Ten years ago today, 26-year old Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest over injustice and state marginalization, igniting mass uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and other countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

As we mark the 10th anniversary of the Arab Spring, we, the undersigned activists, journalists, and human rights organizations, have come together to voice our frustration and dismay at how platform policies and content moderation procedures all too often lead to the silencing and erasure of critical voices from marginalized and oppressed communities across the Middle East and North Africa.

The Arab Spring is historic for many reasons, and one of its outstanding legacies is how activists and citizens have used social media to push for political change and social justice, cementing the internet as an essential enabler of human rights in the digital age.   

Social media companies boast of the role they play in connecting people. As Mark Zuckerberg famously wrote in his 2012 Founder’s Letter: 

“By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored. Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.”

Zuckerberg’s prediction was wrong. Instead, more governments around the world have chosen authoritarianism, and platforms have contributed to their repression by making deals with oppressive heads of state; opening doors to dictators; and censoring key activists, journalists, and other changemakers throughout the Middle East and North Africa, sometimes at the behest of other governments:

• Tunisia: In June 2020, Facebook permanently disabled more than 60 accounts of Tunisian activists, journalists, and musicians on scant evidence. While many were reinstated, thanks to the quick reaction from civil society groups, accounts of Tunisian artists and musicians still have not been restored. We sent a coalition letter to Facebook on the matter but we did not receive a public response. 
• Syria: In early 2020, Syrian activists launched a campaign to denounce Facebook’s decision to take down/disable thousands of anti-Assad accounts and pages that documented war crimes since 2011, under the pretext of removing terrorist content. Despite the appeal, a number of those accounts remain suspended. Similarly, Syrians have documented how YouTube is literally erasing their history. 
• Palestine: Palestinian activists and social media users have been campaigning since 2016 to raise awareness around social media companies’ censorial practices. In May 2020, at least 52 Facebook accounts of Palestinian activists and journalists were suspended, and more have since been restricted. Twitter suspended the account of a verified media agency, Quds News Network, reportedly on suspicion that the agency was linked to terrorist groups. Requests to Twitter to look into the matter have gone unanswered. Palestinian social media users have also expressed concern numerous times about discriminatory platform policies.
• Egypt: In early October 2019, Twitter suspended en masse the accounts of Egyptian dissidents living in Egypt and across the diaspora, directly following the eruption of anti-Sisi protests in Egypt. Twitter suspended the account of one activist with over 350,000 followers in December 2017, and the account still has yet to be restored. The same activist’s Facebook account was also suspended in November 2017 and restored only after international intervention. YouTube removed his account earlier in 2007.

Examples such as these are far too numerous, and they contribute to the widely shared perception among activists and users in MENA and the Global South that these platforms do not care about them, and often fail to protect human rights defenders when concerns are raised.  

Arbitrary and non-transparent account suspension and removal of political and dissenting speech has become so frequent and systematic that they cannot be dismissed as isolated incidents or the result of transitory errors in automated decision-making. 

While Facebook and Twitter can be swift in responding to public outcry from activists or private advocacy by human rights organizations (particularly in the United States and Europe), in most cases responses to advocates in the MENA region leave much to be desired. End-users are frequently not informed of which rule they violated, and are not provided a means to appeal to a human moderator. 

Remedy and redress should not be a privilege reserved for those who have access to power or can make their voices heard. The status quo cannot continue. 

The MENA region has one of the world’s worst records on freedom of expression, and social media remains critical for helping people connect, organize, and document human rights violations and abuses. 

We urge you to not be complicit in censorship and erasure of oppressed communities’ narratives and histories, and we ask you to implement the following measures to ensure that users across the region are treated fairly and are able to express themselves freely:

• Do not engage in arbitrary or unfair discrimination. Actively engage with local users, activists, human rights experts, academics, and civil society from the MENA region to review grievances. Regional political, social, cultural context(s) and nuances must be factored in when implementing, developing, and revising policies, products, and services.
• Invest in the necessary local and regional expertise to develop and implement context-based content moderation decisions aligned with human rights frameworks in the MENA region.  A bare minimum would be to hire content moderators who understand the various and diverse dialects and spoken Arabic in the twenty-two Arab states. Those moderators should be provided with the support they need to do their job safely, healthily, and in consultation with their peers, including senior management.
• Pay special attention to cases arising from war and conflict zones to ensure content moderation decisions do not unfairly target marginalized communities. For example, documentation of human rights abuses and violations is a legitimate activity distinct from disseminating or glorifying terrorist or extremist content. As noted in a recent letter to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, more transparency is needed regarding definitions and moderation of terrorist and violent extremist (TVEC) content.
• Preserve restricted content related to cases arising from war and conflict zones that Facebook makes unavailable, as it could serve as evidence for victims and organizations seeking to hold perpetrators accountable. Ensure that such content is made available to international and national judicial authorities without undue delay.
• Public apologies for technical errors are not sufficient when erroneous content moderation decisions are not changed. Companies must provide greater transparency, notice, and offer meaningful and timely appeals for users. The Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, which Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube endorsed in 2019, offer a baseline set of guidelines that must be immediately implemented. 

Signed by,

Access Now

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI)

Article 19

Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

Association Tunisienne de Prévention Positive

Avaaz 

Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)

The Computational Propaganda Project

Daaarb — News — website

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor 

Global Voices

Gulf Centre for Human Rights, GC4HR

Hossam el-Hamalawy, journalist and member of the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists  Organization

Humena for Human Rights and Civic Engagement 

IFEX

Ilam- Media Center For Arab Palestinians In Israel

ImpACT International for Human Rights Policies

Initiative Mawjoudin pour l’égalité

Iraqi Network for Social Media – INSMnetwork

I WATCH Organisation (Transparency International — Tunisia)

Khaled Elbalshy, Editor in Chief, Daaarb website

Mahmoud Ghazayel,  Independent

Marlena Wisniak, European Center for Not-for-Profit Law

Masaar — Technology and Law Community

Michael Karanicolas, Wikimedia/Yale Law School Initiative on Intermediaries and Information

Mohamed Suliman, Internet activist

My.Kali magazine — Middle East and North Africa

Palestine Digital Rights Coalition, PDRC

The Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy 

Pen Iraq

Quds News Network

Ranking Digital Rights 

Dr. Rasha Abdulla, Professor, The American University in Cairo

Rima Sghaier, Independent 

Sada Social Center

Skyline International for Human Rights

SMEX

Soheil Human, Vienna University of Economics and Business / Sustainable Computing Lab

The Sustainable Computing Lab

Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM)

The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP)

Taraaz

Temi Lasade-Anderson, Digital Action

Vigilance Association for Democracy and the Civic State — Tunisia

WITNESS

7amleh — The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media

Originally published at: https://www.accessnow.org/facebook-twitter-youtube-stop-silencing-critical-voices-mena/

A lot of attention is paid these days to whether and how AI should be regulated to ensure its ethics.  A High-Level-Expert Group in Brussels has started the usual European “stakeholder-carousel” and called for input to their first ideas.

But in fact, AI is a highly technical matter and when it comes to technical standardization, ethics is a relatively new field. Technology standardization is traditionally dealing with protocols, with hardware specifications, etc.. The fuzzy domain of ethics as well as the context-sensitivity of any ethical matter seems almost contrary to the straight und homogenous logic of the engineering world.

A first question in this challenge is therefore to ask what ethics is in the first place. While the philosophical world has worked over 2000 years on this question, ethics means – in a nutshell –  to do the right thing in the right way and to be a good person in doing so. In other words: to act – ideally as an exemplary role model – such that you or your company contributes to the good of society. To create positive externalities and avoid negative externalities. To create wellbeing in this world and combat the opposite.

Not everyone is equally good at acting ethically. Most humans learn pretty much to stay in the green area (see figure 1). This is what we learn in childhood, as part of our upbringing or by growing up as a member of society. In contrast to this good or ethical behaviour, there is also bad behaviour or what the law recognizes as criminal behaviour. Fairy tales call it “evil”. Between these two extremes between good and bad behaviour, between good and evil, there is some kind of borderline behaviour; a behaviour Germans would call „grenzwertig“ or „marginal“. The law is demarcating the line where this marginal behaviour isn‘t acceptable any more; where a practice is so bad that it is not legitimate any more; an extreme point where the rights of the people, nature or society are undermined by actors in such a way that these should be sanctioned to ensure the long-term stability of society.

From my perspective any technology, including AI, can be and should be build such that it fosters ethical behaviour in humans and human groups and does not cause any harms. Technology can support ethical behaviour. And – most importantly – it can be built with an ethical spirit. The latter is supporting the former.  What cannot be excluded prior to technological deployment is that borderline (or even criminal ) behaviour is accidentally triggered by a new technology or by the people using it. This happened to Microsoft when their AI became a fascist. Technology should therefore be iteratively improved, so that potential borderline effects are subsequently improved within it. In this vision there is no need for regulation. Companies and engineers can do the job; constantly working towards the good in their artefacts.

But here is a challenge: Ethical standards vary between world regions. Europe has different standards when it comes to safety, green IT/emission levels, privacy, etc.  There are completely different ethical standards when it comes to freedom and liberty when we compare Europe with China. There are completely different gender models when Russia and the Middle East are compared to Europe or the US. Ethics is always concerned with what is good for communities in a region. But technology is global these days and built to scale in international markets.  So I guess technical de facto standards that are rolled out worldwide often unwillingly and easily hit the borderline as soon as they spread across the world.

Regional legislators then have to look into this borderline behaviour of foreign technology to protect relevant values of their own society. This is what happened in the case of privacy, where the GDPR now protects Europe’s civil value standard. The GDPR shows that the legislator has a role to play when technologies cross borders.

And here is another challenge: Unfortunately these days – lets be realistic – not all companies are angels. „Firms of endearment“ do exist, but there are quite a few as well who play the game of borderline ethical/legal behaviour (see figure again). Be it to save cost, to be first to market, to pursue questionable business models or to try new things of which the effects are hardly known, companies can have incentives to pursue business practices that are ethically debatable. For example, a company may develop an AI software for predictive policing or border control where it is not fully transparent how recommendations made by this software are coming about, what the data quality is, etc. When companies are in these situations today the often play “the borderline game”. They do this in two ways:

1. They influence the borderline by setting de facto standards. They push rapidly into markets setting standards that are then in the market with quite a lot of ethical flaws. Examples are Uber and Facebook who confront a lot of criticism these days around diverse ethical issues after the fact (such as hate speech, privacy, contractual arrangements with employees, etc. ).
2. Or, secondly, companies actively work in official technical standardization bodies (such as CEN, ISO, IEEE, the WWW Forum, etc…) to ensure that technical standards are compatible with their business models and/or technical practices.

In both of these cases, companies prioritize the pursuit of their business more than they typically care for ethical externalities. How can regulators handle this mechanism?

To address problem 1 – sudden de facto standards – regulators need to set barriers of entry into their markets. For instance, they can demand any external technology brought to market to go through an ethical certification process. Europe should be thinking hard on what it lets in and what not.

To tackle problem 2 – companies influencing proper standardization processes – regulators must pay more attention to the games played at the official standardization bodies to ensure that unethical borderline technologies are not actually standardized.

So to sum up, there are these three tasks for regulators when it comes to tech-ethics:

1. Regional legislators always have to look into ethical borderline behaviour of foreign technology to protect relevant values of their societies.
2. Regulators need to set barriers of entry into their markets; i.e. by testing and ethically challenging what’s build and sold in one’s market. Europe should be thinking hard on what it lets in and what not.
3. Regulators must also watch the games played at standardization bodies to ensure that unethical borderline technologies are actually legitimized through standardization.

Are we in Europe prepared to live up to address these 3 tasks? I am not sure. Because a first questions remains in the dark when it comes to Europe’s trans-regional political construct: Who is “the regulator”? Is it the folks in Brussels who pass some 70% of legislations for the regions today? Or is it the national governments?

Lets say that when it comes to technology, regulation should be proposed in Brussels so that Europe as a region is a big enough internal market for regional technologies to flourish while engaging in healthy completion with the rest of the world. But even then we have to ask who is “Brussels”? Who “in Brussels”? When we ask who the regulator is, we should not forget that behind the veil of “DG bureaucracy” it is really individual people who we are talking about. People who play, are or believe themselves to be “the regulator”.  And so the very first question when it comes to ethical regulation just as much as ethical standardization is who are actually the people involved in these practices?  Do they truly pursue regional interests? For instance, European interests? A good way to answer this question is to ask on whose payroll they are or who sponsors their sabbaticals, their research institutes, etc.

For example: When there is a High-Level-Expert-Group (HLEG) on AI Ethics it is worthwhile asking: Who are the people administering the master of the group’s recommendation documents? Are these people paid for by European taxpayers? Or are these people paid for by US corporations? We need transparency on both. Because it is this HLEG that is likely to pass recommendations on both legislation and standardization.

Lets presume in this example, they are all people paid for by European tax payers. Another set of questions, demanded by the ethical matter specifically, is: What concept of a person (idea of man, “Menschenbild”) do these people have? Do they believe in the grace and dignity of human beings and do they respect humans as they are with all their weaknesses? Do they have a loving attitude towards mankind or do they think – as many do these days! – that current analogue humanity is the last suboptimal generation of its kind? Short: Who do we actually entrust with regulation in sensitive ethical areas, such as the ethics of AI? As we move into more and more sensitive ethical and social matters with technology I think these questions need to be asked.

As we pass HLEG recommendations into standardization or even regulation; as we establish standards and make these standards part of the law, we need boards, such as the former Art. 29 Working Group for data protection, which are (1) recognized domain experts and (2) well respected individuals who can be entrusted with judging on whether a standard (or even a law) is actually living up to ethical standards. I would like to call such a board “guardians of ethics”. Guardians of ethics should be respected as a serious entity of power. A group that has the power to turn down legislative proposals and standards. A group that inserts into the system a new kind of separation of powers, between lobby-infused regulators and business-driven standard makers on one side and the public interest on the other. Today we only find this separation of powers with the high courts. The high courts decide on the borderline between acceptable and unacceptable technology design. But high courts come too late in the process. Faced with the rapid diffusion of new technologies ethical judgements should come before a technology deployment; before de facto standards inhibit the law and before a technical standard is released. Societal costs are too high to make ethical judgements on technology only after the fact and at late points in time of a technology‘s existence. Any standardization process and any law on ethics in technology should be passed by guardians of ethics who can challenge proposals before bad developments can unravel. Guardians of the ethics have the power to stop what is unwanted.

But in fact, AI is a highly technical matter and when it comes to technical standardization, ethics is a relatively new field. Technology standardization is traditionally dealing with protocols, with hardware specifications, etc.. The fuzzy domain of ethics as well as the context-sensitivity of any ethical matter seems almost contrary to the straight und homogenous logic of the engineering world.

A lot of attention is paid these days to whether and how AI should be regulated to ensure its ethics.  A High-Level-Expert Group in Brussels has started the usual European “stakeholder-carousel” and called for input to their first ideas.

A first question in this challenge is therefore to ask what ethics is in the first place. While the philosophical world has worked over 2000 years on this question, ethics means – in a nutshell –  to do the right thing in the right way and to be a good person in doing so. In other words: to act – ideally as an exemplary role model – such that you or your company contributes to the good of society. To create positive externalities and avoid negative externalities. To create wellbeing in this world and combat the opposite.

Not everyone is equally good at acting ethically. Most humans learn pretty much to stay in the green area (see figure 1). This is what we learn in childhood, as part of our upbringing or by growing up as a member of society. In contrast to this good or ethical behaviour, there is also bad behaviour or what the law recognizes as criminal behaviour. Fairy tales call it “evil”. Between these two extremes between good and bad behaviour, between good and evil, there is some kind of borderline behaviour; a behaviour Germans would call „grenzwertig“ or „marginal“. The law is demarcating the line where this marginal behaviour isn‘t acceptable any more; where a practice is so bad that it is not legitimate any more; an extreme point where the rights of the people, nature or society are undermined by actors in such a way that these should be sanctioned to ensure the long-term stability of society.

A guest opinion piece by Eliska Pirkova

The recent draft of the Social Media Guidelines targeting journalists working for the public Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) is a troubling example of how self-regulatory ethical Codes of Conduct may be abused by those who wish to establish a stricter control over the press and media freedom in the country. Introduced by the ORF managing director Alexander Wrabetz as a result of strong political pressure, the new draft of the ethical guidelines seeks to ensure the objectivity and credibility of the ORF activities on Social Media. Indeed, ethical guidelines are common practice in media regulatory framework across Europe. Their general purpose is already comprised in its title: to guide. They mainly contain ethical principles to be followed by journalists when performing their profession. In other words, they serve as the voice of reason, underlining and protecting the professional integrity of journalism.

But the newly drafted ORF Guidelines threaten precisely what their proponents claim to protect: independence and objectivity. As stipulated in the original wording of the Guidelines from 2012, they should be viewed as recommendations and not as commands. Nonetheless, their latest draft released in June 2018 uses a very different tone. The document creates a shadow of hierarchy by forcing every ORF-journalist to think twice before they share anything on their social media. First, it specifically stipulates that“public statements and comments in social media should be avoided, which are to be interpreted as approval, rejection or evaluation of utterances, sympathy, antipathy, criticism and ‘polemics’ towards political institutions, their representatives or members.”Every single term used in the aforementioned sentence, whether it is ‘antipathy’ or ‘polemics,’ is extremely vague in its core. Such a vagueness enables the inclusion of any critical personal opinion aiming at the current establishment, no matter of how objective, balanced or well-intended the critique may be.

Second, the Guidelines asks journalists to refrain from “public statements and comments in social media that express a biased, one-sided or partisan attitude, support for such statements and initiatives of third parties and participation in such groups, as far as objectivity, impartiality and independence of the ORF is compromised. The corresponding statements of opinion can be made both by direct statements and indirectly by signs of support / rejection such as likes, dislikes, recommendations, retweets or shares.” Here again, the terms such as partisan opinions are very problematic. Does the critique of human rights violations or supporting the groups fighting the climate change qualify as biased? Under this wording, the chilling effect on the right to freedom of expression is inevitable, when journalists may choose to rather self-censor in order to avoid difficulties and further insecurities in their workplace. At the same time, securing the neutrality of the main public broadcaster in the country cannot be exercised by excluding the plurality of expressed opinions. Especially when the neutrality principle seeks to protect the latter.

Media neutrality is necessary for the impartial broadcasting committed to the common good. In other words, it reassures that the misuse of media for any propaganda and other forms of manipulation will not occur. Therefore, in order for media to remain neutral, the diversity of opinions is absolutely essential, as anything else is simply incompatible with the main principles of journalistic work. The primary duty of the press is to monitor and to inform whether the rule of law is in tact and fully respected by the elected government. Due to its great importance in preserving democracy, the protection of the free press is enshrined within the national constitutions as well as enforced by domestic media laws. The freedom of expression is not only about the right of citizens to write or to say whatever they want, but it is mainly about the public to hear and to read what it needs (Joseph Perera & Ors v. Attorney-General). In this vein, the current draft of the Guidelines undermines the core of journalism by its intentionally vague wording and by misusing or rather twisting the concept of media neutrality.

Although not legally binding document, the Guidelines still impose a real threat to democracy. This is the typical example of ethics and soft law self-regulatory measures becoming a gateway for more restrictive regulation of press freedom and media pluralism. Importantly, the non-binding nature of the Guidelines serves as an excuse for policy makers who defend its provisions as merely ethical principles for journalists’ conduct and not the legal obligations per sei, enforced by a state agent. However, in practice, the independent and impartial work of journalists is increasingly jeopardised, as every statement, whether in their personal or professional capacity, is subjected to much stricter self-censorship in order to avoid further obstacles to their work or even an imposition of ‘ethical’ liability for their conduct. If the current draft is adopted as it stands, it will provide for an extra layer of strict control that aims to silence the critique and dissent.

From the fundamental rights perspective, The European Court of Human Rights (ECt.HR) stated on numerous occasions the vital role of the press, being a public watchdog (Goodwin v. the United Kingdom). Freedom of press is instrumental for public to discover and to form opinions of the ideas and attitudes held by their political leaders. At the same time, it provides the politicians with the opportunity to react and comment on the public opinion. Therefore, healthy press freedom is a ‘symptom’ of a functioning democracy. It enables everyone to participate in the free political debate, which is at the very core of the concept of democratic society (Castells v. Spain). When democracy starts fading away, weakening the press freedom is the first sign that has to be taken seriously. It is very difficult to justify why restricting journalists’ behaviour, or more precisely, the political speech on their private Facebook or Twitter accounts should be deemed as necessary in a democratic society or should pursue any legitimate aim. The Constitutional Courts that follow and respect the rule of law could never find such a free speech restriction legitimate. It also opens the question about the future of Austrian medias’ independence, especially when judged against the current government’ ambitious planto transform the national media landscape.

When in 2000, the radical populist right Freedom Party (FPO) and the conservative ÖVP formed the ruling coalition, the Austrian government was shunned by European countries and threatened with EU sanctions. But today’s atmosphere in Europe is very different. Authoritative and populist regimes openly undermining democratic governance are a new normal. Under such circumstances, human rights of all of us are in danger due to a widespread democratic backsliding present in the western countries as much as in the eastern corner of the EU. Without a doubt, journalists and the media outlets have a huge responsibility to impartially inform the public on matters of public interest.  Ethical Codes of Conduct thus play a crucial role in the journalistic work, acknowledging a great responsibility to report accurately, while avoiding prejudice or any potential harm to others. However, when journalists’ freedom of expression is being violated, the right to receive and impart information of all of us is in danger, and so is democracy.  Human Rights and Ethics are two different things. One cannot be misused to unjustifiably restrict the other.