibility for platforms owners by providing them with an easy-button legal checklist that they can comply with in order to absolve themselves from blame / consequences of platform misuse. 

These rules will be easy for billion-dollar companies (which grew without rules) to comply with - but will make it prohibitively expensive for new entrants (startups or open source, not-for profit alternative platforms) who might offer better (safer) social media alternatives, to enter the pace - thus unfairly entrenching the incumbents' dominance and monopoly.

This "global rules" will remove the need for cultural contextualization - thus hitting the culturally heterogeneous global south much harder as Governments will have to bear the burden of local content moderation on such platforms. This could lead to more internet shutdowns as governments resort to the trusted "I have hammer, every problem is nail" approach.

3. Phrases like "a global problem that needs a global solution" will be repeated often to try diffuse institutional responsibility away from platforms and into abstract non-entities. 

4. Taxpayer subsidized community policing will be proposed - to pass the buck of monitoring content on their platforms to the public. "It is a community platform". However, any proposal about sharing profits or allocating platform ownership within the community will strictly not be entertained (because that is communism, and evil). Only responsibility and blame can/should be shared communally.

5. Restricted freedoms (e.g. censorship) will be entertained as an option. Democratization of publishing will be challenged in favor of centralized models that can be monitored and/or controlled by elites.

6. Platforms shall seek legitimacy as global custodians and judges of "truth" and "real news" (MSM 2.0).
7. Taxpayer funded subsidies will be sought (worded as "partnerships" with government agencies - which means diverting government resources from other uses like healthcare, education and other essential services that taxpayers need, so as to help solve problems created or amplified by companies that don't pay - or pay much lower proportionate taxes).
8. It will be suggested that private contract provisions ought to supersede higher (e.g. criminal) laws e.g. Platforms will seek legitimization of their self-imposed power (see link below) to decide which crimes should be reported to authorities and which ones shouldn't.

The world can expect confident assurances that all parties are working relentlessly to solve this "global" problem and this will be backed by impressive numbers such as tens of thousands of moderation teams and big budgets. But the platform leaders will probably omit any discussions about:
a. The health impact of (and ethical issues around) extreme content on moderation employees; 

b. The practice where they avoid directly hiring moderation teams (denying them brand prestige on CVs and possibly full staff benefits); 

c. Allegations that their moderation teams are paid much lower wages than the engineers who create the problem algorithms but never have to deal with the consequences;
d. Allegations that moderators work under callous managers / hostile conditions while doing what is possibly the worst job on earth;

e. That moderators are constantly at risk that their traumatic job could cause long term damage their mental health - possibly denying them a chance at decent future income; and
f. That there is unlikely to be any binding commitment to lifelong follow up with former moderation employees - to ensure moderation trauma does not result in long term psychological or economic suffering.
The reality of our 21st century world is that global internet platforms have become tools that governments rely on for surveillance, while politicians depend on them for image and popularity management. Further, the negative events that these platforms amplify, can yield certain policy / political outcomes that could be aligned with the interests of corrupt elites and/or affiliated corporations. 

Indeed there seems to be a growing symbiotism between global platform owners and ruling elites that was previously the preserve of Mainstream Media (MSM) - as the elites learn how to leverage these new platforms for their own gain. This raises the risk that technology platforms will continue to be used, in increasingly sophisticated ways, for global perversion of democratic ideals, violation of human rights and increased restriction of personal freedoms.
Links:
1. UK Lawmakers slam social media for facilitating extremism
https://mashable.com/article/facebook-youtube-twitter-uk-hearing-christchurch/
2. A different perspective, focusing on (apparently intentional) failure by platforms to report crimes.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/24/mps-criticise-tech-giants-for-failure-to-report-criminal-posts-twitter-facebook-google-youtube
Brgds,Patrick.
Patrick A. M. Maina[Cross-domain Innovator | Public Policy Analyst - Indigenous Innovations]

    On Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 5:30:58 PM GMT+3, Alex Comninos via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:  

 Dear All

I am wondering lister thoughts on the "Christchurch Call”

Where does Africa and the South stand in these processes, how will it affect us? What principles would we like to see in such a call? (If we would like to see it at all)

This is happening in the midst of so many other global events, many tragic, as well as legislative and regulatory processes/calls on/for social media platform moderation and regulation. 

[article pasted below] its worth following the link to watch the video too.

The devil will be in the detail of the 'Christchurch Call’
By Tom Pullar, Stuff New Zealand

https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/112230966/the-devil-will-be-in-the-detail-of-the-christchurch-call

ANALYSIS: World leaders and technology companies will probably reach some sort of accord on social media and online extremism when they meet in Paris next month.

But the devil will be in the detail of the agreement they reach, suggests Colin Gavaghan, director of the Centre for Law and Policy in Emerging Technologies at Otago University.

Normally, when politicians attend international summits, the text of the agreements they sign is agreed beforehand and then ratified at the meeting, rather than actually being negotiated there.

The summit in Paris on May 15 hosted by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron will be a little different from most, in that representatives from many the world's biggest technology companies, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter will be among the participants.

There are clues as to what it will contain.

A spokesman for Ardern said the Government wanted the text to set out "parameters or actions where countries and companies agree to take action".

He also said the Government wanted the agreement to be "reasonably specific rather than too high level".

But Ardern cautioned that the Christchurch Call would not amount to a "draft set of regulations" that social media companies would need to follow.

She also suggested that the focus would be on trying to prevent footage from terrorist attacks being shared online, rather than on the distribution of extremist content more generally.

"This is not about freedom of expression. This is about preventing violence and extremism and terrorism online," she explained.

"I don't think anyone would argue the terrorist on March 15 had a right to live stream the murder of 50 people. That is what this call is very specifically focused on."

Agreeing concrete steps to achieve even that narrow goal would be incredibly hard.

Technology experts appear in agreement that the technology does yet not exist that could have automatically identified the live stream of Christchurch shootings as a terrorist atrocity while it was taking place and being streamed live online. 

There is also no need to use a large social media service, or even live-streaming at all, to distribute a video. 

While Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have used video and audio-matching technology to gradually rid their websites of copies of the Christchurch video, it was also being distributed by people who simply posted links to it – hosted on nefarious websites – in their social media posts. 

Just so long as people can set up websites and post content to the internet anonymously, it is hard to see how that could be prevented.  

Gavaghan cautions the more people that are brought to the table, the more "general and vague" international agreements tend to be. 

The risk, he argues, is you can end up with texts that are pitched at such a level that "no-one could disagree with them" but which don't tend to mean anything in practice. 

The role, if any, of the United States in the summit will be something to watch for, he says.

"They take their First Amendment considerations very seriously indeed, and that has been a real bone of contention between the EU and US-based companies."

But Ardern said the fact that the problem was "extremely difficult" was not a reason not try to find a solution and many would agree with that.

Sensibly, she has also made it clear upfront that she believes the summit should be the start of a conversation rather than the end of one.

The fact that it appears representatives from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter will attend the summit is also encouraging.

That may be partly because they want to shift responsibility for solving the Christchurch-shooting problem from their businesses to governments and regulators.

But they do appear to have recognised that the game has changed.

The sheer novelty of the summit hosted by the two young politicians should save it from any risk of obscurity.

If they do look at the broader issue of social media platforms being used to propagate extremist views more generally, then the practical challenges are likely to multiply. 

Material promoted by terrorist organisations would already be illegal in most countries, Gavaghan says. "They are quite an easy target to identify and get shot of."

But the boundary between less extremist content and legitimate political views would inevitably be hard to define, he argues.

"A lot of the casual everyday normalisation of racism and extremist views comes in at a level probably far below anyone's hate speech laws.

"The daily output from the Daily Mail and the Express and the Sun probably does a lot more to normalise racism and anti-immigrant views than some of the really extremist stuff, but what can you do? It is not plausible to ban that.”    

That doesn't mean the landscape facing social media isn't, or should change, he believes.

"The days when the likes of YouTube and Facebook could take the view that they are simply a neutral platform for other's people content and not a publisher – that has gone.

"But the question is, what is it reasonable to expect them to do?"

Stuff

--
Alex Comninos

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