Translator this morning i have the pleasure of introducing a brilliant panel, particularly i am pleased that there are journalists here. For a change im glad im on this side and youre on the other side. It makes me happy. Thank you for the dialogue inviting us here. Were going to talk about social media and their impact on elections. I have the pleasure of introducing a political analyst, journalist, anchor, and has some of the most important and influential programs in the region on political analysis. And edison, a special rapporteur on human rights. Hes an attorney but also a journalist. He has been in charge of litigating some of the most important freedom of cases in the hemisphere. That is why his your participation today is so important. Thank you for being here. Crystal patterson. Shes an expert on Strategic Communications and has worked on Public Communications and Strategic Communication and public and private sector. She now works for facebook and is in charge of corporate relationships regarding governance and policy for facebook. And its very important to include these platforms in this conversation to play. We need to know what facebook is doing to confront the challenges posed by new forms of communication on these platforms. Thank you for being here today. Patricia campos melo is a brazilian reporter at large for sao paulo from brazil. She plays an Important Role in and outside of her country. Shes received the International Red cross award for humanitarian journalism. Shes received otherwise awards. And she know what is she has to do. She shows the greatest challenges posed to democracy and human rights by these platforms. And thats why she has been so deserving of the awards she has received. And unco is probably and i dont want to offend any of my colleagues here, but perhaps one of the most important journalists in latin america. Hes a pioneer and is also very vigorous. He has done Data Analysis and investigative reporter. You know he works in argentina and also other media. And he played an Important Role in but in the panama papers. Its important he reviewed that data and investigative journalists. Hardly anyone does a better job than him. So im very happy and honored to be kicking off this panel. Today im going to have a very quick introduction, some specific questions, and then were going to open the floor to the audience for participation. Since the third wave of democratizization have we seen such a big change. In fact there were some minor setbacks but we cant talk about any decline. However, if the starting point is the third wave of democratization with all of the problems posed by transitions, then there has been a decline. And i think that today this is recognized very clearly by actics but this has coincided with an increase in these new forms of political communications. Its whether theres a correlation there. Because what you can say, for example, is this could be negative. For example, in tunisia, it could not have been in venezuela the only space is social networks. But its also used to a section of the country which is also and to effect the will of voters. So what is the relationship between these forms of political communication and social networks. We see that this system takes place. This could be easily manipulated by internal groups. Such as the ultraconservative groups. There are other ones as well. Or by other countries which is the case of russia. In order to have an impact on elections. So what they do, they use data to identify vulnerabled ed audiences, spread lies and disinformation that is specifically aimed at misinforming the public. They use bots to distort communication as if it were human and they have troll factories that also have an impact. They simplify language and use algorithms to have ecochambers that are spaces of intolerance. More or less identified in this. So the question is if you agree that such a cycle exists and that is the m. O. Of unscrupulous people and these people have always existed but theyve never had these tools at their service. If that is an impact on elections and how would you describe that. How could y i thank you, everyone. I want to make sure i can be heard. Its always an honor to come back every year. So thank you. The answer is that, yes, who governs them . Or rather look at whos governing us. Look who if elected. You do see there is an impact on the left and right. They have been elevated or pushed forward by misinformation. And i love youre using that term, otherwise disinformation. Because fake news. You need to talk as a journalist as misinformation. And it does have an impact. The people who are governing us nowadays feel supported by social media and data and what trolls in Troll Centers are doing. Populous in the latinamerican countries. And they undermine the integrity of their opposition and the media. Theres a recent poll in latin america that says 50 to 60 no long trust in the business sector or media or system of justice. Over which there was a minimum amount of trust in society. Theres not only an impact, its a huge impact. Its very worrisome because these people come into power by using this information. And journalists as well and well talk about that later what the role of journalists is to help us out. Its not only a matter of the media but you also have to have alliances against Political Parties and media. In those percentages by people who no longer believe the journalist who is are doing their jobs with data investigation who go to the scene of events, who put together testimony which is the most tangible because if maduro says hes got all the medicine, then the journalists go to the hospitals to find out people are dying because there is no medicine. Sop what better contrast could you have . Since nobody believes in us and since weve been our credibility has been undermined, then you have whats been happening lately. I do think the impact is huge. And later we can talk about whether or not you can do this. Because misinformation has existed during electoral campaigns for many years. But the new thing is we have this tool which propagates itself and with what one click, one link, one tweet, the same lie that was called negative campaigning in years gone by now is multiplied and you have some leaders today. Thank you and i particularly want to greet the interamerican dialogue for the honor of placing me on this panel. First of all, we have to determine what misinformation is. Its an attempt to disseminate false information if to intentionally see the public. In this regard, passive use of misinformation is an attack on open and fluristic. Look at this as the enemies of democracy and fundamental freedoms. And we should address it this way. Its not a political lie which weve historically had. And public debate try to discern and debate this. Also in columbia and in approximate it and the uk. And the election in brazil. By manipulating disinformation. Also used in columbia and in mexico. Although the affect was att attenuated by some measures during that electoral campaign. Now, secondly we should also understand that those who come into office use this narrative of fake news and disinformation to discredit the traditional media. By providing because of this. From president s such as bolsonaro who have been declared enemies of an open society. And theres a strategy in this regard also in the United States. Does not believe their institutions such as the press and journalists who play an essential role. Mixed in with this disinformation, they create chaos whereby alternative narratives can be produced. For example, that the amazon isnt burning as we just heard from the foreign minister of brazil. And also they take advantage of this situation. In terms of the academics are divided on this, some say they dont have the ability to cha e change campaigns into a broader climate of polarization that already existed in other societies in which they say we have to look at the role of the Political Parties, of the populous leaders and of the media. Because if you often if you looked both in the United States and latin america, the tv channel, you see one depiction of reality. On another channel, you see a different one. So also journalists need to review their role in this polarization. Theyve become echo chambers on which one side to the other begins to connect. And people who have this type of ideology which has always been back there. Now its become more visible. And so this is information that tends to snowball from these nuclei. And thats no coincidence that the candidates are attacking human rights. Theyre attacking the basis. In most countries of the region have, in fact, been elected in some. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Im excited to be here. At facebook, we are taking this problem very seriously. Were trying to look at it in a robust way. Were spending a lot of time thinking about the disinformation on the platform without becoming police of speech in every way. And sometimes finding the line between disinformation and real debate is challenging. That was one of the challenging things about 2016 here in the United States was that a lot of the posts and content that was used to create discord were written in real issues and real debates people were having. But were strategically deployed to try to create more problems. So for us that means trying to develop partnerships and working relationships with some of the different groups that youve already discussed. So working with journalists and Media Companies particularly in latin america. We have over 100 consortiums we work with on Third Party Fact checking to make sure the information on our platform is legitimate. If its not, people will be able to know that the information is not correct. We have added more reporting tools. If the fact checker determines that there is information that is not correct in the post, it will get flagged. It will we will send a note to the person who posted it. Anyone who soos that post will be notified it is incorrect and well show them other resources on that topic to help them be more informed. We will also limit how much it shows up in news feed. Thats where most people find information on facebook. So were trying to limit most of their stuff is bigger than facebook. Or any social media company. And how people were feeling in the world right now. In terms of our responsibility to limit the scope of the damage, were trying to do a lot more. Were also trying to partner with a number of News Agencies focusing on latin america. Baesically trying to come together to create a framework for assessing what it is. Or kind of the reviewing these things. Also work with civil society. Spent a lot of time working with democracy organizations that are focused on how we keep elections free and fair. The National Democratic institute. So that we can identify hate speech and trends and identify problems ahead of time. Or as theyre happening. We arent defensive drivers as i call it so we werent thinking how people would misuse the tools. And also know that we dont have all of the expertise to understand the dynamics of every election. So were working with experts on that to figure out the best ways to know that our tools arent being misused and were more information as were coming up with new products and ideas for people. So were trying to take a really broad approach to this. As theyre consuming content on the platform, whos showing me this message . Why are they showing me this message . A lot of this happening. So you can see any ads that a page is running. You can see disclaimer information about who is running those ads and who theyre targeting. Again, this is to provide more information so people have a better sense of whos talking to them and why. We understand that we are in the center right now. I think were one piece of a bigger system. But we are trying to be forward thinking and fast about how were addressing this. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for the invitation. Sorry im going to speak english. I think catalina said something correct. This is not a new phenomenon, this information. And also the speed and how easy it is to spread nowadays. Going to speak specifically about whats app. Brazil is the Second Market for whats app after india. But the pervasiveness of whats happening in india is huge. You have correct me if im wrong 130 million users for 210 million population. In india the largest market is 4 million for 1. 3 billion population. Many people, they get all their information from whats app. Theyre very positive aspects of democratizi democratizing. But in this case, theres a very negative aspect. Everything in whats app is encrypted. You never notice whats coming in on the groups. Basically if youre on tv, youre a politician on tv. And you Say Something that is untrue or fake news, you can be a fact check exactly at the same time. And you dont know this is going on. Most of all, you have something that they call astroturfing. Its easy to identify whos originating what. In facebook, its easier. But in whats app, its just impossible to know. This is one thing. The other thing is its very easy and this is something that was done. Everybody if a person has internet connection, paypal, this person can buy massive mejageing through whats app. Theres cheap Software Online that allows you. What you can do in practical terms, you scrape all the phone numbers and create a huge group. And then you just send massive amounts of messages. You can hire this sitting in your office, you can hire spanish Marketing Agency which was done in brazil or a local Marketing Agency and get people to do this. The other aspect that is serious is the legislation is not keeping up. All these expenses are not being declared because you cant trace to specific candidates. And you cant theres no accountability because you dont know what exactly is being spread. The question you asked, to what extent does that influence, there are no specific stories. To sway an election. The one thing we know is theres no accountability. And for instance, whats app, brazil is the Second Market for whats app. Theres no manager in brazil. Theres no one theres no whats app representative in brazil. The one thing we have now is a person whos directly responsible for messages Facebook Messenger or whats app. This person is not an employee of whats app. In india you have you have a country manager for whatsapp. So this is further complicates the way you could make someone accountable and one less thing, i agree with you and its very difficult. How are you going to regulate this. You dont want to make anyone a censer, not facebook and not whatsapp and not the government. Who will filter whats true and whats not . So thank you. Hugo . [ speaking Foreign Language ] i lived in washington for several years so its very nice to come home, and thank you very much for the invitation. It is a pleasure to be here. So i just would like to nuance a couple of things and we talked about ecosystems and we talked about the relative impact of all of this and id like to focus on that for a second and what weve been seeing in argentina now that a president ial campaign is under way. Our motivation is that what were seeing first of all is first you need to see the contacts with this information effort is being launched and thats what academia calls the bias of condition fegz for everyone who rereads and the information or the data and it reinforces their previous beliefs. This means that they discard everything with whats not in line, and for example, a few days before the election, i published an article for the new york times. In the comment, im not going to tell you that i dont want to encourage that troll because its an anonymous troll. Imagine that avenger number two, totally anonymous and they say thats just a silly nonsense from scared kishner supporters and they said did you read the article and the answer is i read the title and i left it which is what most people do and this title suggested, so this shows that this person was expressing an opinion about which he or she agrees didnt even bother. They didnt even bother to read before they attacked it. Thats the first point. The second point with the circle of confirmation and all of these efforts try to put forward their work in a specific and they didnt care about anyone else and people would not vote for candidate a and candidate b and theyre in been camp or the other and who can still be switched from one side to the other. And with that niche theres more for ourselves. The older people. Yes. Im sorry, but all of us, why . Because the young ones, the young people, those who were born in the digitalier a they have the nose and the attrition to detect, yeah, theres a bad smell here, theres a rat here, but what we have seen the academ says, and it affects people who are over 60. Yes, they will fall for it and yes, patricia, they feel that there are many more older people, older than my parents and my parents and uncles and they, you know, asked me, is this real . And i have to write back to them, no, that cant be. Thats impossible and then i have to explain that one by one and thats my last point and regarding that, the last point, and im sure we will elaborate on it later on and all of this information efforts and im here on loan because im doing the same investigation and research that patricia did and im trying to do it in argentina and im doing that investigation regarding the efforts of Cambridge Analytica in argentina and the efforts of the trolls and the bots and were about to publish something about a character that manages over 1500 50,000 bot accounts and they work for both heads of campaigns and they both achieve the campaign heads know about it and they hire them both because hes a primary mercenary in argentina and hired by both campaigns. So all of this works if the context helps you because if on the contrary, context does not help a candidate even with all the efforts and even with all the online tools, they wont make it and even if macri hired 20 of these mega mercenaries if the economy is not on his side if you dont have the undecided that he can trap, he wont make it because its the economy, stupid and this weakens those efforts. Andrea, back to you. Your answer was, yes, there is an impact because look who is in our government, for example, with the there is awe great discussion whether this Information Campaign mattered or not given the small difference between the yes and the no, and i wonder how a country like ecuador, correa used the National Networks to discredit whoever could issue evidence based on evidence and whoever was left in the end to present an opposing view was the social media. I think there was a ministry of truth or the supremacy of truth that was established. So the social networks played an Important Role in that control of information that the government was trying to play with and control. Yes, i think this continues to be so. There is a war between the government of lenny moreno and those who follow correa regarding this information with regard to what kind of corruption was there really during the Correa Administration and thanks to alternative media, the posta which is by true journalists that opened who opened up a link just for Investigative Journalism and focused on president correa. So yes, youre absolutely right because social networks can be saviors on one hand, but they can also bury someone, but there is the duality and the avengeures on the one hand and the saviors and also the killers. So those media took Rafael Correa to power selling him as an expert in communications and once he is in power and youre aware of this case, he terminates competition and he has a space of eight hours or he used to have, not anymore, a space for speaking every saturday, eight hours with no kind of opposition, no one having an opportunity to have a rebuttal so at the end of the Communication Media there were high fine against them and the gag law and the communications, superintendent to the ministry that decided what was true and what was a lie. Oh, so youre lying . You pay the 40 million. Youre telling the truth . Youre okay. There came a point when they had all Communication Media and all media were at his mercy, and this was, and i think society woke up from this regarding social media, but when there is a lie, a lie that is repeated over and over and over every single day and you say it through the media, through the press, through National Networks and theres no rebuttal and no been can do any investigation because youre going to be censored and youre going to go to jail and youre going to be prosecuted. So a lie that is repeated a thousand times and there is the truth, eventually and i was reading this very interesting book about the plebicide that says the amount of energy necessary to refute lies is in order of magnitude higher that is to produce a new lie. A lie told put it on social media every single day becomes a truth. It is almost impossible to erase. You have to do it one by one. As you were telling us, one by one, friend, heres whats going on. This makes it harder and more complex and it worked. Yes, and with the change of government in ecuador and all of those things were revoked and all of those gags on the media, but the damage was done in colombia and it fractures and the wounds are open still and they polarized a country and an ecuador Communication Media. Y some of them had started to work and the wounds and the fracturing and the polarization in the country was there and the damage has been done it takes a long time to revert all of that. Thank you. Academics arent divided and some say the problem is not political communication through social media and the context and the political context. The truth is never before had we seen systematically in an organized way. And the Information Campaign, false information created to fool people on the scale, the dimension and the scope that we see today. It is true that given the state, the opportunity to regulate this is even worse than the disease and the democracy with the International Agencies and defend democrat sees and there are several things here. It would take me a long time and yes, catalina, and i think we all agree and there is a more systemic defect in this information and there was a public opinion, so, yes, i would like him to investigate corruption by politicians, but hes investigating fake news and we all end up talking about fake news while those who are in power and who abuse power continue to do so and for example, brexit is complicated and they are five years on without knowing what the fate of the country will do, will be if they were going to do away with 200 years of human rights and there was a matter of gender and all of these other things come in and they distort the public debate, and the public sphere which was the strings after markets and what can we do . I think the first thing we can do and its very hard, not lower the bar because if we have an attack on fundamental liberties, then the response will be well, lets lower the bar on fundamental protections and the free speech, et cetera, which has been fundamental and yes, many congresses are talking about penal ways to punish this sort of invisible enemy, although nonvisible, really, as a response, but thats taking a step back. Its lowering the bar because ultimately those are going to be prosecuted criminally will be journalists and leersd of the opposition in totalitarian regime, but it is natural and what are we going to punish . Those who are broadcasting fake information, fake news so that when there is some investigation by mello and the nation and someone attacking a powerful one and the powerful one will say this is fake news and even though he wont go to jail there will be a process that the countries are recently beginning to get rid of and second of all attacking internet structures and the internet is a great democratizing agent and not punishing the intermediaries because of the information that it goes through the networks. Another way is they make accountable on twitter and whatsapp and the platforms where the information is circulating information or false information and i will lower all the bars so that i dont be faced with some punishment against me and then we have censure and thats the worst of the solutions, i think. On the one hand, it is a warning, but on the other hand i think we can do a great deal because it is a complex topic because there are many invested interests a couple of months ago in the department of the oas, the Democracy Department and we had a panel of experts with the platforms and civil society, et cetera, and we needed to come up with articulated response and the platforms have obligations regarding freedom of speech and human rights and so does the government and the platforms are run by private entities and they have to assume a certain degree of responsibility regarding the defense of that sphere with the media, with electoral authorities also let us not forget with the electoral authorities are not good at communicating and part of the reaction of the electoral process needs to happen and this should be in the hands of the state and we are at the oas developing a guide or a menu of possible responses that these actors will have to give in a wellarticulated manner regarding states and other actors and stakeholders. I dont want to forget Political Parties because we need to start to work with them. These are fundamental actors and stakeholders and democracy because there is a factor of this information that is significant with the Political Parties and also legally, we need to take a look at things with the rules of transparency regarding electoral publicity and advertisement and they base themselves on older media, but we have no rules applying to platforms, and i think that, of course, taken into account the proportionality, et cetera, they would have to have the same burden of transparency, who they hire, how they hire and who places an ad and on a voluntary basis and in some cases, regarding protection of personal data and latin america has agencies has protections at work in coordination with other state actors because part of this information is based on using the traces and the footprints that we leave on the cyberspace when we use the internet. So the response is not easet and answer is not easy and it is multifaceted. I want to give you an example which was useful in mexico and generating privileged channels of information and with the Electoral Authority and the platforms media and the verification organizations and it led to whenever something was detected in fake news regarding the electoral process, and they would flood with information, the networks and the population and warning them, hey, this is happening and this is going around, but it is fake news and generate a counter narrative against the fake news to make sure that the citizenship will be aware of the new ecosystem. My son who is 16 years old needs to study guttenberg and its mandatory, but its not mandatory to learn about social media. I think both in the formal and informal educational system, we need to be literate in using information technology. Thank you. Crystal . Translator the human rights agencies has made specific recommendations to facebook on four topics related to protecting the electoral process, and the protection of personal data. The need to reinforce protection of personal data, the need to make paid advertisements be transparent unfortunately in the United States and Citizens United does not make expenditure and political advertisement in our countries, we have them, but theyre easy to evade through the platforms and the moderating contents with the human rights views and realizing algorithms to break with those situations, and you mentioned some of these things in your first intervention and how do you apply this to whatsapp because what is clear, this is what happened in brazil and this information channels are going to systems with whatsapp which are much harder to control. How the measures on these four topics that are urgent to protect the electoral processes can be transferred to those other media, those different platforms that have specific, particular characters because they are closed. So thank you for the question. You know, so all of these platforms, facebook, instagram and whatsapp are part of facebook inc. So i can go out and i can go talk about whatsapp and instagram. So we may not have a person thats labeled as the whatsapp person for you to sue, but we do have a big team in latin america that tries to work on addressing these issues and talks to policymakers, candidates and academics and journalists about these issues all the time. We are obviously very concerned about it and all of these platforms are designed to work differently and there are different challenges for each one. With whatsapp it was intended for you to have one to one or one to a few communication whereas facebook by definition is youre talking to a bunch of people whether its to a friend group or on a page and also theres just a different set of tools available and ones much more public and facebook is used in a ton of ways for campaigns and for different ways for individual people. For whatsapp, the value of it, too is the value is it is encrypted and they do have privacy and its something very important and we continue to lean into. We have tens of thousands of employees thinking about this and not about just facebook and instagram. Even though there may not be a person with that label this is a companywide effort to make sure were being thoughtful about this. In the case of whatsapp weve thought about things we can introduce on the product to diminish some of these challenges and its increasing the friction and making it harder to move to a large number of people and weve also limited how many times you are able to forward a message. If you have to start from scratch with a whole new message it does slide on the process, and if you have someone who is motivated and a wellpaid mercenary that may not be enough and were trying to balance and minimize this information with making this a platform thats useful for people and that they are able to communicate effectively. You raised some good points that i wanted to point out. One, to your question, our Community Standards are not public in their entirety and people have a much better sense on what we enforce on and we can be transparent about what counts as hate speech and civil rights oerl organizations around the world about what should and should not be allowed on the platform and what counts as hate speech. I used to spend a lot of time advising people on how to use the tools and the hate speech and how quick three these things sort of change and morph is pepe the frog which started out as an innocent cartoon character has evolved as a symbol of White Nationalism in the United States. Two weeks ago i read people in hong kong are using brazil, too. Its a sign of freedom for them. Its not hate speech. They dont even know its a White Nationalist thing in another part of the world. Theyre all using facebook and we all need to identify the post using pepe as hate speech and which ones are using him as a symbol of freedom and we have to make sure were being precise when were doing that and these are the kind of challenges and im not mentioning that as a feel bad for us thing and there is a nuance depending where you are and what it is and were working with outside groups to better approach the challenges. I would also just note that i realize were here to talk about disinformation. Theres a lot of good happening on the platforms with people sharing information and there are people sharing bad content going around and debufrpging nk and telling their friends and it will help promote democracy and coming back to the arab spring. Weve had stuff on the platform that isnt good and its been helpful for people to better understand something that they wouldnt have believed if theyd seen it with their own eyes and sometimes with Law Enforcement where people are shot or abused by Law Enforcement officers. We dont want to believe that because often with these power structures bad behavior gets covered up, but because of the power of the internet people have been able to base on what theyre doing, from the race, there is a lot happening on the platforms and it isnt all necessarily negative. Were really trying to do our part to make sure were working with governments, parties, journalists and were trying to figure out a framework for this and we are a country of 2. 5 Million People on the platform and trying to balance the interest of all of them and were trying to figure that out. We want the first social media let forms and we arent going to be the last. I think were the focus right now because were the ones where a lot of the stuff happened, but we want frameworks in place that are bigger than one platform and we want this to be something that were hopefully fixing and with the internet its hard to say long term that are solutions that transcend just one platform. I think theres a lot of potential to do that. The example i cite in terms of ways that the Tech Companies and Law Enforcement and other organizations can come together to solve problems is trial exploitation and we work with other platforms to make sure were identifying content and that is Child Exploitation and were able to do that effectively because we Work Together and set standards together about what this looks like and the right way to respond and im hopeful we can do other great things in terms of elections and democracy, as well. Thank you. Patricia. Translator the messages, for example, the messages on whatsapp that circulated for brazils elections and they were targeted to vulnerable populations acceptable of being influenced or manipulated emotionally in the worst possible way and they tended to discredit the more serious Information Sources and evidencebased journalism and how can they respond to this situation . Sorry. I understand and whatsapp always said it was intended for Oneonone Communications and people misuse it and they are misusing it and its very easy to circumvent filters and its like its a very easy thing to do and the second thing is i understand you have facebook people based in brazil, but whenever we have to speak to them and theyre supposed to contact someone in the u. S. And its not the same as having someone based in brazil. When i say we, i mean, government officials and sorry, just two points. Thats fair. Actually good to know. I can go back to that and ask more. Youre absolutely right. I think we in the Mainstream Media, we have to do some soul searching to understand why were they so effective in damaging the credibility of Mainstream Media because obviously, we were making a lot of mistakes and one of the things that i think might be helpful and we journalists tend to not give enough attention and we tend to assume that people know how journalism work, right . So if we were more transparent to explain exactly how stories are investigated and how do you get your information and where are your sources, who are your sources to the extent that you can disclose your sources because sometimes the fact is they dont differentiate a blog which is your opinion to affect news, news gathering, right . Maybe if we were more transparent which is something that i think Mainstream Media has this arrogance of saying we dont need to explain people where were getting their effects from, right . So i think this could be something helpful. The other thing is i do ink they target people who are more vulnerable, but i think this is going to get much worse. In the brazilian election they didnt use microtargeting as intensely as they are used in the indian elections. I covered indian elections this year and in 2014, and they have access to a lot of data from people including from social programs and you can get data from people and you can target messages very specifically and customize those messages. In brazil that was not done in a very widespread manner, but i know theres some legislation thats just been approved, for instance, was there a veto in one piece of legislation that its going to be allowed to share with third pares, information from Social Security fr a and you can only imagine how its going to be used to target people who are not who have not decided or people who are part of a specific religion or, you know, this is something that i think its going to get worse. Translator i would like to leave some room for your questions and there are microphones on both sides and once hugo is done with his piece, we would go to questions from the audience. Hugo. What can journalists do to respond . Are we doing things well or not . Is there something that needs to be rethought . It is an enormous challenge because, in general, we journalists approach our audience from a rational standpoint whereas audiences are handling themselves on an emotional level and therefore, we are spreading information that we consider is relevant and has been verified, and that maybe is not aligned with what the audience wants to hear or wants to hear and therefore, they just rule it out and this is the first point. The second point is that in addition, there are sometimes when even us trying to correct the versions that are out there on social media and the only thing that we do when we make these attempts is to reinforce the previously held ideas. We feed them, for example, for instance, there are people out there who think that the earth is flat. No, no, dont laugh because there are people who do believe that the earth is flat, and actually there is a movement of those, the flat landers and that when one broadcast information, no, this is false and what the group is saying is not true because these are the reasons, one, two, three, four. This, instead of helping and we will reinforce and no, there is a moment, and there are people who think the same way i think, and they discard what we have said and they go to google and just google flat landers and this example of those who believe in the earth being flat or those who are in favor of White Supremacy or whatever. So we need to tackle this very gingerly, very carefully and talking with academs in argentina, la nacion develop what is called reversal. Ar where we correct the information by being extremely careful about the information that we provide in order not to feed those movements even more. In my prior intervention here i gave a concrete example, but i never told you the name of that person who had made a comment who said that he had not read my my article, why . Pause many of you may go out and google that person. So when we have learned from the academics is we need to be careful when we approach people or fake stories. We should not provide information that fuel the fire and i agree with patricia that this is an effort that will take a lot of time that we need to do a lot better and we need to be more open and transparent regarding our process, but at the same time we need to have clarity as to the fact that there are many people who do not care, whenever we say they will continue to believe what they want to believe. Do you remember the end of the xfiles, the introduction of the xfiles and the last image we saw the tv show and they had a poster that had fox nadler, on his office with the image of a ufo and it says i want to believe. So if there is anyone who believes that pope francis, for example leads a satanic ritual every night in the sanctum of the holy see, you just pay the pope to say this. In pack, pope francis actually does this every night. He beheads someone and they have this satanic ritual. No. This every night. He beheads someone and they have this satanic ritual. No. Does this every night. He beheads someone and they have this satanic ritual. No. You have to tell them im not going to feed into this because i have to feed people who will go see the holy see every night. Pass rhys patricia and hugo and say who we are electing because in the end the media are responsible explaining who the candidates are, where they come from and there is a book how you move democracy and specific characteristics of who the candidates have been in certain places. So the media is also failing in which they say were covering the electoral campaigns, but we dont get into who they are and they have psychological profiles who the future populist and future dictators are and were not recognizing this in time and we have a very simple target for these populists and thats media because they realize that thats where democracy was diminished and then you bring in the constitutional courts and the legislature and the way that prosecutors are selected and this is done in many countries and i would like to go back to the responsibility and i know we havent done this correctly and we really could beat ourselves up over it, but we have to go back to those hearings. What are we showing in our countries or back to the audiences and whether were really looking at the electoral campaigns without falling into a verbal fight and we have to look at who really is running for these positions. Whats their past and what kind of future would await us if they were elected. Yes, there is something that had stood with this. Does the media really have responsibility . But context matters because in certain context, the book that you mentioned showed that leadership doesnt come out of nowhere, and id like to Say Something that the president said and thats when we talk about culture abandoning the training processes in terms of training digital citizens. So probably could give a very important lecture on this in terms of fostering a democratic culture in our countries. Im going to give the floor. Is there anyone here . Someone has some information . Id just like you to introduce yourself and well take three or four questions and then well allow the panelist to answer. Guillermo pacheco . This has been an excellent panel on social media and disinformation. My question is how are we preparing ourselves for whats going to happen in ten years because thats the problem now, but whats the problem going to be in ten years . This is already a challenge now. Ten years from now after social media has different platforms, for example, facebook and whatsapp, not talking about now, but ten years from now. What are we doing to prepare ourselves to combat this information and miss information in the future . Thank you. Translator if your question is for a specific person please say so. Communications for the embassy and my question is for crystal paterson. Theyve been innovating a lot of different tools and right now you can report when there is a fake profile. I was wondering if it would be possible at some point to design a special tool like marked safe when youre in the middle of a Natural Disaster and would it be possible to develop a tool to make fake content in the midst of an election . Thats basically the question. To market as fake . Exactly. Instead of having to correct the news or the whatever, the comment thats there and just being able to mark it as fake and maybe give it some other sources or something from facebook to be able to know thats fake. And the program does that so if you were to see something that had false information in it, it had been reviewed by a Third Party Fact checker and feed or a friend of yours shared it and you would see a notation that says this would be disputed. This information and article would be disputed and you would know that and we would tell the person who posted it and wed share information. We would look at more ways to make the resources more robust. Thing change on facebook to the first question. Weve all known since this blew up that it would be whack a mole and these people who do bad things and keeping up with the new ways. How do we deal with people changing some cards and were not going to solve them overnight and well come up with Good Solutions and it is hard to know and the media change so quickly, and i started facebook five and a half years ago, and i think were all so used to watching video and live stream, but there was a time not that long ago when this didnt exist and it is hard to know what it will look like 10 years, and were constantly thinking about that. If we do this again with the same conversation last year i would have a bunch of new innovations and warnings that we have about what works and what doesnt because were studying what helps people identify that information and what they do with it because people dont always do [ speaking Foreign Language ] translator okay, now well hear the questions and then well answer. Good morning. Im danielle. I dont think well get to everyones questions and i think well just take three more. Then well see how many we can answer and then have time for more and the three people who were originally in line. Yes, i also was in the short line and from the interamerican team on womens leadership and being looking at the changing culture that was mentioned and changing a culture of violence against women through the media. So youre women journalists so i would like to know what you have to say about this and the mechanism of social networks to how that can be used for this. Good morning. This has been a very interesting panel and ive enjoyed it very much. Its a lot of food for thought. Im gonzalo paz from the school of Foreign Service at georgetown university, with the moderator and the rest of the debate really was circumscribed to the situation within one country or region. However, the moderator did a good job of pointing out the use of this in international relations. Certainly, there have been accusations of russian interaction and the 2016 elections in the United States and also in the referendum in catalonia and holland, and im expecting this to occur in latin america at any time, and this could be what we call Second Generation fake news. In other words, there may be false reporting of fake news. For example, theres a disInformation Campaign. They might accuse something of being fake news when it isnt. So that could be highly destabilizing. Id like to know whether you think lark is prepared to confront fake news attacks outside the country and im not talking about within a democratic system in the country. Thank you. Good morning. Im oscar basoveri, and i am with the world data group. First of all, i would like to congratulate you for the panel and this is an essential topic both with this information and privacy. I have a question and it is as follows. Have some of you considered the use of credentials to fight this information and also ensure privacy. In other words, autonomous or sovereign, individually controlled Digital Credentials and well take your two questions if you could be very quick. So our speakers can wrap up and otherwise there wont be time. I am a researcher here in washington, but i am originally from brazil. My question is thinking about the vulnerable groups of fake news, in the United States there has been a reported link between altright fake news from the ultra conservative groups and the cell groups where there is a breeding ground for toxic masculinity and i was wondering if a similarity or a similar connection has been noted in latin america. The last one. Sorry, this is for crystal. Correct me if im wrong. The algorithm is like you click in the news feed whatever you are most likely to interact with and therefore, like a lot of people go to facebook or twitter to they no longer watch the paper or watch tv. What are the efforts that facebook is taking right now to balance and to she a balance of news to the audience . Translator okay. Very good. The two questions rolled into five. Im sorry, i havent been good at that and lets start at the opposite end with hugo. Did i catch you by surprise . No. Okay. If youd like, i could answer one question, how to prepare ourselves for fake news and this information two minute, two and a half minutes, each of you. Yes, that is a question this ive been asking myself and ill give you a specific and very selfish example. My kids are 13, 16 and 19 years old, and in my entire career i have never got my kids to say dad, i like what you published because i never manage to get them to read my news reports, and i have thousands of followers on twitter, linkedin, instagram, facebook and ive never been able with that publicity power, been able to bring in my kids generation and i have never told them, would you read this because im just waiting to see if at any point in time through any tool i can reach my kids, and im telling you from the generational perspective and in this context we are exper imie experimentingo address these youngsters who in ten years will be making decisions that affect public life and im trying to see how can i get to them through instagram and how can i reach them through twitter and youtube . For example, in our newspaper we have developed a series of five videos on how a president ial campaign is developed in argentina and we did it with the youtube format and we reached an audience we had never reached before. Secondly, we did this at a level that was very basic and we got terrific feedback on it. People saying now i understand a little bit better how a Campaign Works which gets back to what i was saying. We are talking to a very small niche and we have left behind a huge audience that we have become disconnected from and where we have essentially become a lost patrol force. We were going up ahead of the pack with very specific, nicheoriented information that everybody else didnt even know what the heck we were talking about and they didnt care and they didnt understand. So very clearly, we have to step back and begin to use other formats to try to reach other audiences and along this line, one that seemed very surprising and the first time it was mentioned to me i thought it was ridiculous and they even have used cartoons and little cartoons to try to explain journalistic investigations of the first order and its not that theyve experimented with new formats in order to try to reach new audiences and thats the process were in right now. So the question as to how to handle this ten years down the road, yes, this is an experiment and ill tell you that ive opened up a snap chat account to try to communicate Money Laundering investigations over snap chat and its a big headache and if i want to reach other sectors i have to do something differently and were doing this and were opening an account on tictoc and it is a lat form in china which is the most rapidly growing one in the world. So either we have to do this or were leaving our huge flank unprotected. They can just get fake news from wherever they get it to and now we work with tictok and convince the world is not flat. We still have to find a way to make Fact Checking go viral because thats something that doesnt ever happen, right . It is such an unfair competition and it really creates anger or excitement, fake news as opposed to Fact Checking which is boring and it doesnt go rierviral and im no sure the snap chat thing, and mara about the outright and im not sure if there is a link in brazil, at least and there are several twitter users who use the pepe the frog and also gab, that other platform, right . But the one thing i know and every women in brazil knows that maybe here, too and its a very misogynistic environment and its very, very sexist and the kinds of attacks that women suffer in social media are way beyond anything acceptable. Its not fair criticism and its not criticism against what youre writing and its criticism against your appearance, your family, your looks and its a toxic environment for women in general. Gracias, patricia. Ill answer the last question about theal ga rhythm and how we present content to people. Its hard and i think people get on facebook to connect to friends and then you start to follow pages and we often try to suggest pages you might like, but again, people go on there looking for the things that they want to see, to your point earlier and people tend to reinforce the things they already know, so you know, im a relatively young person who lives in a major city. If you start suggesting about pages about farming in the midwest to me im probably not going to follow those. Its not because theres anything wrong with them, but its just not what im interested in. We do try to find ways to introduce things to people and one of the things we did notice is we did studies and research on how people were feeling on the platform and what changes they would like and one of the ones we heard after 2016 was just that people felt meaningful interactions were meeting for them and they were overindexes on the news and the loud stuff and not enough communication to connect with in the first place and friends and people they cared about and so we made a big change to news feed so that youre seeing more friends and more groups and posts that encourage real interaction between people as opposed that are posts that are there to spark arguments and are more broadcasty in nature. So this is something that we continue to think about and were trying to think hard about and bias in theal ga rhythm and how do we get people to think more openly about what they follow and what they see and also trying to move towards tools that people will find more useful for those meaningful interactions and groups have taken off on facebook and its a nice place for people to talk and were trying to be thoughtful about how we deal with content in groups which is something that hadnt been something that we were concerned about when we first launched them a few years ago and theyve become very powerful in terms of being able to communicate and build community which is very nice. I also just want to talk about the women and i think its an issue for journalists and i spent a lot of Time Training women to run for office and it is it is a trash can on the internet, if youre a woman, particularly if youre trying to up end power structures that people dont like. So being a journalist, running for office and were trying to be really thoughtful to make sure, one, were handling it right on the platform and also women who are using our platform in public ways have the tools to learn that something is wrong and also be able to moderate their pages so its not a place where theyre being called names and treated poorly. Yeah. This is something thats really important and i think it will become more so especially as more women in the political process and other areas of life, as well. Thank you. The first has to do with the sustainability of quality journalism and theres another point i didnt touch on and experts that the economist has mentioned. Translator we need to think about the economic benefits offered by these platforms and then we need to make it to benefit people for quality information rather than those who present this information, but the same retribution happens, when somebody puts out fake news and the Media Outlets and make sure they do investigation to produce information to support democracy, so i would like to urge the social media platforms to reach some agreements and some different rules of the game with the mass media and both advertising and the benefits of these platforms feed on each other. We want to make sure that the media go back to these platforms and we want them to have Different Levels of retribution and there should be a way to encourage the production of quality information. Sometimes there are private authors, but im also concerned about the sustainability of the media and thats very important and secondly, this has to do with moderating content because notoriously, lat forms are now Public Forums and public space and there was something about harassment of women journalists and also women with a high public profile and the report was just reported and we see that men they might criticize our information, but female journalists get attacked based on sertereotypes and structural gender discrimination so when women do this theyre subjected to this type of violence. So we have to limit the fine line between protected and unprotected speech. So these platforms can work toward this and in some cases they have been working on discourse that per aferments vie against women and we know it is very challenging to distinguish between speech that we dont like and speech that really constitutes enciting violence. So facebook should have Different Councils to reyou have on moderating content, and i know that this is just barely Getting Started and we need to develop it further so that we can avoid such problems. Very quickly as to whether or not were prepared to whats going to happen ten years down the road. No. Were just barely finding out about this and then the journalists and columbia and ecuador and the Fact Checkers to prove whether or not what we receive side true, but im not that old, but i am a bit oldfashioned and i think we should go back to the traditional thing of journalists calling people up to verify sources and this leads us to what is important, the root of our profession to produce quality journalism and although were not ready for whats to come, we have to go back to the basics of our profession and be vigorous. Do you want to Say Something to wrap up one line . And the question regarding the International Impact of all of this . I just give this as a headline. We have this interaction between the media, journalism and social networks, but it is really much broader than that, and ill just say this as a comment. Mercenary troll and bot services go beyond journalist information. Theyre also attacking companies, and theyre attacking ngos, think tanks and much more. In fact, one of the Services Offered by trolls is that, for example, in trivago, they can attack the reputation of the rival that your rival hotel chains and think tanks to tear down think tanks because they put out a report and they attack them in order to weaken them and where does the fundraising come from and one of the things the trolls are looking at is on wick peed w wikipedia and because of its algorithm and the more comments you get the more leverage it gives you and say there is a biography and say i didnt write it, but one exists is if someone put in a lie saying coronado was linked to Drug Trafficking and the posts that you have about this since it bears more weight, if i tried to correct this and the person who wrote this has more leverage, corrects what i corrected then what that person said is what stays there and just so you know, there are wikipedia accounts that are posting 24 posting 24 hours a day and there are signs that there is not an individual question that have been hired to do this. In fact, its detected that they have 500 posts every 24 hours. Every day of the year. So you dont see any rotation that goes back to what the doctor said that there are accounts that work englishs, spanish, italian, russian and sometimes there is to marriage or polyglot where 24 hours a day they continuously post 500 post on all of the things out there from the arab spring to oil in venezuela and to simultaneously saying that there are agencies and they devote themselves to manipulating so five seconds they made a Wikipedia Page of myself and said they were uncomfortable. I contacted them and said im not from portugal and i said i need proof. How do you prove that you are the person . Im saying im not from portugal. Yes, please i think you agree with me that this is been a very good panel. applause good morning everybody thank you for good morning everybody, thank you so much for coming. Im Chrissie Juliano director of the big city health coalition. I wanna start by saying a special thank you