"How to respond to disinformation while respecting free speech?" - @Commonlaw20 and I wrote submission for @Irenekhan’s UN work on disinformation, drawing on @risj_oxford research and other relevant work. Some key points in thread, full submission here reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/risj-review/ho… 1/N
There is (a) no conceptual clarity and (b) no substantial agreement on what exactly constitutes disinfo. This is not a philosophical point but defining feature of problems we face. It underlines inherently political nature of determining what does and does not constitute disinfo.
From the point of view of the public disinformation is to a large extent a problem associated with the behaviour of politicians and other domestic actors, especially on social media, and not more narrowly a problem of false information or actors with more unambiguously ill intent
We risk a situation where measures meant, at least nominally, to address very specific problems of narrowly defined types of disinformation, for political reasons or in response to much wider public concern, end up restricting much broader terrains of information
Limitations of necessarily imperfect technologies combined with the inherently political nature of decisions over what constitutes disinformation means there are serious practical and principled limitations to how useful artificial intelligence will be in dealing w/disinformation
There is a risk that some governments will pursue responses to disinformation that – irrespective of whether they in fact help address specific problems of narrowly defined types of disinformation – risk restricting free speech
Some governments are in different ways increasingly encouraging platform companies to undertake regulatory and police functions that are traditionally considered a matter of public law, sometimes in ways that can restrict free speech and inhibit independent news media
Functions are delegated to platforms by government regulation on the one hand and, on the other hand, platform companies sometimes seek to assume such functions, perhaps in part to reduce their liability and likelihood of more regulation
Research identifies number of practical responses to different kinds of disinformation that have been successful at reducing its effect directly or indirectly, reducing its spread, and increasing societal resilience to disinformation problems without infringing on free expression
Such interventions have a proven track record. Instead of restricting speech, they qualify it. Instead of limiting independent news media, they enable them. (E.g. countries with diverse and robust independent news media seem more resilient to disinformation.)
Governments can encourage implementation of such measures by mandating transparency reports documenting who does (and does not) engage in proven examples of good practice, and by providing direct and indirect funding support for independent fact-checking, media literacy, and news
Similarly, platform companies could implement and/or support such measures, & share data so that independent researchers could regularly assess and test the efficacy of different responses. They are part of the problems. They need to be part of solutions, on basis of human rights
It would be troubling if we moved from opaque unilateral and often unaccountable content moderation by private companies to opaque unilateral and often unaccountable content moderation by governments.
Let's not replace naiveté about platforms with naiveté about political actors.
Let's not replace naiveté about platforms with naiveté about political actors.
We draw on @risj_oxford research and a few other of the many scholars, non-profits, rights orgs and others who do important work, including e.g @cward1e @alicetiara @andyguess @BrendanNyhan @robyncaplan @safiyanoble @gabriellelim @1lucabelli @EddaHumprecht @davidakaye & many more
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