About . Guest there is a government apart from the state department and the u. S. Agency for national develop meant but is also a bit diverse and that we have funding from Tech Companies, foundations and private individuals. Host you just put out a new report called the crisis of social media and what is the main take away in this report . Guest main take away is the internet is becoming less free around the world. There are many trends that we have seen around how Free Expression and privacy are under threat but the main theme we look at this year is how governments around the world are using social media to manipulate elections and monitor their own citizens. Host to help us dig into these issues is sarah fisher of axials. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us today. I want to dive into that dynamic rate you say some governments are weapon rising social media to target their own populations and what does that mean exactly . Guest there are three distinct tactics in the 65 countries that we covered that trend late to roughly 87 of all Internet Users around the world. The most common tactic we saw particularly around elections was the use of disinformation campaign. That is something that has been in the news a lot around foreign meddling in the actions of russia and china but in our research we are seen domestic actors are the most or strongest purveyors of disinformation and propaganda. The impact that having on free and Fair Elections is alarming. The second tactic we looked at was on technical interference. This happened in half the countries that had elections that we covered. For this in part under the guise of curbing this misinformation and rumors many governments are now blocking access to news websites and to the websites of opposition candidates and in some cases to social media apps or the internet altogether and they are denying their citizens the ability to access information at a really critical time. The third and final are more like a traditional censorship heavyhanded tactic of passing laws that criminalize certain forms of expression online and jailing ordinary users who are speaking out against the government or opposition candidates and critical journalists. When we talk about government so we talk about members of the military and certain administrators branches were talking about the president s or leaders of countries themselves dictating these rules. Guest its a mix that in some cases if the election authorities are in a place like thailand lack independent from the military that has been controlling it and that then has an impact on free and Fair Elections and the realistic chances of the opposition. In other cases governments themselves and the ruling party and i think when it comes to disinformation in particular that is when it becomes murky and rather than being able to say clearly that this was a candidate or government actor they are working with third parties and political operatives in this very shady industry for Information Operation on social media. You made mention three types of disinflation, technical interference and censorship. Can you provide an example from each with one country. Guest sure. One of the more fascinating examples of disinformation and there are many but in the philippines rather than there are strict rules around what candidates can spend on social media around political advertisements and that is the conversation were having now in the u. S. In order to skirt the rules around political advertising we saw candidates actually pay socalled agro influencers rather than targeting the people on social media that have one or 2 million followers they are going after the people with perhaps 3000 or 10000 followers so called micro influencers. You will see sometimes there will be a gamer who is just talking to his usual audience and that usual method will be interspersed with an advertisement for a local politician other interesting cases in brazil and in india where we seem candidates build the instruments for disinformation themselves almost from scratch as if theyre manufacturing the echo chambers. Once they own and control the vehicles from disseminating disinformation then there is theres oversight and accountability and it becomes more difficult. Could you guest on technical interference we saw in cambodia 17 news websites that were blocked shortly before an election was about to take place in these are critical independent news websites and some based on that United States and i think some of the same conversations we have against foreign interference or having and more or oppressive environment with ac perhaps american or independent International News websites as interfering in their elections. The impact that is having on Free Expression and access to information is alarming. So legal interference is a more traditional crackdown in india is a great example where you had a many individuals who were arrested for insulting the Prime Minister and similarly in turkey there is a rise in defamation where its illegal to insult the president and the governing officials. We seen around the world how the number those arresting her individuals for nonviolent political social and religious speech has grown to a record high of 47 out of the 65 countries. When it comes to some countries you serve at you said some are becoming more free in terms of internet, ethiopia is an example and thats in africa or a lot of countries have blocked Technological Access to the internet. Why is that an outlier . Guest its interesting in a volatile reason because we have the largest and proven in ethiopia and the largest decline in neighboring sudan. Its one of these places where 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 and there had been years of protests in certain regions of ethiopia that have now started to come down and the new Prime Minister has enacted a pretty great reform agenda on removing certain forms of censorship and unlocking independent news websites and releasing journalistic loggers in jail for online writing so that is one of these places where the country seems to be moving in the right direction and i should note that there are certain things that happened after the coverage. A barber report which ended in may 2019 that are alarming and there was a continuing a certain blocking and its interesting to see how the political dynamics are at play. If you look at sudan which is the country with the biggest decline of any country in our report actually, activists and ordinary citizens in particular women have used Digital Tools and things like whatsapp and facebook and they communicate or network and to do that in a more secret private way where they did not risk any repercussions from the harsh security agencies in the country and theres an example of a Facebook Group initially built as a way to sort of that perspective romantic crushes so all of these young women on facebook sharing images of young men and reaching out through the network and saying do you know dirt on him i should know of and anything i should be aware of and once the revolution started in the mass protests that quickly transformed into a crowd Source Intelligence agency and women or posting photos of men who had harassed them for their family members on the street and said can you identify this person and this Security Forces member so its amazing how these almost networks that we have can be activated in moments of political crisis and achieve positive democratic spirit speaking to those networks does report acknowledge any efforts by them to curb some of these efforts with disinformation campaigns by governments, Networks Like facebook, youtube or instagram. Guest its been fascinating to see over the years how Tech Companies i think in part due to the uproar about the activities have really taken this issue increasingly seriously and now theres been a outpouring of investment and knowhow into these companies in order to tackle this information but what we always recommend is sometimes the cure can be just as harsh as the virus and was Something Like this information there are ways its not clearcut to note that 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 what 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 rules that they have on a global level play out locally and any unintended consequences that their policies can have. One interesting part of it is how the tools can be sort of weapon iced by the people in power and so what we are generally seen is social media is this level Playing Field, i think, for Free Expression by activists and users and now its been coopted by some of the more powerful all resources actors in our society and i think that is where social Media Companies need to lets say we leveled the Playing Field because we need to weed out the bad actors and to perhaps make certain policy changes within the algorithms to incentivize the type of productive democratic discourse and conversation rather than incentivizing some of the worst of us. Host Adrian Shahbaz in your house report are you on the flipside that some of these Major Companies that sarah mentioned are yielding to National Governments in different countries. Guest it is very tricky because these are global companies. In many cases they are the most powerful in the United States and by a large they uphold u. S. Laws but i think that is a good thing. There are certain cases were governments abroad have become much more adept at forcing these Tech Companies hand. Turkey is a good example of this and how a few years ago now even in 2010 i think it was blocked youtube for refusing to take down certain videos that they claimed insulted the memory of a revered figure in turkey. Because youtube refused turkey then blocked all of you too. We are starting to see that dynamic play out in a lot of countries. Twitter, for example, is active in turkey and as part of their deal to stay online in turkey they actually have to remove certain content from being viewed within turkey. That is i think an important distinction that when the Government Asks protect company can you censor essentially these types of posts we started to see companies implement that but only on the local country level so it remains available for people all around the world but also people in those countries who are using bp ends circumvent the government restriction. Host it comes to blocking and massive surveillance china is at the bottom of your freedom list. Isnt it . Guest yes, china has been at the bottom of our list for four years now. I think in many ways it conflates the opposite of Internet Freedom and something we call digital authoritarianism where the government is actively channeling technology for authoritarian and we see that in the way that they have automated censorship of peoples private messages they are sending on Services Like we chat. Acid investments into social media surveillance and the use of Artificial Intelligence and big data tools to comb through massive information sets to root out certain or anything that the communist party can deem against its interest. Finally, when you look at Surveillance Technology even beyond the internet and places like province or im sorry region this is the place where the local community has come under massive Human Rights Violations by local authorities. They are using every tool they can from the most oldschool traditional means of in person checkpoints where they force leaders to hand over their devices for search and force them to download this spyware app that can monitor everything they do on their devices. When comes to some of these pregnant hearing in the United States people [inaudible] that they are using censorship to censor some of their ideals. How have you found theres a net freedom being alleged here in the United States and where does the u. S. Fall . Guest the u. S. Falls six place in our reports and it has declined for three competitive years. Part of what we are seen in the United States and this year specifically we have been to the u. S. For the growth or growing use of surveillance by border agencies especially agencies that are under the deferment of Homeland Security and we have seen unwarranted device searches up three 100 over the past three years and i think its what Many Americans dont understand is the certain protections that they have when it comes to their local police or other federal authorities those arent available with dhs. As we see that awareness and the public aspects of how dhs is now collecting the social media details of immigrants coming to the country so theres a lot of alarming ways that i think privacy is under threat in america. As it relates to disinformation what we call for is generally Greater Transparency and accountability. I think many people point out that private companies are not liable to the first amendment. There are first unintended conferences if you were to force private companies to adhere to a very strict definition of the first amendment. All sorts of harassment would stay on the plot forms and we would not have any way to create a more productive space online. What we are calling for greater citizenship because thats not the answer and different ways the plot forms can incentivize better speech can down drink harmful speech but also for any actions that they take that they report about this and transparency reports that there are only four avenues for appeal so if youre a user and find one of your post was censored you think unfairly that there is a way you can appeal to a company. Its hard and theres no one you can call on the phone but to make sure your kids get the second look and thats something were staying with, for example, facebooks Oversight Board so it will see tech committees move in that direction. When it comes to privacy in the United States in places like europe privacy is a fundamental human right. What are you seeing in terms of privacy there . Guest generally speaking its interesting to see the europeans are perhaps at her on privacy in the u. S. Is better on free speech. When it comes to privacy the eu had something called the gdp are, general Data Protection regulation and that came online at the last year and what this did was provide users, ordinary europeans with greater control and protections over their data. At the same time rather than being a protectionist approach it also harmonized rules for Data Protection and all of the eu members and so now youre creating a giant market then crossborder data and great economic market and now the europeans are moving to and explore that model and they have reached an agreement with japan for greater data sharing and that is in part because they are able to use the European Market as leverage and say if you want access to all our good and services you need to prove that you are applying the same level of protection to europeans that we are. Host mr. Shahbaz, are that european nations or that u. S. Collecting this data that we are sending out . Guest yes, completely. Unfortunately we are also just giving it away. I think that is something that we dont have not fundamentally understood the risks that come with having all of our devices connected to the internet and you know, theres a bout the data that we are handing over as part of the willing but then theres other data that we are handing over just by using services so even if youre on facebook or twitter or not posting anything many of these Companies Still monitoring your behaviors while you are surfing the internet or having your phone in your pocket. The interesting thing about Data Protection is we mentioned europe and gdp are but one of the big emissions is that it does not apply to european governments so security agencies and it only applies to private companies but we are seen this is somewhere where the european are agreed that surveillance agencies should have widespread access to citizens data. When it comes to some of these companies theres been conversations that access to data could be an antitrust threat or something that needs to be broken apart what kind of threat does access to data posed to the existence of these companies holistically moving forward . Guest as i said, data is the new oil. But i think we are moving to perhaps a greater realization the data is not only an asset but a liability and storing immense amount of data on private citizens has its risks, especially cybersecurity risks. Then a day goes by when you dont hear about the next giant data breach and there is no real way for Many Americans to take measures to get themselves safer. So, i think we need to move to a model where we are protecting data and prioritizing somet