Funding from Tech Companies, foundations, and private individuals. Reportt put out a new called the crisis of social media. What is the main take away in this report . The main take away is that the internet is becoming less free around the world. There are many trends we have seen around how Free Expression and privacy are under threat. The main thing we look at this year is how governments around the world are using social media to manipulate elections and monitor their own citizens. To help us dig into this issues as our guest, sarah. I want to dive into that dynamic. You say some governments of weaponizing social media to target their own populations. What does that mean . There are three distinct tactics that we saw in a 65 countries that we covered. That translates to 87 of all Internet Users around the world. The most common tactic we saw particularly around elections was the use of disinformation campaigns. That is something that has been in the news around foreign meddling and perhaps russia and china but in our research, we are seeing the domestic actors are the strongest purveyors of disinformation. The impact that is having on free and Fair Elections is alarming. The second tactic we look at his around technical interference. This happened in half of the countries that had elections we covered. Of curbing false news, many governments are now blocking access to news websites, to the websites of opposition candidates, in some cases to social media apps or the internet altogether. They are denying their citizens the ability to access information at a critical time raid the third and final tactic is more like traditional censorship heavyhanded tactic of passing laws that criminalize expression online and jailing ordinary users who are speaking out against the government or opposition candidates. Are we talking about members of the military . Administrative branches . Or the actual president ial leaders of the countrys dictating these roles . It is a mix. In some cases, it is the election authorities themselves and who lack independence from the military that is controlling it. On thed has an impact free and Fair Elections. In order to skirt the rules around political advertising, we saw candidates pay micro influencers. Rather than targeting the people in social media who have one million or 2 million followers, they are going after the people with 3000 or 10,000 followers. Micro influencers. Who isuld be a gamer talking to his usual audience. That message will be interspersed with an advertisement for a local politician. Other interesting cases in brazil and india, kissing candidates build we have seen candidates build the instruments from scratch. Once they own and control the vehicles for disseminating oversighttion, then and accountability becomes far more difficult. On the question of technical interference, we saw in cambodia, for example, 17 news websites that were blocked shortly before the election was about to take place. Independentitical, news websites. Some of them are based in the United States. The same conversations we are having around for an interference are happening in authoritarian and oppressive environments where they see american or independent International News websites as interfering in their elections. The impact that that is having on Free Expression and access to information is alarming. Interference is a traditional crackdown. India is a great example where you had many individuals who were arrested for insulting the Prime Minister. Turkey, there is a rise in defamation. In that country, it is illegal to insult the president and governing officials. We have seen around the world where the number of countries that are arresting individuals for their nonviolent, political social and religious speech has grown to a record high of 47 out of the 65 countries we covered. You said some countries are more free in terms of internet. If hell get is one. In africa, a lot of countries are blocking access to the internet. What is special about ethiopia . We have the largest improvement in ethiopia and the largest decline in neighboring sudan. The internet environment depends greatly on the political environment. In ethiopia, we saw a new Prime Minister who represents a traditionally disadvantaged minority in ethiopia. There have been years of protests in ethiopia that have now started to calm down and the new Prime Minister had enacted a great reform agenda on removing certain forms of censorship on blocking news websites, releasing journalists and bloggers who have been in jail for their online writings. That is one of these places where the country seems to be moving in the right direction. I should also note that there are things that happen after the coverage time of our report which ended in may of 2019 that are alarming. There was a continuing of certain blocking. If you look at sudan which has the biggest decline of any country in our report, activists and ordinary citizens and women in particular had used digital tools, things like whatsapp and , formok to communicate networks, and do it in a more secret, private way where they did not risk any repercussions from the very harsh security agencies in the country. There is an example of a Facebook Group that was built as a way to bet perspective romantic crushes. All of these young women on facebook sharing images of young men and reaching out to the women in the network and saying do you know any dirt on him that i should know of . Once the revolution started and the mass protest, that quickly transformed into almost a crowd Source Intelligence agency. Photosere then posting of men who had harassed them or their family members on the street and saying could you identify this person . Almostmazing how these banal Networks Networks can be activated in times of crisis. Report recognize any reports by any efforts by networks to curb this behavior . It has been fascinating to see over the years how Tech Companies, in part due to the uproar about their activities, have taken the issue increasingly seriously. There has been an outpouring of investment and knowhow into these companies to tackle disinformation. Is, we always recommend sometimes the cure can be just as harsh as the virus. With Something Like disinformation, there are ways that it is not clearcut to note this is something that should be removed from the platform or this is something that is perhaps a harsh take but free speech. With all of this, i think with Tech Companies, we are pushing them to take a more nuanced approach to how they treat misinformation on their platforms. To make sure they are aware of the ways that the role they have on a global level plays out locally and any unintended consequences their policies can have. One interesting part is how these tools can be weaponize by the people in power. We are generally seeing is that social media used to be a level Playing Field for Free Expression by activists. By, it is being coopted some of the more powerful, well resourced actors in our society. That is where social Media Companies need to relevel the Playing Field. To root out the bad actors. To perhaps make certain policy changes within the algorithms to incentivize and productive democratic discourse in conversation rather than incentivizing the worst of us. In your report, are you finding on the flipside the some of these Major Companies are yielding to National Governments in Different Countries . It is very tricky because these are global companies. They are, and many cases the most powerful based in the United States. By and large, they uphold u. S. Laws. That is a good thing. There are certain cases where governments abroad governments have become more adept at forcing these companies hand. Urkey is a good example youtube they blocked for refusing to take down certain videos that they claimed insulted the memory of a revered figure in turkey. Because youtube had refused, turkey blocked youtube had we are starting to see that same dynamic layout and a lot of countries. Twitter, for example, is active in turkey and as part of their turkey,stay online in they have to remove certain content from being viewed within turkey. That is an important distinction that when a Government Asks a censormpany, can you these types of posts . What we have started to see is companies implement that but only on a local country level so it remains available for people all around the world but also people in those countries who are using a vpn to circumvent government restrictions. Andhen it comes to blogging mass surveillance, china is at the bottom of your freedom list. Yes. China has been at the bottom of our list for four years now. It encapsulates the opposite of Internet Freedom. Something we call digital authoritarianism. The government is actively channeling technology for authoritarian and. It we see that in the way they have automated censorship of peoples private messages they are spending on Services Like we chat. Massive investments into social media surveillance. Combing through massive information sets to root out anything that the communist party can deem against its interests. Finally, when you look at Surveillance Technology even , oned the internet autonomous region has a local community that has come under massive hindu Rights Violations by the local authorities. They are using every tool they can from the most oldschool traditional means of inperson checkpoints where they force them to hand over their devices for a search. They force them to download a spyware app that can monitor everything they are doing on their devices. When it comes to these companies here in the United States, people are arguing, conservatives especially, that they are using censorship to censor their ideals. Had he found that there is a lesser form of Internet Freedom here in the United States . Where do we fall . We fall in sixth place. It has declined for three consecutive years. Part of what we see in the United States and this year specifically we dented the United States for the use of surveillance by border agencies especially agencies under the department of homeland security. We have seen unwarranted device searches up 300 over the past three years. What Many Americans dont the certain protections that they have let comes to their local police or other federal authorities, those are not available with dhs. As we start to see that awareness, also these very public aspects of how dhs is now collecting the social media details of immigrants coming into the country. Wayss a lot of alarming that privacy is under threat in america. Disinformation, what we call for is generally Greater Transparency and accountability. What many people point out that private companies are not liable to the first amendment. There are certain unintended consequences if you were to force private companies to adhere to a strict definition of the first amendment. Namely, all sorts of harassment would stay on the platforms and we wouldnt have any way to create a more productive space online. Insteadare calling for of greater censorship, thats not the answer. Different ways the platforms can incentivize better speech can alsorank verbal speech but any actions that they take, that they report about it in transparency reports that there are avenues for appeal so if you are a user and you find out that one of your posts was censored that there is a way you can appeal to a company. I know there is no but you can call on the phone to make sure your kids get a second look. That is something we are seeing with facebooks oversight board. Its good to see Tech Companies move in that direction. When it comes to privacy in the United States, in places like europe, privacy is a fundamental human rights. What are you seeing in terms of privacy there . Its interesting to see the europeans are better on privacy and the u. S. Is better on free speech. The eu comes to privacy, had something called the gdp are. Year. Ame online last what it did was it provided users, ordinary europeans with greater control and protections over their data. At the same time, rather than being a protectionist approach, it harmonized rules for Data Protection and all of the eu member states. Now, you are creating a generic giant market for crossborder data flows and europeans are moving to export that model. Agreementreached an with japan for greater data sharing. That is in part because they are able to use the European Market as leverage and say if you want access to our goods and services, you need to prove that youre applying the same level of protection to europeans that we are. Are the european nations or the u. S. Collecting this data that we are sending out . Yes. It unfortunately, we are also giving it away. Not fundamentally understood the risks that come with having all of our devices connected to the internet. A thought that the data we are handing over willingly but there is also lots of other data we are handing over just by using services. If youre on facebook and twitter and not posting anything, many of these companies are still monitoring your behavior while you are surfing the internet. The interesting part about Data Protection is, we mentioned europe. In of the big omissions their regulation is it does not apply to european government or security agencies. It only applies to private companies. We are seeing that this is somewhere where the u. S. And europeans agree that surveillance agencies should have widespread access to citizens data. To theset comes companies, there have been conversations that access to data could be an antitrust threat. It could be something that needs to be broken apart. What kind of threat does data access posed to the existence of these companies holistically moving forward . Data is the new oil. We are to perhaps a greater realization that data is not only an asset but a liability. Storing immense amounts of data on private citizens has its risks especially cybersecurity risks. Not a day goes by that we dont hear about the next giant data breach. There is no real way for Many Americans to take measures to get themselves safer. Perhaps a move toward model where we are protecting prioritizing data minimization which is the idea that perhaps companies should limit what types of information they are holding about us. When they dont need it, get rid of it. Deleted off of the server. Dont leave it for eternity. Where it can be hacked or used against us either by governments or criminal actors. Flipside, you see instances where Tech Companies are partnering to use this mass data to improve peoples health, their lives, to contribute to Autonomous Vehicles or 5g. Is an argument being made in industries and countries more free on the internet that this is what you want to collect more data . Yes. I think we need to go about it intelligently. To secure data so that it is anonymous even when it isnt anonymous it can still be brought back to us that there are other things we can do to make sure it doesnt have any unintended consequences for privacy. You are correct that especially with advances in artificial intelligence, data is an integral part of that. I think we are moving toward a model. There are companies who can train ai models not based on actual raw data on users but feeding them fake data that can be even more representative. Right now, there is a lot of i. S. In the data being collected. When we make certain assumptions a son that data, that can have drastic consequences for people s academic life, whether they are on a watchlist, credit scores. When he have more transparency in general. With shining a light on the current practices, i think that is where we can collectively as a society take ages to better protect data. How would you like to see this Freedom House report used . We Work Together with a network of contributors in the 65 countries we cover. That is so we can test conditions on the ground but also that they can conduct interviews with local officials and activists under threat. What we have already seen with the report is an activist in nigeria for example will lobby his own government and say this is how we fair this year. You want us to be the next african Silicon Valley . Lets compare to kenya. There is an interesting aspect where when you start to score countries, there is a Competition Among governments. We often have governments come to us and say how can we better our score in your report because it is important to us . Think,re ways that i here in the United States, i call on policy makers and private companies and take this seriously and take action. Withit comes to innovation Silicon Valley and private Tech Companies, we are leaders around the world. When it comes to laws and regulations, less so. Were falling a little bit behind. The 2020 election is coming up. How do these issues impact our next election . Its going to be very concerning. We already saw a preview of that