Wake Up Call

Susan Ness, Distinguished Fellow, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania

The 2016 presidential election was a wake-up call in the United States. In hindsight, it was the demarcation line between a euphoric but naïve time when online services and platforms were applauded for promoting freedom of expression and democracy around the globe — for offering 24/7 access to information on every imaginable subject, and for presenting a cornucopia of free apps to enhance our daily lives — and a dark time when platforms were vilified for breaching consumer trust, for profiting from disseminating disinformation, and for blithely enabling foreign demagogues to wreak havoc on our political institutions.

Neither the pre-election idyllic vision of Internet technology nor the reviled post-election vision reflects reality. Technology is neutral.

We’re awake now.

During the past two years, noteworthy progress has been made toward detecting and countering the systems that enabled foreign powers to conduct cyber warfare by micro-targeting unsuspecting social media users receptive to their deceptive messages. Machine learning has accelerated the ability to identify and remove offending posts, bot accounts, and foreign propaganda. Statistics are published now, summarising the number of accounts, postings, and pages that have been blocked, taken down, or cancelled. Journalism programmes are being retooled to help weed out viral deception.

Transparency is emerging in the sponsorship and funding of online political ads. And more citizens — although hardly enough — are becoming aware of their digital surroundings.

Europe has forged ahead, significantly contributing to the body of knowledge on how society builds cyber resiliency. Better tools are needed on both sides of the Atlantic to prepare for the upcoming elections.

Unfettered elections underpin democracy. But democracy is fragile, as so many countries have demonstrated. And there is no democracy without freedom of expression.

A free and open Internet affords access to information about corruption and government atrocities that tyrants do not want their citizens to see. Such regimes may pass laws that label such posts as terrorist or ‘fake news’ and demand deletion. They justify their actions by citing western government rules.

In our rush to inoculate our citizenry from the impact of cyber-scoundrels, let’s make sure that free expression is not sacrificed for expediency. Government pressure may unintentionally incent platforms to block userposted content instead of evaluating nuance and context — effectively deputising platforms to be government censors.

Multi-stakeholder initiatives — including those created by the Commission — potentially offer greater flexibility to address cyber content issues while protecting free expression. A transatlantic approach may further that outcome.