*[Enwl-eng] The most impactful thing we’ve ever done?!
ENWL
enwl.bellona at gmail.com
Sun May 15 23:51:03 MSK 2022
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Dear friends,
This might just be the most impactful thing
Avaaz has ever done.
For years, mega tech platforms like
Facebook, YouTube and TikTok have been making billions while flooding the
world with disinformation, hate speech and other harmful content. But after
years of incredible campaigning, the European Union has just agreed on a
historic law that will force Big Tech to change – and this could be the
start of a global revolution to protect us all!
We can honestly say Europe’s new Digital
Services Act wouldn’t look like it does without Avaaz. We ran massive
investigations into the harms caused by social media and shared our findings
everywhere. Then we drafted groundbreaking legislative proposals on how to
protect our societies as well as freedom of speech, and ran a huge push to
get key lawmakers on board! And it worked!
EU Commission Vice-President Margrethe
Vestager endorsed our call for a “Paris Agreement of the Internet”. And EU
Commissioner Thierry Breton was so convinced by our research that he went on
TV to talk about it the day after we met him!
EU leaders publicly thanking Avaaz and its
members
For over four years, our movement - together
with an inspiring civil society coalition – has been at the forefront of
this battle to protect citizens and democracy. Read on for the full story of
how a few dozen activists, researchers, and hundreds of thousands of Avaaz
members across the world took on some of the most powerful corporations that
have ever existed – and won!
2018: A Hundred Zuckerbergs (yikes!)
It all started almost exactly 4 years ago,
in 2018: disinformation was creating havoc in democracies, and hate speech
was being weaponised around the world. In April that year, we launched our
first global call to platforms and regulators to "Fix Fakebook" and rein in
big tech.
Over 1 million people joined that call, and
we flooded Washington and Brussels with over a hundred cardboard cutouts of
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The image landed in media all over the world,
including on the front page of the New York Times.
We travelled to Silicon Valley to meet with
top executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google, trying to convince them to
act. But we were banned from some of their offices, and had to hold meetings
in the car park!
It was clear that the companies weren’t
serious about tackling the toxicity on their platforms. We needed to change
the laws that governed them.
Next stop: the European Union.
2019: Diagnosing the Problem, and Defining
the Fix
In 2019, many EU lawmakers didn’t really
understand the problem. The idea that lies and conspiracy theories going
viral online were having a serious impact on our democracies was contested –
and without proof, the regulators wouldn’t act.
So, inspired by a Lithuanian project, we
hired researchers we called “elves” to investigate internet “trolls” and
reveal the scale of the disinformation problem, especially the impact it was
having in Europe.
Working from a war room in Brussels, our
team of 30 “elves” uncovered what 30,000 Facebook monitors and their team of
experts seemed to have missed: huge networks, using fake accounts and
inauthentic pages, spreading toxic lies and hatred across Europe ahead of
crucial elections. Following our investigation, Facebook took down networks
that could reach an estimated 3 BILLION (!!!!) views in a single year!!
A glimpse into our anti-disinformation war
room in Brussels
As election day approached, top EU
politicians, journalists and security experts were coming to our war room
almost every day for information and briefings. Our work made headline news
all over the world warning millions of Europeans of the disinformation
threat just before the elections. Even Facebook publicly thanked us!
Exposing these networks helped Europe dodge
a bullet in the elections. But top EU officials were shocked by what we had
found and asked us: what could be done?
So, working with social media insiders,
academics and lawmakers, we developed research-backed proposals to clean up
social media while protecting freedom of speech:
1.. Detox the algorithm. Stop platforms from
making dangerous disinformation and harmful content go viral just to keep us
hooked to our screens
2.. Correct the record. Show every single
person who sees disinformation a correction from an independent fact-checker
right in their news feeds. TIME Magazine called it a ‘radical new proposal
that could curb fake news on social media’
But with a new virus emerging in Wuhan and
the US elections looming, we were about to see some of the most terrifying
impact of disinformation yet.
2020: Social media vs. Democracy and Public
Health
As Covid-19 spread across the world, lies
and conspiracy theories about it also went viral. Our researchers released a
bombshell investigation showing how Facebook was an epicentre of Covid
misinformation. On the same day, Facebook announced that they would direct
anyone who engaged with Covid misinformation to fact-checks on the World
Health Organisation’s website. This was the first time Facebook had EVER
done this!
Politico wrote: “Thing is, it wasn’t the
globe’s most powerful tech regulator that forced Facebook to acknowledge
flaws in its policy — it was campaign group Avaaz...”
We didn’t stop there, and in another
hard-hitting report showed how Facebook’s algorithm itself became a global
threat to public health - spreading our findings all over the media and
presenting them directly to key EU and US officials.
2020 was also the year of the US
presidential election. A year before the vote, we’d found there was already
more disinformation on Facebook than found in the three months ahead of the
2016 elections! We hired a dedicated team of US researchers, and in the run
up to the election, we produced over 40 investigations on the rampant
disinformation, hate, violence and extremism that was spreading online,
pushing Facebook to act on many harmful networks that had spread dangerous
content to millions.
And just around the elections, Facebook
launched emergency measures, throttling the spread of many of the pages we
had identified as repeat misinformers, making it harder for them to flood
social media with lies and hatred before the vote.
But shortly after election day, Facebook
withdrew some of the measures they’d put in place! It was a disaster. A
tsunami of lies claiming that the election had been stolen flooded Americans’
social media feeds.
We investigated many of the networks making
these lies go viral, and one of the biggest we found, tied to Trump's former
chief strategist Steve Bannon, was banned from Facebook for spreading false
claims about the vote.
But the damage was already done. On January
6th, protestors convinced that the election had been stolen violently
stormed the US Congress.
Our researchers jumped into action and
within days were able to show to show how Facebook had been used to stoke
the violence. Our report was covered in a slew of outlets, from AP to Time,
Washington Post, and more, and our research was mentioned repeatedly in a
Congressional hearing at which Zuckerberg and other tech executives
testified.
2021 and Beyond: Towards a "Paris Agreement
for the Internet"
There was no longer any doubt about the
threat that disinformation posed. But we still didn’t have the laws we
needed. Then came a chance – the EU was developing the Digital Services Act,
a new law to govern digital technology. As we met with decision-maker after
decision-maker to argue that the legislation should focus on holding
platforms accountable for harms created by their algorithms, slowly the idea
started to gain traction.
And we didn’t let go – showing up at every
single meeting, event or video call with our findings, and publishing ever
more evidence exposing how platforms were failing. We even organised a
conference on disinformation bringing together some of the most influential
EU politicians and executives from Facebook and Twitter to make our case!
Despite frantic lobbying by the social
platforms, things began to move in our direction. But it wasn’t a done
deal – so to show public support, we commissioned a huge poll that found 83%
of people in Germany, France, Italy and Spain wanted platforms to change
their algorithms if they were found to be amplifying harmful content. We
even delivered messages to politicians from Avaaz members across Europe in
beautifully made books!
Click on the image to read the book!
And then, after years of work, months of
negotiations, and a final stretch of over 16 hours of non-stop discussions
in Brussels, it happened: officials and lawmakers agreed upon a historic law
that holds platforms accountable for the harms caused by their algorithms.
Here’s what the law will do when it goes
into effect:
a.. Detoxify the algorithm → Online
platforms like Facebook will have to take responsibility for the harms they
cause to our societies, for example, for the way their systems help spread
toxic content across the internet;
b.. Open the black box → Allow independent
auditors, researchers and civil society to scrutinise platforms’ actions and
uncover their wrongdoings.
c.. Impose big sanctions → Platforms will
face fines up to 6% of their global income (yes we're talking billions of
dollars here) if they don’t comply with the rules.
d.. A step closer to stopping surveillance
advertising → Ban the targeting of people with ads based on their political
beliefs or gender, and end the exploitation of children’s data entirely.
This is a massive step forward for the
future of the internet and democracy. It could be the tipping point to help
us restore the dream of an internet that makes us more connected, better
informed, and more empowered as citizens. Of an internet that is FOR US and
not AGAINST US.
We’ve been on the forefront of this fight
alongside an incredible set of organisations, researchers, whistleblowers
and, yes, politicians. But changing how these huge corporations operate will
not happen overnight. Our movement will celebrate this massive win, and then
keep fighting for the internet that the world needs, and our people deserve.
With deep gratitude for being part of this
historic effort to shape a better future for all of us,
Luca, Sarah A, Nadia, Rosie, Joana, Luana,
Rebecca, Fadi, Christoph, Antonia, Nate, Barbara, Mat, Banafshe, Giulia,
Isabella, Manou, Gizem, Adela, Ine, Mo, Ana, Fra, Marco, Ruth, Christine,
Nick, Vanessa, Kaitlin, Andy L, Lily, Luis, Arber, Steve, Sam, Camille,
Chase, Martyna, Alice, Samir, Pascal, Ahmed, Fey, Mike, Mario, John, Sarah
M, Leon, Aloys, Chris M, Daniel, Julie, Luciana, Mario, Muriel, Will, Raul,
Jameelah, Patricia, Andrew S, Nell, Bert....and the entire Avaaz team
PS: If you want to know more about the
Digital Services Act and the impact it will have on our societies check out
our analysis here.
PPS: If you are a journalist and want to
speak with our team about the story in this email, the DSA, or the future of
the internet, please reach out to media at avaaz.org
Click below to share our story:
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Avaaz is a 70-million-person global campaign network
that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people shape
global decision-making. ("Avaaz" means "voice" or "song" in many languages.)
Avaaz members live in every nation of the world; our team is spread across
18 countries on 6 continents and operates in 17 languages. Learn about some
of Avaaz's biggest campaigns here, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or
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You became a member of the Avaaz movement and
started receiving these emails when you signed "Join Avaaz!" on 2013-08-06 .
To contact Avaaz, please do not reply to this email.
Instead, write to us at www.avaaz.org/en/contact .
27 Union Square West
Suite 500
New York, NY 10003
From: Luca Nicotra – Avaaz
Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2022 9:56 AM
Subject: The most impactful thing we’ve ever done?!
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