ADC debates on disinformation and fake news at Book Fair
The Association for Civil Rights took part in the talk “Disinformation. Tools to strengthen democracy” on May 8 at the International Book Fair of Buenos Aires. During the event, held by the City of Buenos Aires and the Swedish Embassy, ADC project leader Eduardo Ferreyra stressed the importance of clearly defining the issue to tackle it, and referred to the debate on whether to regulate fake news.
The meeting was moderated by Jessica Ferradas (FOPEA) and attended by Anders Carlsson (Swedish Ambassador), Pamela Malewicz (Human Rights and Pluralism Undersecretary of Buenos City City), Andrés Sánchez Rico (EU Ambassador), Olivia Sohr (Chequeado) and Fabio Tarasow (FLACSO).
Ferreyra highlighted ADC’s strive against disinformation and the joint work with fellow organizations such as Chicos.net and Observacom on the subject. “To address this problem as an organization, we must first delimit it because otherwise, it becomes too broad an issue,” he said. “This would bring clarity and leave out certain types of speech that may be irritating but cannot be deemed as false.”
ADC’s researcher continued by explaining, “once we clarify the terms, we can devise solutions, such as providing training, collaborating in the improvement of public policies or creating educational content on the subject, encouraging students to think critically.”
“From ADC, in particular, we formulate contributions to the different branches of government, and we also hold discussions with tech platforms, which play an important role as mediators of public discourse,” he continued.
The project leader then referred to the debate on whether to regulate disinformation and fake news: “Whenever we address the topic, we always assume it as the regulation of content, which raises red flags for freedom of expression. This must be examined from different stances, as we do at ADC, where we maintain that public regulation plays a vital role, but must be approached from a multifaceted perspective.”
Next, Ferreyra expounded on the activity of the Association for Civil Rights as to data protection, given that “disinformation campaigns target information that people unintentionally hand over on the web and is utilized for profiling purposes.” Finally, when asked about the likelihood that tech giants prioritize and invest to enhance the quality of the information they disseminate, our researcher replied that “compared to previous years, some progress has been made on this point, partly due to pressures from civil society and the scandals that some of these platforms faced. Plenty remains to be done, but we observe greater transparency in content moderation, in the alliances with organizations and fact-checkers or in the access allowed to independent parties to scrutinize their algorithms and data handling.”
