Afghans are choosing safety over internet access & YouTube ordered to demonetize election misinformation in Brazil
We hope you're doing well and staying safe. We continue to follow developments in Afghanistan as the Taliban take-over of the country continues. The August 31 deadline for US withdrawal draws near, and a number of western countries have wound down evacuation flights in the meantime.
This week in The Checklist, we look at a how Afghans are adjusting the privacy settings on their social media accounts or deleting them entirely to avoid being targeted and identified online.
We also look at YouTube blocking ad revenue from videos spreading misinformation about electronic voting in Brazil, and how Kenyans are sharing information online about vaccine availability that their government has failed to make available.
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Afghans are forced to choose between staying safe and staying online (Rest of World)
As the Taliban seized control of major cities, people grew concerned that the group could use social media profiles and other information on the internet to identify citizens who previously worked for the Afghan security forces, civilian government, or foreign organizations. Many Afghans scrambled to delete their accounts or adjust their privacy settings, sometimes forced to choose between staying safe and maintaining important connections to contacts abroad. In response, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter all said they had taken steps to help people in the country secure their data.
“It’s not like you have one streamlined way by which you can turn off your footprint across five platforms, or two or three...Basic logistical issues could hamper Afghans from taking steps to protect their digital privacy, including lack of access to electricity, internet, and working smartphones or computers. Without those things, it can be almost effectively impossible to delete your accounts." — Will Byrne, Human Rights First
TSE blocks YouTube revenue from Bolsonaro supporters' channels due to misinformation (EFE)
Representatives of electoral institutions from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru signed a declaration in Quito with the aim of jointly combating false news and disinformation generated around electoral processes. Among the commitments of the meeting, the participants reiterated their intention to continuously apply good regional practices for verifying information (fact-checking) and actions against disinformation from electoral bodies, the media, civil society organizations and other state and private institutions.
"In most of the analyzed content, what can be seen is not the transmission of legitimate criticism or the proposal of solutions to improve the electoral process that is fully guaranteed to citizens and the media, but the promotion of complaints and false news about frauds in the electronic voting system, which, however, have already been exhaustively refuted in view of their manifest groundlessness, including by the Federal Police itself" — Luis Felipe Salomão, coordinator of the General Election Tribunal
Kenyans are sharing vaccine information their government won’t provide (Quartz)
Kenyans are using social media to spread details of Covid-19 vaccine availability in order to fill information gaps and boost vaccination numbers. The country’s health ministry has published a list of approved vaccination centers on its website, but this information is not updated, leaving people unaware of which centers have the vaccines in stock, how to sign up for doses, and what the waiting times are.
Kenyans on Twitter are addressing this challenge using hashtags including #PataChanjoKE (“pata chanjo” is Swahili for “get a vaccine”). They’re posting information about health facilities that have Covid-19 vaccines, sharing their experiences of getting jabbed, and trying to motivate others to get jabbed.
"The government’s failure to prioritize vaccine information in its public messaging is leaving people confused" — Anand Madhvani, co-founder of the Covid Kenya Initiative
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