We call for a world in which technology is built in service of humanity and where our global public square protects human rights above profits.

Right now, the huge potential of technology to advance our societies has been undermined by the business model and design of the dominant online platforms.

But we remind all those in power that true human progress comes from harnessing technology to advance rights and freedoms for all, not sacrificing them for the wealth and power of a few.

We urge rights-respecting democracies to wake up to the existential threat of information ecosystems being distorted by a Big Tech business model fixated on harvesting people’s data and attention, even as it undermines serious journalism and polarises debate in society and political life.

When facts become optional and trust disappears, we will no longer be able to hold power to account. We need a public sphere where fostering trust with a healthy exchange of ideas is valued more highly than corporate profits and where rigorous journalism can cut through the noise.

Many governments around the world have exploited these platforms’ greed to grab and consolidate power. That is why they also attack and muzzle the free press.

Clearly, these governments cannot be trusted to address this crisis. But nor should we put our rights in the hands of technology companies’ intent on sustaining a broken business model that actively promotes disinformation, hate speech and abuse.

The resulting toxic information ecosystem is not inevitable. Those in power must do their part to build a world that puts human rights, dignity, and security first, including by safeguarding scientific and journalistic methods and tested knowledge. To build that world, we must:

Bring an end to the surveillance-for-profit business model

The invisible “editors” of today’s information ecosystem are the opaque algorithms and recommender systems built by tech companies that track and target us. They amplify misogyny, racism, hate, junk science and disinformation — weaponising every societal fault line with relentless surveillance to maximise “engagement”.

This surveillance-for-profit business model is built on the con of our supposed consent. But forcing us to choose between allowing platforms and data brokers to feast on our personal data or being shut out from the benefits of the modern world is simply no choice at all.

The vast machinery of corporate surveillance not only abuses our right to privacy, but allows our data to be used against us, undermining our freedoms and enabling discrimination.

This unethical business model must be reined in globally, including by bringing an end to surveillance advertising that people never asked for and of which they are often unaware.

Europe has made a start, with the Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts. Now these must be enforced in ways that compel platforms to de-risk their design, detox their algorithms and give users real control.

Privacy and data rights, to date largely notional, must also be properly enforced. And advertisers must use their money and influence to protect their customers against a tech industry that is actively harming people.

What an incredible, hopeful time in Oslo! Thank you for the dreams and the laughter, dear friends! #CourageON @NobelPeaceOslo https://t.co/zfvuHwWFxp

— Maria Ressa (@mariaressa) September 4, 2022

End tech discrimination and treat people everywhere equally
Global tech companies afford people unequal rights and protection depending on their status, power, nationality, and language. We have seen the painful and destructive consequences of tech companies’ failure to prioritise the safety of all people everywhere equally.

Companies must be legally required to rigorously assess human rights risks in every country they seek to expand in, ensuring proportionate language and cultural competency. They must also be forced to bring their closed-door decisions on content moderation and algorithm changes into the light and end all special exemptions for those with the most power and reach.

These safety, design, and product choices that affect billions of people cannot be left to corporations to decide. Transparency and accountability rules are an essential first step to reclaiming the internet for the public good.

Rebuild independent journalism as the antidote to tyranny
Big tech platforms have unleashed forces that are devastating independent media by swallowing up online advertising while simultaneously enabling a tech-fueled tsunami of lies and hate that drown out facts.

For facts to stand a chance, we must end the amplification of disinformation by tech platforms. But this alone is not enough. Just 13 percent of the world’s population can currently access a free press.

If we are to hold power to account and protect journalists, we need unparalleled investment in a truly independent media persevering in situ or working in exile that ensures its sustainability while incentivising compliance with ethical norms in journalism.

21st century newsrooms must also forge a new, distinct path, recognising that to advance justice and rights, they must represent the diversity of the communities they serve. Governments must ensure the safety and independence of journalists who are increasingly being attacked, imprisoned, or killed on the frontlines of this war on facts.

We, as Nobel Laureates, from across the world, send a united message: together we can end this corporate and technological assault on our lives and liberties, but we must act now.

It is time to implement the solutions we already have to rebuild journalism and reclaim the technological architecture of global conversation for all humanity.

We call on all rights-respecting democratic governments to:

1. Require tech companies to carry out independent human rights impact assessments that must be made public as well as demand transparency on all aspects of their business — from content moderation to algorithm impacts to data processing to integrity policies.

2. Protect citizens’ right to privacy with robust data protection laws.

3. Publicly condemn abuses against the free press and journalists globally and commit funding and assistance to independent media and journalists under attack.

We call on the EU to:

4. Be ambitious in enforcing the Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts so these laws amount to more than just “new paperwork” for the companies and instead force them to make changes to their business model, such as ending algorithmic amplification that threatens fundamental rights and spreads disinformation and hate, including in cases where the risks originate outside EU borders.

5. Urgently propose legislation to ban surveillance advertising, recognizing this practice is fundamentally incompatible with human rights.

6. Properly enforce the EU General Data Protection Regulation so that people’s data rights are finally made reality.

7. Include strong safeguards for journalists’ safety, media sustainability and democratic guarantees in the digital space in the forthcoming European Media Freedom Act.

8. Protect media freedom by cutting off disinformation upstream. This means there should be no special exemptions or carve-outs for any organisation or individual in any new technology or media legislation. With globalised information flows, this would give a blank check to those governments and non-state actors who produce industrial scale disinformation to harm democracies and polarize societies everywhere.

9. Challenge the extraordinary lobbying machinery, the astroturfing campaigns and recruitment revolving door between big tech companies and European government institutions.

We call on the UN to:

10. Create a special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General focused on the Safety of Journalists (SESJ) who would challenge the current status quo and finally raise the cost of crimes against journalists.

Presented by 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureates Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov at the Freedom of Expression Conference, Nobel Peace Center, Oslo, Norway, on September 2, 2022. Republished from Rappler with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Sri Krishnamurthi

Global technology and business leader Dr Anita Sands has warned against allowing digital technology to take over democracy on the eve of the first anniversary of the Christchurch mosque massacre last year.

Dr Sands, who hails from Ireland but is based in Silicon Valley, California, served or serves on the board of several software and cloud companies.

“Democracy depends on communication and deliberation, free press and countervailing forces to hold the powerful accountable,” she said in her keynote address “Digital Disruption and the New Democracy” this week organised by Project Connect at Auckland University of Technology.

READ MORE: Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism

“In a couple of weeks’ time we will commemorate the first anniversary of the Christchurch tragedy and a day of immeasurable sorrow when the world finally gained an appreciation for the very darkest implications of technology and how it can serve as a breeding ground for extremists and an outlet for their putrid beliefs,’’ she said.

On March 15 last year, a gunman attacked Al Noor Mosque in Riccarton and the Linwood Islamic Centre, killing 51 people. The first attack was streamed live on Facebook and other social media.

Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant faces 51 charges of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one under the Terrorism Suppression Act. The trial is due to begin in June.

“In the case of traditional media, we’ve put guardrails around what is appropriate in certain contexts – ratings on movies, warnings before clips are shown on television, censorship of inappropriate content but no such provision exists on the internet until the tragic events of Christchurch last year,” Dr Sands said.

Christchurch Call tackles terrorism
The “Christchurch Call” was the first attempt, after the mosque attack, to bring together countries and tech companies to end the ability to use social media to organise and promote terrorism and violent extremism.

World leaders from 48 countries and technology companies, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, pledged to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online at the Paris summit.

“In one of the most vocal and effective calls for action by your prime minister, [Jacinda Ardern] challenged the international community and the technology industry to devise a 21 st century response to this atrocious event.

“As a result of the Christchurch Call, a broad coalition of countries and companies have come together and made meaningful progress on curtailing and reacting to extremist content and hate speech.

“They’ve agreed to standards and crisis protocols, they’ve committed to investing in technology to combat this evolving issue, as well as funding research into how terrorist groups actually behave and use technology,” she said.

“Terrorism and extremism are one corner where humanity unquestionably has to draw a line in the sand and fight back, and defending democracy is another,” said Dr Sands, who earned her PhD on atomic and molecular physics from Queens University, Belfast and has a masters degree in public policy and management from Carnegie and Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where she was a Fulbright scholar.

The onus was clearly on every person as an individual to be wary of the sound bites in online platforms, the former all-Ireland speaking champion said.

‘Playing our part’
“As individuals we also have to play our part in committing to critical thought and more vigilant around how and where we get the news,” Dr Sands said.

“Countries like New Zealand are better off than others that are already suffering the effects of an information environment that is so polluted that nobody knows what to believe anymore.

“New Zealand is fortunate that your mainstream media has not yet deteriorated to where in itself it is a polarising bubble. You still have a highly respected free press and public broadcaster which is as much a representation of your commitment to independent thought as a source of your news, and because of them a proper and civilised debate still exists here,” she said.

However, she warned: “Democracy in the digital age isn’t just a whole new playing field, it is a whole new game and we have to catch up quickly on how it is being played.

“Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff has written extensively about this evolving paradigm which she calls surveillance capitalism and to the capitalists their most precious asset is our most precious asset —our attention, the currency of this new capitalism is our behaviour, every facet which is translated into data and then sold.

“We aren’t customers, we are merely the raw materials that are fed to the real customers, the advertisers.

“As individuals we freely share every facet of our lives without realising it, as we deposit more of attention, they withdraw more of our autonomy without realising we are a society in shackles,” she said before drawing on a witty analogy.

Customers as ‘users’
“It has always struck me as interesting that there are only two industries who refer to their customers as ‘users’ – drug dealers and software developers, and both are in the addiction game.

“In this age of surveillance capitalism, online platforms are in a race to capture our attention which means they have to get us addicted to using their technology.

“As the Netflix CEO once very famously said when he was asked ‘who do you compete with?’ he said, ‘we compete with sleep’.”

Be aware of what the public has to deal with in the digital age, Dr Sands said.

“They [tech companies] do that by unleashing these powerful algorithms that can predict with astonishing accuracy what will keep you there,” she said.

“We end up in what we call filter bubbles, seeing a newsfeed that is entirely unique to each one of us, designed to appeal to your most primal and powerful emotions.

“Humanity has created a puppet that now knows how to pull on the strings of its master.”

This timely warning comes as New Zealand heads to the polls on September 19.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz