Journalists win the Nobel Peace Prize, and Facebook's failure to contain misinformation in India
We hope you had a great week. In this issue of The Checklist, we highlight the Nobel Peace Prize win by Rappler founder and Meedan board member Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Novaya Gazeta founder and editor Dmitry Muratov. Our congratulations go to the two winners, whose work to safeguard freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia respectively have attracted negative attention from the authorities, including threats to their safety and that of their colleagues.
We look at how Facebook's misinformation response lack of Hindi and Bengali classifiers - detection algorithms created by Facebook to counter hateful and harmful speech - have been lacking, despite the social media platform's awareness of pages and groups promoting fear-mongering and anti-Muslim narratives.
We also highlight how domestic misinformation is growing in prominence in Africa as politicians and other actors on the continent adopt the tools and methods previously employed by foreign actors, and how this is eroding public trust.
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Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov win 2021 Nobel Peace Prize (Al Jazeera)
Journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines, and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, have won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which the Nobel prize committee described as being under threat worldwide. Ressa, who founded Rappler, an investigative journalism website, has focused much of her work on Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s controversial and violent war on drugs. Muratov founded the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, one of the few independent media outlets in Russia, in 1993 and has been its editor-in-chief for 24 years.
"They are representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions — Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
Facebook didn’t flag India hate content because it lacked tools: Whistleblower (The Indian Express)
Despite being aware that pro Hindutva groups and pages promote fear-mongering and anti-Muslim narratives, social media giant Facebook could not take action or flag this content, given its “lack of Hindi and Bengali classifiers”. This was revealed in a whistleblower complaint filed before the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee. Classifiers refer to Facebook’s hate-speech detection algorithms, and Ms Haugen further stated that Facebook’s language capabilities are “inadequate” and lead to “global misinformation and ethnic violence”.
"There were a number of dehumanizing posts (on) Muslims… Our lack of Hindu and Bengali classifiers means much of this content is never flagged or actioned, and we have yet to put forth a nomination for designation of this group (RSS) given political sensitivities" — Frances Haugen, former Facebook employee and whistleblower
Domestic Disinformation on the Rise in Africa (Africa Center for Strategic Studies)
A growing number of domestic actors, mostly politicians, are deploying targeted disinformation schemes that adopt sophisticated tactics previously deployed in Africa by foreign actors. This digital disinformation is deployed at significant scale, and has the effect of distorting public discourse, making it increasingly difficult for the African public to discern between facts and “fake news” while following political, social, and security developments across the continent. The resulting deterioration of trust and truth online could lead to further conspiracy theories and fabricated content taking root.
"I suspect that the coordinated disinformation we have uncovered is just the tip of the iceberg and that it is expanding as governments and political figures learn to manipulate social media algorithms through fake, duplicated, and coordinated content production" — Tessa Knight, researcher with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab)
What’s new at Meedan
Fact-checking requires more than facts—it also requires trust at a human scale
By Dr Gillian Andrews
As disinformation rises around the world, fact-checking has become more prominent, and has spread from journalism into other spaces. Fact-checking efforts must reckon with what “facts” and “trust” actually are. Without that missing piece, they are likely to fail.