Designing more and better platforms to support democracy can be an antidote to the wave of global autocracy that is increasingly bolstered by tech platforms that tighten public control.

Op-ed by Lisa Schirch, Professor of the Practice of Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, Paris, France.

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Democracy is in crisis globally, and technology is playing a role. Most large platforms optimize their designs for profit, not community or democracy. Increasingly, Big Tech is siding with autocrats, and the platforms’ designs help keep society under control.

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A handful of tech billionaires dominate the global information ecosystem. Without public accountability or oversight, they determine what news shows up on your feed and what data they collect and share.

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Tech companies design platforms based on extensive psychological research. Examples include flashing notifications that make your phone jump and squeak, colorful rewards when others like your posts, and algorithms that push out the most emotional content to stimulate your most base emotions of anger, shame or glee.

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A techno-autocracy is a political system where an authoritarian government uses technology to control its population. Techno-autocrats spread disinformation and propaganda, using fear tactics to demonize others and distract from corruption. They leverage massive amounts of data, artificial intelligence and surveillance to censor opponents.

For example, China uses technology to monitor and surveil its population with public cameras. Chinese platforms like WeChat and Weibo automatically scan, block or delete messages and posts for sensitive words like “freedom of speech.” Russia promotes domestic platforms like VK that are closely monitored and partly owned by state-linked entities that use it to promote political propaganda.

Over a decade ago, tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, and now Vice President JD Vance, began aligning with far-right political philosophers like Curtis Yarvin. They argue that democracy impedes innovation, favoring concentrated decision-making in corporate-controlled mini-states governed through surveillance. Embracing this philosophy of techno-autocracy, they moved from funding and designing the internet to reshaping government.

Techno-autocrats weaponize social media platforms as part of their plan to dismantle democratic institutions.

The political capture of both X and Meta also have consequences for global security. At Meta, Mark Zuckerberg removed barriers to right-wing propaganda and openly endorsed President Donald Trump’s agenda. Musk changed X’s algorithm to highlight right-wing content, including Russian propaganda.

Designing tech for democracy

Recognizing the power that platform design has on society, some companies are designing new civic participation platforms that support rather than undermine society’s access to verified information and places for public deliberation.

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In 2014, a group of technologists founded Pol.is, an open-source technology for hosting public deliberation that leverages data science. Pol.is enables participants to propose and vote on policy ideas using what they call “computational democracy.” [...] People participate anonymously, helping to keep the focus on the issues and not the people.

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Taiwan used the Pol.is platform to enable mass civic engagement in the 2014 democracy movement. The U.K. government’s Collective Intelligence Lab used the platform to generate public discussion and generate new policy proposals on climate and health care policies. In Finland, a public foundation called Sitra uses Pol.is in its “What do you think, Finland?” public dialogues.

Barcelona, Spain, designed a new participatory democracy platform called Decidim in 2017. Now used throughout Spain and Europe, Decidim enables citizens to collaboratively propose, debate and decide on public policies and budgets through transparent digital processes.

Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Ressa founded Rappler Communities in 2023, a social network in the Philippines that combines journalism, community and technology. It aims to restore trust in institutions by providing safe spaces for exchanging ideas and connecting with neighbors, journalists and civil society groups.

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In 2024, the Alliance for Middle East Peace began using Remesh.ai, an AI-based platform, to find areas of common ground between Israelis and Palestinians in order to advance the idea of a public peace process and identify elements of a ceasefire agreement.

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crosspostato da: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/35703805

Archived

[Op-ed by Benedict Rogers, Senior Director of Fortify Rights and a co-founder and trustee of Hong Kong Watch.]

Dictatorships use solitary confinement as a form of torture, designed to break the prisoner’s spirit. Under international law, “prolonged solitary confinement” is defined as exceeding 15 days.

British citizen and 77 year-old media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, in jail in Hong Kong, has now exceeded 1,600 days in solitary confinement, yet has committed no crime.

He has already served several prison sentences on multiple trumped-up charges, including 13 months for lighting a candle and saying a prayer at a vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

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The number of writers jailed reached a new high in a wider range of countries, with at least 375 behind bars in 40 countries during 2024, compared to 339 in 2023, according to the international writers' association PEN. China, already the world’s top jailer of writers, registered another significant increase.

Archived version

• The number of writers jailed reached a new high in a wider range of countries, with at least 375 behind bars in 40 countries during 2024, compared to 339 in 2023, says PEN, the Worldwide Association of Writers NGO, in its Freedom-To-Write Index.

• China, already the world’s top jailer of writers, registered another significant increase of 11 cases, to 118 writers behind bars. The majority were jailed under the pretense of “national security” charges, oftentimes for criticism of the government and official policies, pro-democracy viewpoints, and the promotion of ethnic minority languages and culture. Uyghur writers and intellectuals continue to face particularly harsh treatment.

• War and conflict continued to have a negative impact on writers in 2024, as the crackdown on dissent in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and in Russia resulted in further upticks in the number of jailed and threatened writers, keeping both countries in the Top 10.

**Top 10 Countries of Concern: **

1. China
2. Iran
3. Saudi Arabia
4. Vietnam
5. Israel
6. Russia
7. Türkiye
8. Belarus
9. Egypt
10. Myanmar

Other key countries of concern—which each jailed seven writers during 2024—are Cuba, Eritrea, and Morocco.

Over the past six years of producing the Writers at Risk Database and Freedom to Write Index, the trend is clear: writers are being jailed at a steadily increasing rate over that time period, from 238 cases counted in 2019 to 375 in 2024. This time span has also seen significant negative political developments in a number of key countries currently included in our Top 10 jailers of writers that have had an outsized impact on the climate for free expression and have resulted in sharp upticks in writers being jailed, most notably: the flawed August 2020 presidential election and widespread protest movement in Belarus, the February 2021 coup and anti-military civil disobedience movement in Myanmar, the “Woman, Life, Freedom” demonstrations that erupted following the custodial death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini in the fall of 2022 in Iran, the Russian-instigated war in Ukraine which began in February 2022, and Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

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Why do people living in democratic countries vote for political candidates who openly violate democratic standards? A new study by a University of Notre Dame [in France] found that diverse understandings of democracy among voters can lead to votes for authoritarian-leaning political leaders.

“A considerable variety in democratic views leads part of the electorate to overlook violations of democratic norms such as minority rights protection or restraints on executive power,” said Marc Jacob, assistant professor of democracy and global affairs at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs. “These varied attitudes represent an important vulnerability for the democratic system as they can enable authoritarian political candidates to access and retain power.”

The study, [...] found that voters' differing conceptions of democracy shape their ability to recognize democratic violations and, in turn, affect their voting choices.

Jacob and co-authors Natasha Wunsch of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and Laurenz Derksen of ETH Zurich conducted a candidate choice experiment in Poland, a democracy where elections remain competitive despite some democratic backsliding over the past several years. (Democratic backsliding occurs when existing democracies slip backward toward autocracy and is currently taking place in every region of the world.)

The researchers found that respondents who supported democracy in principle but adhered less strongly to liberal democratic norms, such as minority rights protection and constraints on executive power, tolerated democratic violations more readily.

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“Democracy education often features big, abstract ideas, but it’s just as important to show people how civil liberties, power-sharing, and the rule of law directly benefit them—and to remind them that their votes play a crucial role in keeping those values alive.”

Political scientists and economists have traditionally argued the more economic prosperity a country has, the more democratic it becomes - but Professor Ian MacKenzie from University of Queensland’s School of Economics in Australia says the relationship is not simple.

“When a country’s income is very low, survival is the focus and the marginal benefits of consumption of material goods is very high,” Professor MacKenzie said.

“Essentially, when you don’t have much, an extra dollar is very, very valuable to you.

“Because of that, you won’t invest time in political activism, you’ll invest it in working to increase your income.”

Professor MacKenzie, along with economists Dr Dario Debowicz (Swansea University), Professor Alex Dickson (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow) and Associate Professor Petros Sekeris (Toulouse Business School), looked at data from every country between 1800 to 2010 to analyse their income and democratic score.

They hypothesised the relationship between the income of a country and its level of democracy is not linear but instead forms a U-shape.

Professor MacKenzie said when societies reach a high level of income, the curve shifts towards increased democratisation.

“As income increases, there comes a turning point at which your income has increased so much you start to value improvements in political freedoms,” he said.

“People feel more empowered to challenge authorities.

“A lot of people believe there is no link between income and democracy, or that there is a positive link – as in more income equals more democracy.

“What we’ve shown is that it’s more complicated than that.”

Professor MacKenzie said China was a country to watch in that it has experienced extraordinary economic growth over the past 4 decades while remaining an authoritarian state.

“The U-shaped theory suggests political uprisings could occur if economic growth continues,” he said.

“China has many citizens who are benefitting from the country opening its markets and increasing its GDP (gross domestic product) so there’s a lot of evidence to suggest they may start craving democratic principles.”

The research was published in Springer Nature.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/20532607

Here is the study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp1274

Most people in most countries state that they wish to have a democratic government. But the definition of democracy has been constantly contested. Without understanding what people really mean by democracy, the concept is vulnerable to being exploited by dictators and anti-democratic politicians for their own ends.

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A new research study led by the University of Oxford, National University of Singapore, and Emory University has now shed light on the question: "How do people around the world define democracy?"

The study surveyed over 6,000 people from the United States, Italy, Egypt, India, Thailand, and Japan- countries with highly different political regimes, democratic histories, geographic regions, levels of development, and cultural backgrounds. The study explored how people prioritize nine different attributes in their understanding of what makes a country democratic, using examples of hypothetical countries.

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• Overwhelmingly, participants were significantly more likely to view countries that select their leaders through free and fair elections as more democratic than countries without elections.

• Participants were also significantly more likely to view countries with strong protections for civil liberties as more democratic compared with countries without such protections.

• The relevance of these was consistent regardless of people's age, gender, education, minority status, or political ideology.

• After elections and liberties, the two most important attributes were gender equality, then economic equality. Countries in which men and women have equal rights are more likely to be seen as democratic than countries with highly unequal gender rights. Relative equality between the rich and poor (compared with high inequality) also increased the likelihood that a country was seen as more democratic.

• Then, countries where leaders must respect the legislature and courts' authority in decision making were more likely to be perceived as more democratic compared with countries in which the leader frequently bypasses the legislative and judicial branches when making decisions.

• In contrast, the researchers found little evidence of an "authoritarian" redefinition of democracy taking root anywhere. Even within authoritarian countries such as Egypt or Thailand, democracy was still perceived as being rooted in elections and liberties.

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In a historic ruling the International Court of Justice has found multiple and serious international law violations by Israel towards Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including, for the first time, finding Israel responsible for apartheid. The court has placed responsibility with all states and the United Nations to end these violations of international law. The ruling should be yet another wake up call for the United States to end its egregious policy of defending Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and prompt a thorough reassessment in other countries as well.

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According to Reuters, he is accusing the company of discrimination, wrongful termination and showing a pattern of bias against Palestinians. Hamad said he noted procedural irregularities on how the company handled restrictions on content from Palestinian Instagram personalities, which prevented them from appearing in feeds and searches.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16422026

Not a surprise but man

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Credible Web Community Group

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Why would you want to delegate moderation:

Temporarily, while looking for new mods and admins. When an instance is under attack by trolls and the like, ask extra help When there is a large influx of new users

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The field of social development has seen three major approaches to dealing with problems:

the Charity Model

the Needs-Based Approach

the Rights-Based Approach

For half a century, developing nations were arguing at the United Nations sessions for the need to recognize the right to development as a human right. With a growing globalization process and several political changes around the world, and with increasing pressure from developing nations, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Right to Development.

“The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised.”

This declaration gave a strong boost to the Rights-Based Approach to development and marked a new era in social development.

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Federated Moderation: Towards Delegated Moderation?

What would an ideal fediverse organization do?

Fediverse, NetCommons and the blueprint for P2P society?

RIPE NCC Community Fund 2023

United Software Development: A new paradigm?

Federated Moderation: Towards Delegated Moderation?

EC - NGI0 Liaison -- Webinars and Workshop April 2021

Important: We need Your Input on the Future of the SocialHub

Hospitality exchange community considers moving to the fediverse ;)

Proposal: New top-level forum section for Domains

Working and thinking on "native" #openweb aproches to governance

Organizing for SocialHub Community Empowerment

RIPE NCC Community Fund 2023

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I see no reason why, after the Fediverse has found a solid moral ground, it shouldn’t put this up to the test against Meta and try to win over some terretory with it. Actually, it seems like the most sensible thing to do. Because we want to bring these digital rights to as many people as possible, and for that, we need to partially federate with Meta.

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This question is particularly relevant for non-profits working in the field of human rights – especially those who are familiar with the problems inherent in Facebook’s attention-based business model.

In other words, doing human rights advocacy through Facebook could be a case of “one step forward, two steps back”: Though awareness and even impact may be achieved on a particular progressive front, it comes at the cost of all the economic, social, and political problems associated with surveillance capitalism.

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A Victorian children’s court granted permanent stay of the case, and Magistrate Lesley Fleming made damning findings against police.

In the decision, Fleming found law enforcement used “the guise of a rehabilitation service to entice the parents of a troubled child to engage in a process that resulted in potential harm to the child.”

“The community would not expect law enforcement officers to encourage a 13-14 year old child towards racial hatred, distrust of police and violent extremism, encouraging the child’s fixation on ISIS,” Fleming said.

Fleming also found police had purposefully delayed charging Thomas until he turned 14, which would make it more difficult to use the doli incapax defence, which states children under a certain age cannot be held criminal responsible for their actions.

The AFP officer responsible for signing off on the operation, Deputy Commissioner McCartney, told Senate estimates he would do it again.

McCartney defended the operation on the grounds that the de-escalation techniques employed by Victoria Police’s Countering Violent Extremism team weren’t “being effective”.

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In terms of human rights, social media platforms have a huge impact on how an individual may express, search for, and encounter information. Individuals may be subjected to discrimination through or by the platforms, or have their personal data and privacy restricted. However, as private companies they are not bound by human rights law, unless human rights standards are translated into national regulation. Such translation has happened in many areas of life—workers’ rights, protection of children, environmental protection, protection of journalists and press freedom, for example—but there is still no regulation that stipulates the role and responsibility of tech giants that have reached such a size and volume that their impact on individual speech, public debate, discrimination, and privacy may in many contexts be more significant than that of the state itself.

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Great question.

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Earlier this month, the 47 member states of the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a landmark Resolution (A/HRC/20/L.13) to include the “promotion, protection, and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet.” The Resolution, which was presented by Sweden, was backed by more than 70 countries in all, both members and non-members of the HRC.

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"Our findings suggest age verification is generally supported, but participants think it likely would not work. Instead, they said more safety education, face-to-face dialogue, and accountability from social media companies would be better approaches to keeping young people safe online."

It will stop migrants who cross unlawfully from receiving asylum, but only takes effect when the southern border has been "overwhelmed"