1108IGF8 no 110 freedom of speech - Internet Governance …



SEVENTH ANNUAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUMBAKU, AZERBAIJAN8 NOVEMBER 201209:00SESSION NUMBER 110FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND FREEDOM FROM HATE ONLINE:YOUNG PEOPLE COMBATING HATE SPEECH ONLINE**********This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.**********>> RUI GOMES: Good morning, everybody.Hello.Good morning, everyone.I'd like to apologize first of all for being a bit late in the start of this workshop.The bus took a bit longer than expected but I'm happy to have made it to the workshop at end of the day.Very pleased to see you here I work for the council of Europe in the European youth center in Strasbourg. I am in this context in charge of a project which deals with, especially with hate speech in its online expression and more generally with the role of young people in the usage of Internet and one could say generally, broadly speaking, net citizenship.We have proposed this workshop to actually address and discuss together the relevance of hate speech online to young people, how it is addressed in different regions of the world, and what could we learn from that in order to plan a youth campaign that we are organizing in the council of Europe, but also to more generally to understand how should people, young people relate to the Internet, and how could we support their relation to the Internet in a way that supports human rights and democracy.So that that then could be translated and carried forward in future Internet governance.Our aim in a nutshell is both addressing and combatting hate speech online, but also learning from this to see how could we better act to also support young people to be responsible citizens on Internet.I'm very pleased to have here with me very distinguished panel of experts I will introduce them now I have, you can introduce yourself, yeah?>> ALA'A JARBAN: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.My name is Ala'a Jarban from Yemen.I'm a young blogger and human rights activist.We mostly use down line word, social media, new media as a tool to advocate for human rights issues.>> MARIA PASCHOU: Good morning, my name is Maria Paschou, I'm chair for the advisory committee on youth, and I'm pleased to present to you the campaign we are supporting and discuss with you how to support it.>> NICOLA: Good morning, I'm Nicola Douglas, I'm a young person from the U.K. and affiliated with ChildNet international as part of their young people's project.>> Okay, I think we will explore the issues with Ala'a and Nicola and then Maria.I would like to invite all of you to take the floor and come in with your points of views or opinions or questions regarding the issues. Because our intention is really to have a workshop as participatory as possible.I would like to start with inviting Ala'a to start with us how the is in Yemen from the perspective of a young blogger or an online activist for human rights and democracy, how it is perceived, the question of hate speech online.From your experience, what does it mean. How relevant is it as an issue.>> ALA'A JARBAN: First of all I'd like to thank all the audience for coming.I know it's difficult to attend an early session and also difficult for us to wake up.At the same time I'd like to thank you for the introduction.We agreed that Internet governance and human rights should walk hand in hand together especially when it comes to young people.I come from a country that went through the Arab spring, and we actually started all the protests using the online world as a safe space for us to meet, organize and mobilize.We started at beginning of 2011, we did a Facebook group we called protest to call for freedom of expression in all forms for human rights, for justice, for equality.And we used Facebook as a safe place for us to meet to organize since it was really difficult for us to meet in real life as the government was targeting any of the activists.Facebook helped us a lot also. We used blogging as well.Our first movement, because the government said we will go out and destroy and sabotage, so we decided to call for protest in cleaning the streets, which was very impressive.So many people joined us after they saw the peacefulness of our calls.The element of anonymity in the online world was very important to us as well.In our part of the world, especially with Arab spring, we were very inspired with why it happened in Tunisia and Egypt as well. So this created an element of wonder, I called, philosophy, that maybe children still have it.I always compare to a magic trick. When we for example, taking a rabbit out of a hat, when we were kids we would just be so amazed, so stunned by it. Then we start asking questions, like how did this happen.Youth in that region, also in so many parts of the world started asking so many questions. And with questions came a very big issue, and that is hate speech.Usually activists online who ask many questions face so many issues of hate speech.For instance, a female activist from my own country faced a very bad kind of hate speech on the Internet for being, for example not wearing a scarf, being with her hair, many Islamic extremists started pages calling her in quotations an infidel.Also we witnessed so many Facebook pages that target marginalized groups in my country. For example we have over one million Somalian refugees that come to my country. Recently we witnessed Facebook page calling for kicking them out of the country.Even the name they gave to them in Arabic means servers or synonym to slaves.We witness so many cases like this recently in the online world.So the question is how can we take responsibility when it comes to freedom of expression and hate speech online.I think this question is raised to everyone. It's not anymore about what is the responsibility we should take but also who is involved.I believe young people are very important force in this society, and any change happening in any place in the world, young people play a very important role.Thank you.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you, Ala'a.What you are saying is that the freedom of expression in the case of Yemen and this miracle that you talk about, this wonder, comes with also, or comes accompanied by then a kind of a backlash of hate speech or in fact abuse of people through the Internet.In other words, using the same means that we use for freedom of expression is also used to perhaps curb freedom of expression or intimidate people not to go on line. Yeah? Is that what you are saying?I'd like to invite the audience also to perhaps questions or comments to Ala'a before we move on to another panelist.I think specifically in relation to this issue of freedom of expression being accompanied by also freedom sometimes to abuse, and how that is perceived from many other experiences around the table.Yes, please.>> The safe center, Russia.You mentioned that Facebook (breaking up) young people.(Breaking up).You chose Facebook for communication and for activities in Facebook because Facebook was a safe place for you.It is absolutely okay we talk (breaking up).What about government reaction for your activity? Because as I know in most countries, the person can be prosecuted for actions that (breaking up).For example if we take Germany, a Austrian person can be prosecuted. Do I understand correctly that government could react or not react? Thank you..>> ALA'A JARBAN: Real good question, yes, thank you.Yes, the government would react differently to such movements on Facebook.Social media has a double edge tool.So to be honest, also this country, the hosting country of the IGF is not also have a good record of human rights when it comes to activists on Facebook.I remember the case of one activist sentenced to 12 years just for starting a Facebook page and his father was sacked out of his job with a company that is related to the government just for starting a Facebook page.And in my country, in my own experience as well, many people, actually bloggers are still in jail now.We have part of the security called political security, which is responsible for actually just arresting activists and human rights activists in the country.But I'm very optimistic because the situation has changed in my country now after the Arab spring. We have more freedom and we're working on also having the needed freedom to have quality, gender equality, woman empowerment.For example in our country they have a policy to know the IP address and so many activists have been followed and kidnapped out of streets. And so many are still in prison and we're working hard to get them out. Hopefully we will do soon.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you, Ala'a.Other comments or questions, inputs from the room.I have one myself perhaps.When you speak, when you say for example perhaps more, Islamist or political movements when they target people on line, you think it is an organized approach or movement? Or is it individual?.I think one. Questions that we face in our project, for example, is to find out the difference if there is a difference between what can be somehow individual reactions that maybe sometimes overreact, people don't know how to react, and what is in fact the expression online of political movements that are actually active off line as well.You see what I mean?How is it from your experience?>> ALA'A JARBAN: To answer a question, I think it's both.There is some kind of hate speech that is organized and there is the individual.Sometimes people just provide their opinions in the online world. Not in an organized way but they provide it in a way that can be called hate speech.But as well there are organized movements such as the Islamist extremists, for example, in my country that would using it to target female activists and calling them infidels and we would actually witness movements in the street, not only online but also off line world, actually protest calling for the practice of the Islamic law to punish the activists who spoke freely using the online world.>> Good morning, everyone, Pedro from the European forum.Direct question to you about how do you from your perspective and experience reconcile when you try to combat hate speech online with the freedom of expression and the situation in your country?What is your basic value when it comes to combat combatting hate speech? Do you focus on the protecting part, on securing that we avoid these circumstances when people are bullied online, or is it your first premise based on your experience, is it more the freedom of expression? How do you reconcile in your country? Because each country has its own debates on where to put the level, so what is it from Yemen and from you.Thanks.>> ALA'A JARBAN: Thank you for the question.I believe that the most important element in combatting hate speech, especially for my country, is protection. Since the security of activists online is on the edge, most of the time sort of things they would say.Also freedom of expression is very broad term.Actually you cannot control what is on the Internet.Maybe you can monitor sometimes, but most importantly is how to protect those who, what activists in the online world. As well as also providing guidance, providing support for those who face such hate speech, organized campaigns in the online world.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you. Other comments or questions to Ala'a?Maybe one before moving on with Nicola, maybe just one question.This in Yemen or in the linguistic background that you work in, does the notion of hate speech actually exist? I mean as hate speech.What will it be called? In the law, does it exist? If you talk about this with colleagues, you will talk about abuse or verbal abuse or online abuse? Or would you say actually this is hate speech and would people recognize as something which is potentially also a criminal act?>> ALA'A JARBAN: Actually there's absolutely no mention in the Yemen law of hate speech or specific law for the online environment on the Internet.Maybe the only policy we have on the Internet is banning pornographic websites, which is also a way to ban other websites, bloggers also have their websites blocked.The term hate speech is not known in our country. Maybe they would use the word bullying, cyber bullying, but people actually, yeah, have different terms for hate speech.They also call it abuse when it comes, when some of the activists get harassed or some also get threats.So it's also verbal abuse as well.But the term hate speech itself is not very used in this part.>> RUI GOMES: Yes, because I think that is one of the challenges that we also face in Europe. Even though in English it seems clear when we speak about hate speech online, but moving to other linguistic contexts sometimes people do not necessarily understand or immediately relate to what we refer to.Certainly one of the challenges that we face.You touched upon cyber bullying, and cyber bullying is for many of us, especially young people, perhaps the most visible face, most visible side of the nasty face of the Internet, if I can put that way.I think we have seen in the recent weeks, very recently actually, cases of young people being harassed to the extreme of committing suicide, and I think something that anyone or everyone is very concerned and very worried with.And we would not say that necessarily cyber bullying is necessarily the core of hate speech, although it is one of the forms that it will assume. Especially for young people is perhaps the most visible part.We are privileged to have with us Nicola Douglas from the Youth IGF Project.I would like to invite her to share with us from her personal experience, and also from your work in the youth give project, how you see this.I mean do you, are you actually afraid ever of going online? And are you confronted with hate speech online?Is it a problem really?>> NICOLA DOUGLAS: Coming as I do from the U.K., hate speech in that sort of concentrated form as seen by yourself in that form where it's an outright sort of vindication of people's rights and victimization of certain groups of people to such an extreme level is not something I experience a lot.Because from where I come from, that kind of hate speech is just not culturally, I don't think, accepted.It's not something that I see a lot of from my perspective.What I do, what I was quite aware of is this idea of cyber bullying. Maybe more general idea of hate discourse, which is a term that we talked about in summer camp a lot.What we mean by this is this sort of general ambience, maybe a cultural accepting of certain offensive views or opinions against particular groups of people, be that related to ethnicity, religion, something as simple as hair color can make the difference, stereotypes based on that.That kind of thing is something that I do experience a lot.I am on forums such as twitter and other chat boards.I do see this kind of discussion going on.It's not targeted.It's not to the level of inciting violence.It doesn't go beyond the bones of freedom of express but it definitely has unpleasant tone to it.I feel what is most unpleasant is how sometimes cultural accepted it is for this discussion to be going on.People don't see that it's such a negative thing because so many people tend to be talking about it.So many people tend to be using certain terms.Yeah.It isn't organized like the kind of things that were going on in Yemen or with activists. Because from my experience, young people in the U.K. just aren't that politically active.I mean I'm 17 myself. I am pretty, I'm fairly politically active as it goes for my country, and that goes to the extent of supporting a particular political ideology and that is about it.So it's nothing like your experience.But from where I stand, this sort of general hate discourse is the more common form.It's not targeted but it's still just as potent because of the way it's so culturally accepted. And that is what scares me more, is this idea that, you know, it's easy, may be slightly easier to combat hate speech that comes from a definite source, but it's more difficult to combat it when it comes from a source that is so general and accepted.Yeah.>> RUI GOMES: I think that is very important point, the fact we don't necessarily associate it with one source, that you could perhaps let's say counter or seek to address.That is a question, I think the other point that has become so generalized, so common, as almost normal form of expression.I mean we are in an audience which is fairly youthful, I would say. I would like to move a little bit to the question, is there something we can do. And if so, what should it be in first place.Did you discuss that in your forum? Thank you, if you could share that with us I think would be a good starting point.>> NICOLA DOUGLAS: This is something we definitely discussed.In summer camp we went through this particular workshop and had a look at the ideas behind it and the sort of things coming out of it.And there were two ways that we definitely identified as being particularly effective in combatting this.There's education and denouncement which were mentioned in the workshop briefing notes.Personally like just from the initial thing, I agree more with education as a method of combatting this hate discourse. From what I talked about in workshops yesterday, in our workshop in particular, was this idea of people becoming more self aware of what they are putting online and educating people in schools from Internet service providers, from parents, from civil societies, just this general education of young people in my country to be a lot more aware of the content they are putting online and the effect it's having on other people.So yeah, education, that is the sort of main method that I would go for.Obviously there are limitations to this because in schools you just don't, they don't have that kind of funding and it isn't a very global approach because there are schools which, where technology isn't that, widely available.I don't know about a situation in Yemen in particular, but I can imagine that kind of thing is just not something the government are going to fund, the idea behind teaching young people how to use the Internet.This other idea of denouncement is a particular one, I believe it's the speak no hate campaign which I was particularly interested in.Because although education is a good starting point, I think that sometimes when you are on these online forums, you don't have that legislative power to monitor what is going on in the Internet.And I think this community based response is possibly a more effective way of sort of controlling, policing what goes on line.To use a certain example, the Olympics going on in London, there were comments about the diver Tom daily. I don't know if anyone is familiar with the example.The twitter reaction to what was said was a general sort of uprising against this particular person who was making these comments on a community based response.Obviously there was no hash tags involved or anything. But this general community policing is somewhat better because the community itself is defining what is and isn't acceptable online, which is far more, I think it's a better approach to have it coming from the people using the platform than designing the platform, who might not necessarily be aware which way they want this acceptance to go.So yeah, denouncement definitely..I think there are certain limitations to it.Young people, I don't know myself, I think I would using a hash tag.There are definitely cases I can think of where twitter tweets the IC myself, from my peer group, where I would say look, stop now. Especially religious discussion, our school, atheists on Christians is a big one I experience a loot.Obviously that is just from my perspective.I think that this kind of thing is the bit where I would be saying look, stop. What you are saying to me is not something that you should be saying because you're being very offensive. The kind of comments that are coming out with is what they see as acceptable is just not something that they should be saying.It is within freedom of expression, I suppose in a way, but it is kind of hate discourse.A community response to this kind of thing would be far more beneficial, I think.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you.That of course implies that the community has people that feel able and are capable of reacting and perhaps of proposing some moderation.I have a speaker there.Could you please introduce yourself.>> Is it on?Okay, hi, my name is Kate.I'm from UNICEF.There is not really related so much to my work but more my experience of growing up in south Africa and the way twitter is used there.We have had a lot of similar cases of people saying things which the twitter community reacted to very badly, particularly around racial issues.But it had those real world repercussions as well.So they were, you had the community response, and a very strong one. But then also the off line response of people actually reporting these cases to the human rights commission and that course being taken further.So it's an interesting comparison.I think a country like south Africa has a lot of good examples, or interesting examples to learn about how hate speech online then gets handled off line as well.>> RUI GOMES: Yes, thank you very much.One of the challenges that we face, and one of the reasons that has let us to start this project, is the continuum between the online and off line.Our assumption is that we should have somehow online human relations should be guided by the same principles guided offline.The question is how to promote that.I think that Nicola mentioned precisely the question of denouncement.I think that is one of the ways.You mentioned, Kate, making use of existing legal mechanisms for protection of human rights, for example, or for combatting racial discourse or discrimination.I think it would be interesting to pick up from other people across the table of other examples of what may work, what may be already existing in your environment or country, or what may not be existing and should perhaps exist.I'd like to invite the participants in the workshop to take the floor and perhaps share also their points of view on this if you would like to.Yeah.>> Hello, my name is Lou Keizer and I'm here as independent, actually, what I do, I trigger organizations and help CEOs and help youth organizations so I'm kind of in a schizophrenic position many times.Actually what I wanted to address, it's not something that I have like directed a solution for or something. It was just something that grabbed my attention very much when it comes to this topic the last couple of weeks.I was monitoring what happened in France with I think the hash tag was good Jew which was being used and it was being taken down.Actually sort of had a problem with those things being taken down.I mean I recognize all the bullying and the troubles that might be coming from these type of expressions, but at the same time I was wondering, okay, so let's say those hash tags were being used for a little less influential group, let's say the Roma for example, I wonder if the Roma would have the same experience as perhaps a Jewish community.It was triggering for me. I would like to hear your comments. Obviously some community have a strong background and strong political case while other cultural or religious groups might not have that.I see actually, you know, a divide in how hate speech is being treated.Do you have an opinion on that? Actually this is to anyone in the panel or the public who wants to speak up on this.Thank you.>> RUI GOMES: Yeah, I'll invite the public before giving our opinion.Martin.>> Hello, I'm Martin, I'm here with the office of France which is a youth site of IGF and we try to bring youngsters to these efforts and especially now to IGF.I have an about it of mixed feelings about the community responses.You had earlier the examples of south Africa.I felt that the backlash against especially the public actors was incredibly huge.It was an individual itself was cyber bullying and the stuff they usually try to combat and avoid, so to a certain extent I think the community response certainly is necessary, a very good thing.But when it comes to, you also spoke of personal backlashes, assaults in certain cases, physical, that goes in my eyes too far.In a way we also need to be careful with what we ask from people.When we say promote the hash tag, that involves other views. People are abusive with the hash tag.I'm a bit worried about building on community response without any moderation where it might lead us.Thank you..>> RUI GOMES: Maybe other speakers want to speak up on this opinion.Yeah, in the back..>> Thanks very much. Is this working?Okay, I am Matthew Jackman, also here with child net, and I was listening closely to what Nicola had to say about the community response.I had a few views on that.As mentioned over there, the community reacts to some cases and some people get what they want out of the reaction, but can we rely on the community all the time.We like to think the community is always right and always looking for the best in people. But the community is full of different people.The Internet is full of various different people looking for different things and wanting to say different things and get different things out of the Internet.So how can the community always be right?So we know there's no kind of one rule for everyone as such.It varies from issue to issue, from scale, the size.If I was being attacked by maybe one person with hate speech and there wasn't a community response, would I have, do I have the kind of same responses, you know, as Nicola mentioned with millions of people.I would like to ask the question, is there kind of one rule for everyone.Is the community the right place to look as such.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you.Other comments?So two questions in fact, which I think are very much related, which are, is the community the best way to react to this.And will communities react the same way to all cases.We tend to say that the fight against hate speech in whatever form it takes should be grounded on human rights approach.So in the respect of human dignity of everyone.Which leaves us then to the question, to the point, if you connect the online and the off line dimensions, let's face it, in the off line world, human rights are also not always totally respected in the same way by everyone.And there are of course at least speaking from our experiences across Europe, there are groups which are more likely to be targets of hate speech offline and online and abuse and sometimes also physical violence.So in that respect one could say, probably argue that the Internet in this way I think mirrors fairly well the rest of society.But then again we're also not necessarily always happy with the human rights record in our society. So if we act towards a better human rights record offline, then we still have to do it online as well.That would be our starting point.Of course, it does not, I think, reply necessarily to the questions, to specificities of online hate speech. In the sense that it is immediate, in the sense that sometimes it can also be very invisible.It's both public in a way but can also be very personally targeted, which is, which is perhaps in some cases more difficult to react to.If I think, for example, as Lugo mentioned the question of the Roma, if you don't have Roma activists or people aware of their situation to react, there may not be so much reaction.And that is, that is a question.Then of course the original point which was how do you, if we have moderators of any kind, let's say people who take the initiative, how do these people, how are these people supported in a way. Or do we just count on the common sense of the global Internet community to say, you know, to hope that somebody is going to react and say, come on, this is stupid, and about I then everything will be settled.I'm not sure we can be optimistic although a good dose is always good.I can see you want to add something to this.Please.>> NICOLA DOUGLAS: Probably at the risk of sounding really idealist.I like the idea of community response, and totally acknowledge all the limitations that come up with it.I think there is a place for it though.And maybe it does go hand in hand with other forms of response, be that moderation or possibly legislation.This idea that the online and offline, the online should be a reflection of the offline and we have this mirror image of human rights and basic dignity of people is really important.Freedom of expression ends where someone else's freedom from hate begins.I can say what I like up to the point where I begin to violate someone else's rights.But who draws the line between where I am violating someone else's rights?Is it the person themselves? A community?As you say with the Roma, they are marginalized to an extent and maybe don't have the same access to the.I'm not totally familiar with that particular hash tag but I can remember were something to come up against the Roma, it wouldn't be viewed in the same way. The Jewish community maybe have a bit more power to get the hash tags taken down.Seems to me if freedom of expression is something we vague as very important, where can we say we are allowed to take the hash tags down, if we are doing this, are we not violating someone else's freedom to express these views? Which is a dangerous and probably unpopular thing to say.I do believe in a free Internet and that people should be able to say what they like.I do struggle with the idea of where in ends.I am only 17.I apologize for that.Maybe as I grow up I will get some clearer ideas of exactly where these lines should be drawn.I'm still experiencing the Internet for myself on the various forums I participate in.I understand that these things are complicated issues that not many people understand.So as a general rule, I see there should be a community response, although it is so limited as people have mentioned. There are huge limitations because there isn't a general consensus.And if there is a general consensus, can we trust it because people come from so many different backgrounds.Maybe there is a place for moderation as well and again limitations to moderation.Maybe the two hand in hand can help to sort out the problem a bit.Thanks.>> RUI GOMES: Ala'a and then I think Kate. Yeah?>> ALA'A JARBAN: I absolutely understand your point, Nicola. Being also a young person, 22 years old, I'm also experiencing the Internet.Truth is the whole world is still experiencing the Internet and things are changing rapidly.As a young person that may be optimistic and a realistic person also pessimistic a little bit.I think the world is so much connected right now to reply to your point, that for example in Europe you have the Roma minority and in my country the Jewish minority.Truth is they don't have to have Roma activist to present their cases, also work for their rights.For example in my country, it's an Islamic country but many also working for the rights of the Jewish minorities.Also I get a bit about being pro feminist movement and also males can support the rights of women.It's also a double edged sword again because the community also have different responses.For example we have the movement against the US strike zones in my country because it kills many civilians and also targeted terrorists.But there is a community agreement that the strike zones are necessarily regardless of the civilians that die.When we stand for causes like this for civilians, we also are facing some kind of resistance from the community itself.>> Kate: I wanted to pick up on the point that I don't think there's an easy answer. From country to country it really differs and from the cultural context.To pick up on the south Africa example again, aside from the cases that the gentleman over there mentioned where it was individuals saying things, there have also been cases where people put up videos which were then considered offensive by certain minorities in the country.Everyone was really encouraged to take those to the chapter 9 institutions in the country who do have kind of the legal man date in the country and are more objective source to try and decide whether something has crossed the line from free speech to being offensive and infringing on the rights of others.But there aren't easy answers, and a lot of them have drawn those kind of arguments, well, is this crossing the line.I think in south Africa people are very sensitive to the rights of others to dignity and respect culturally and ethnically and racially because of the history of the country.In certain cases things which in other countries might not have been removed would be because that is the context that we live in.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you, I think you point the finger to a very important dimension which is the need to take into account the local, national or cultural context.We see also in Europe that there are countries where some types of content are taken out, and other countries where it's no, it's freedom freedom freedom.I think even the case of the hash tag that was referred to in France, I also interpret as partly related to that, that is a history. I think that history weighs heavily on people's mind.Maybe makes people react stronger to some issues than to others.Nonetheless, I tend to say that and agree with Ala'a that at the end of the day if we stand, if we stand up for the rights of some people, we should be able to stand up for the rights of everyone.I think that somehow should be, could be the main idea.It doesn't sort the question of should we ban sites or not. It's not also as we will see in a minute what we are working towards.I think that is the kind of measures that the legal, the people in charge of politics and in charge of legal measures should address.We are looking more into the education side.But ultimately it has also to find its way into legislative world.I see you standing up. Is it because you like to take >> I would like to one more thing.Me personally, I draw the line at physical violence. I think the Yemen example shows that very much when people take it to the street and really assault people, to me that is the line.I do want to mention that I would hope in a session, especially where a lot of youth is involved, that we maybe can stop a little bit by talking about online and offline because basically it is the same thing.We need to realize that.The book Mein Kampf was for a long time not allowed to be read by dutch people. Now the discussion is starting to open up and they say okay, it's a book, and maybe we should be able to read. Probably a lot of hate speech in the book but we can learn from that and empower ourselves with that basically.If we just are not able the read the book, it's not accessible, that will never be like an empowerment factor in that whole process.So I think, I hope actually that we can look in this discussion and further more tomorrow as well when it comes to youth discussions as well, you know, let's forget a little bit about online and offline, otherwise it will be a weird discourse that Mein Kampf book would be allowed but we are going to take down some hash tags, to me I feel like I'm living in a schizophrenic world.The book is going to be allowed but the hash tag not.That is my personal opinion. Maybe you have a reaction, maybe not.I just wanted to expression it, thank you.>> RUI GOMES: Very well and very convincing.You want to say something?>> NICOLA DOUGLAS: I understand where you come from, there does seem to be a total contradiction in terms, this hash tag allowed online and Mein Kampf allowed offline.I like the idea by reading the book people can empower themselves, we educate ourselves through this kind of content.I would say not all young people hold with the idea that the online and offline world are the same thing.I myself see a balance between the two. I think they merge in certain places, but I think people act differently online to how they do in the offline world.In some context, you can agree with me or disagree.But there are ways in which earlier Ala'a mentioned anonymity on the online world is a much more poignant thing than offline. You can't really be anonymous to the same degree you can in the offline world as you can online.I think there are slight separations in every situation that I'm in.I take this possibly for most people too. If you are with your friends you may act differently than to how you are with your parents or teachers.I take this from a young person's perspective.We act differently online and offline. The online is a different space like schools or friends and it's online.I think that I do possibly act slightly differently.I know some of my peers do. They appear more polished because we lose some of the depth that we do in the offline world. For example, communication, body language, tone, that kind of thing completely lost online to some degree.I think that is an important distinction to make, that there is a gap between online and offline.We aren't completely similar.But to return to your original point, there is a contradiction with this idea that the hash tag is banned by Mein Kampf is allowed, and I think that is important to address.I wouldn't say the two worlds are completely merged.They are maybe becoming closer with the advancement of mobile communication. But I think there's still a way to go before we can see them as the same world.>> Thank you, hi, Veronica vernosa, here representing U.K. kids online.I'm from Chile which is Latin America, discuss has been very much absent from the forum I get the feeling, almost no representative from our continent.I was wondering about something else.In terms of hate speech, I think the discussion I heard so far concentrates a lot on the imbalance of power relationships, like looking at the responsibility of society when you have a group being looked down upon or that is being marginalized.And we all assume society has a role to play there.We should protect the ones who are vulnerable.What happens when hate speech doesn't involve imbalance of power. I think that is challenging. We don't talk about human rights or have legislation about that.I want to present a case in which very typical in Latin Americas, especially south America, where many football fanatics.And you have the sort of hooligan there, bravo, and lots of exchanges on social networking sites and twitter where people more or less peers, share the same level of power among themselves, and you see lots lots lots of hate speech.You have the exchange about, among the people, but you also have other people who are not involved who are also being confronted with hate speech.I think that is also very very very challenging because then we tend to think it's not our problem, we don't get involved in these cases.I think it's an important issue to raise when we talk about hate speech because it's how the community, also a community issue but sometimes people say okay, I don't care, I don't get involved.There's a level of acceptance for hate speech froze.I think that it makes it more challenging for education and prevention.You have people getting used to people mistreating each other.Then you have this also in other kinds of media.You have fans from one team, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, within the country, and that comes to other very normal situations.I think there's not much attention when we get to that level.I think level of what should we do about it.I wonder, it's so difficult when it comes to how we defend people's rights when it doesn't look like a human rights, okay, you talk about football but then you are offending someone terribly.Or football players, something.And young people get used to it.So I do feel that in Latin America people get much more violent in terms of, and the level of acceptance of violence grows a lot.I don't know if people have ideas, you know, just comments on that which goes beyond serious issues like political, minorities or vulnerable groups of society.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you Veronica for bringing in this perspective which I think is very important.I myself experience that quite often, and I tend to take it very lightly and say this is football, it's like almost as if you cannot rationalize these things anyway.But there is indeed I think a potential continuum. If you tolerate here, why not there or the other way around.Yeah.Thanks for bringing the point.Again, I invite all the institutes coming into football, perhaps easier to connect now, to comment.You also have an example Ala'a.I forgot. Martin?>> Matthew.>> RUI GOMES: Yes, Matthew. The gentleman there and then Ala'a.>> I think it's very interesting when you mention the word acceptance and how things, people have to accept, in some cases hate speech is going to happen.We shouldn't kind of fear this.I think there's been, things need to be said, as Ala'a was saying, activists, things need to be said, freedom of expression has to be expressed.I think it's a slight contradiction.We try to promote freedom of expression and have workshops talking about how we can say what we want to within the limits.Then how to express freedom of expression but then reduce, try and reduce hate speech.I think the question I'd like to ask is how do we teach this.How do we get that balance right.As we have seen here, we kind of vary culturally and what is acceptable in different circumstances whether football or religious groups, how is it taught in schools and how will young people understands the difference across continents.I think it's interesting what you said about how the online and offline world, there's no difference.I personally think there is a difference, there are things that you can do online which you can't do in the real world. You can't connect.You can't connect the same or be anonymous as Nicola said.I think it's interesting how we become citizens online, express freely, and then the hate speech.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you.There, yeah..>> All right. My name is targona vareg, I'm with the organization responsible for the Brazilian Sana'a.I would like to share some comments regarding our solution in Brazil.Because we are also responsible for the Brazilian national cyber crime reporting.And regarding the websites, we collect public reports about those kinds of crimes.And the last six years of mining, we would say for example 44,816 URLs was reported in Brazil regarding suspects.And about neoNazi websites we received 20,600 reports regarding neoNazi websites.It's a large amount of reports regarding races and neoNazi suspect content.In Brazil our experience shows that, prove that the youth people, the youth generation is the main target of this neoNazi cells.The Brazilian federal police mapping over the last four or five years around 300 different neoNazi cells in the country.And those cells, the majority of those cells target young people between 15 and 20 years old to help them to spread neoNazi content and also discrimination and racist messages, especially on the social networking sites.Of course I would like to share these figures and put on these issues and these figures on the floor to discuss because it's a very serious scenario, and that we need to try to think, try to find solutions. Not only to prevent, especially to prevent those situations, but also to use law enforcement to stop this kind of crime.Thanks.>> RUI GOMES: Can I just ask for one clarification.The reports, are they made by the public? Is it by public institutions? By the public.Thank you.>> Just wanted to mention the football example that you mention.Obviously there's been a lot of hate speech if you want to call it like that in the stadium for a long long time.And we had the banners on the fight against racism on the pitch for a long time. We still have that.You know, that has been there online and off line at the same time.And as Matthew mentioned, online and off line might be a little different.It came from your report as well, huh, that about 40 percent said it was different and the other 40 percent said they acted about the same. I think those were the numbers.And connecting that to the last piece that the gentleman mentioned over here, I think it's pretty awesome actually that the neoNazi websites are there because I'm really scared if there are neoNazi groups in the basement and I cannot see anything.When they have a website at least we see a little bit what is out there and we can get into communication with them. So basically, you know, I like hate speech to be online because, you know, at least we can talk about it then.Especially with the football as well, if it happens in the stadium one time it has the same type of influence on the young people there and on the streets.It's a onetime thing there and it's hard to control.But when it's online, then we can have a discussion about it, we can talk about it and we can monitor it as a community.So you know, honestly, I'm quite happy actually that it happens online. Obviously, we still need to work on it because it takes some time to get grip on it. But you know, let's be positive in that sense and be happy that the stuff is getting out there so we can address it and we can talk to the people.That is all I want to say, you know? Thank you.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you for making your point.Ala'a, you want to say something on this as well?>> ALA'A JARBAN: Yes. The topic of the football was really important to me because in our region actually it was to a point where it was very very serious.There was a game between Egypt and Nigeria and there was a home game and away game.And then social media especially Facebook the fans of the two teams started offend be each other in a var bad way and clashes happened and they had to do the third game in Sudan.And because the talk, the hate speech between the two teams got so big, people, fans actually travelled to Sudan from both countries and started fighting in the stadium, the capital, Khartoum, and hundreds of people injured in a country also far away from both countries.So it is really important to practice these values of human rights not only online offline terms but also normal practices during the day in football and all different fields, not only politics, for example.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you. I have three more people, the gentleman with the glasses and lady with microphone.Then you. Then I think Tamara.Okay.>> Thanks for giving me the speech.I'm Eric clear coming from the national youth service in Luxemburg and representing the inside network.I want to commends the online off line discussions.We discovered in Luxembourg the same problem, distinction between online and off line but the main topics always the same.What we are already doing now since September running a campaign about fight against cyber bullying and do this campaign at schools and many public efforts where young people are gathering.What we try to do at the moment and we had support by the local university is that one of the main issues we try to target in Luxembourg, we don't just talk to the ones who are the target or originating, we also try to address the ones who witness and try to emphasize they are the people who have to stand up, who have to do something.We don't have a college to do a Western European spring at the moment in Luxembourg so we are talking about much less tough things.But still if it's about seeing somebody bullied at school or later time, young people, we as adult, we hesitate should I step in, enter or say that is their business.Another last comment that I want to say, it's very difficult also because we work a lot with young people, where to put the bottom line. Is it when the physical violence starts or when we write about already physical action or even just before we type about physical action.This bottom line is very difficult to find.We had interesting comment in other workshops about the freedom of expression, where does this end, how far can we go.What I took as conclusion a little bit from that discussion is that we really also have to watch ourselves and see the context of it.An example, how many of us heard somebody already in the bus shelter here making comments about the organization of this event.I want to thank people who put effort into the event.It's a huge event, I heard almost 1500 people coming here. Of course nothing can be perfect but we do comment on the edge of how far can you go, yeah, after all they are hosting us.Really shows it's very difficult to really put yourself out as an observer because sometimes even the ones working here against all the cyber crimes suddenly are witnessing themselves can be touched about it.It's emotional like the football thing. If you are also very much into football you might sometimes insult somebody.Let's not forget that it's very difficult. I think that is also what you are mentioning over there.We need to see some hate speech online or offline even because then we can even talk about it, and where to put the bottom.I have two questions if anybody wants to talk later, if you do similar campaigns in your countries, please come up and we can exchange contact details and exchange the practice, I would like to share more about what you are doing and we are doing.And second of course, maybe feedback from the round today, the question of where to put the border, where do you need to start acting and when you need to say oh, stop, that is now the line where you start hurting the other one.Thank you very much.>> RUI GOMES: I thank you..>> I wanted to come back to what Theogo said from Brazil.I think we need to understand that there is a difference if the hate speech comes from a neoNazi cell or if it's just between some people being online.This is kind of an infiltration of the young people. If they get the idea it's between some of them that talking about racism or something like that and you don't understand that there is an organization behind it that tries to infiltrate your opinion, then it makes a difference.If you see, I totally agree, if you have a website, a neoNazi website, and you know your enemy and you can address it, you see what they are writing there, but if it's going through the social networking sites where you just get the impression it might be a personal opinion of some people or some smaller group, then you don't understand that there's a huge organization behind it that tries to disseminate their ideas and their racist content and wide spread it.And therefore I really think it's really important that young people understand when there is a group behind it, an organized group that tries to do this dissemination, whether it's only communication between each other and exchange of views.Thank you..>> Hi, I'm Stephanie Burrell.I work for the council of Europe in the children's rights division.I address issues relating to the child protection online and also the empowerment of children.What I would like to say is that I think the debate concerning freedom of expression versus hate speech is a neverending debate and it's been ongoing since we have our convention on, international convention on human rights.Now what is really different between the online and off line is the accessibility and availability of content.We have got to take into account the fact that we have individual sensitivities and vulnerabilities which are more exposed to violent content and that is what makes the difference.I think the response should be multi stake holder.I think we have to remember why we are here.That is also the difference with the online approach.It's having a dialogue between policy makers, the technical, academic, research and communities to try to find ways of responding, and also ensuring that we can have easy ways of denouncing like we have easy ways of speaking out on line.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you Stephanie, Veronica.Please, brief, because Tama also wants to say something.We also like to invite comments from remote panelists and also give the floor to Maria who has been patiently waiting.>> I think it's important as Matthew and other people pointed out, that we also focus on the how we are going to deal with it..I think in order to do that it's also important to get informed about actual research.Like for instance the research we have more at hand would be on cyber bullying, how to prevent it and what kinds of interventions work.Basically I think it's very risky.There are many initiatives that are taken not based on actual research.Sometimes we think we have one campaign against hate speech might have an effect and might not necessarily do. Because many times, there is some money, not much unfortunately, and in many safer Internet centers and many countries and governments invest some money in raising awareness but not necessarily in having interventions that really have an impact on behavioral changes, people.So when you come to cyber bullying research you see that the most effective types of initiatives are the ones called whole school approaches which actually involve the whole community.By involving the whole community it means parents, communities outside schools, and not just oneshop campaign to talk about hate speech or put a banner on a stadium but actually dealing with policies, even the students develop their own schools.I think it's important to look into existing research and also to invest some money so that academics can also do research on the effectiveness of which actual policies and which kinds of initiatives should be taken.I know there's some initiatives now people developing serious games, all kinds of research being done.There's a course action called cyber bullying.Might be interested to look into that to inform policy on what works and invest money in projects that will have an impact on changing the behavior of people rather than making us all talk about it without any practical solution.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you.Veronica then Tamara.>> Hello, may name is Tamara bokovich, I come from youth for exchange and understanding.I would like to point out that I think it's very important to think about who are we.Because our identities are constructed and basically we all need to accept certain social values to be accepted off line and online.My point would be when it comes to this discussion, these are two worlds merged, off line and online.I think that many people actually are one person off line and another online.So I think this is also very important to tackle this issue. Because when we go from the beginning and say who am I, and am I Tamara off line or am I Tamara online, who is the real me.I think that it also should be very important when we are discussing hate speech.Because things that you will see online you will never say off line.>> RUI GOMES: Yeah, we, in our work recently we came across an experience in which young people, students in this case, were actually had their comments that they had posted online read over on the radio.It sounded really really weird. Because then they realized how stupid perhaps it was.Thanks Tamara.Is anything coming from the remote world? In terms of input questions or no? Or not?No, okay.Thank you very much.I'd like to thank the speakers for having brought the question of education. I think that is valuable coming in. And also research. I think that is one of the things we all agree, perhaps more research is needed.There are not necessarily easy and one off solutions. I think it's a conjugation of different measures.I think we are still looking for answers.For many it's a very new thing.I can agree with Veronica, campaign isn't going to do anything. At the same time we have to learn something.I'm depending my own state because we were going to present the campaign now.Absolutely, I agree we need more research.Perhaps some ways of exchanging practices on what works.This is also an introduction to Maria.The campaign that the advisory council of Europe is initiated and invited for, a campaign against hate speech online.Maria, would you like to introduce us to what that campaign is about and what you expect to get out of it, and how does it relate with some of the issues that we have addressed here.Thank you.>> MARIA PASCHOU: Good morning again.As we said, the advisory council proposed two years ago to the joint council a youth a new project on hate speech online.The main aim of this project was to combat racism and discrimination in online expression.And we are planning at the moment this big campaign because we want to see how we can equip young people in youth organizations with the necessary competencies to recognize and act against human rights violation.So as we say the discussion is not easy one and at the same time not easy e to organize online campaign about the topic.The aims that we have with the campaign at the moment and we are building on this, is to mobilize young people in youth organizations to promote youth rights education and take actions against any kind of violation on human rights.Provide young people online activities, sorry, provide young online activists and youth organizations with competitiveness and tools, and contribute to more democratic governance of Internet.Mark the different forms of hate speech that we have, already mentioned today.And see what is the impact that these forms have on young people and how we can better address them.Then create and train at the same time network of young bloggers in order to make them able to run a main campaign online.Yes, we have prepared a small PowerPoint.Okay.Yes, as I said, this campaign is mostly based on human rights education, and there we are foe.It's not a campaign that we want to limit freedom of expression, of course.It's not a campaign that we want to, it's not a campaign in general but it's a campaign a hate speech specifically.Of course it's not a campaign that we want to blame others.So it's difficult but it's very important to try to keep this limits while we are running the campaign.As I said, this campaign will be about education on human rights, but at the same time we want to work on democratic citizen ship and media literacy.One of the biggest challenges we see is the legal aspect.Legally hate speech is a crime but we want to see how we can bring necessary legal measures out of this campaign.The functioning of the campaign, maybe they can follow, yes.Okay, the training courses.The functioning of the exam pain, the council of Europe will have the political guidance and the campaign will be run for young people, it is for young people.The young people and youth organization of course will have the ownership of the campaign.One of the biggest challenges for us is to see how we can involve in the campaign nonorganized youth.The council of Europe will organize training courses for bloggers. We already did this.We already working on a campaign strategy.And we are at the moment we have also proposal for a logo that maybe you can say this is.The first proposal for our logo.Hate means stand for human rights.But it's not adopted yet.We are working on it. Just the first proposal as I said.On the campaign it will be a central website.It will be a blog with edited content.And of course direct communication and online presence.The campaign will start in March officially.It will be launched the 31st of March which is the international day, 21st, sorry, of March, which is international day against discrimination and racism.As you can see, it will work in both levels, European, where we will have the campaign platform online action tools, always provided by the council of Europe.Some ideas are on reporting hate speech and hate speech watch, but at the same time, we will work on the national level.In the international level we will, we are intending to create national coordinating bodies that will run this campaign.These bodies can be youth organizations that want to take lead on the campaign at national level.We want through this bodies to also work a lot in education and training in national level.Of course we want to organize the conferences, national and European level.More information on the campaign I'm running now in the presentation, but I think during the break if you want more information we can set it.You can find in this website, coed.inc/act for (reading) human rights education the abbreviation on this.We are open. Any help and contribution on the running of this campaign.Of course if it is, if there are any questions or comments on the campaign are more than welcome.>> RUI GOMES: Thank you very much Maria.Sorry for, that you had to rush. I think that you provided I think very much to the point introduction to the campaign.We are running against time at the moment.I still would like to perhaps collect any feedback or any idea that you may have from your side about the campaign that has been presented.It is something I should stress, it will be mostly online.So it's not the European campaign only.Anyone in the world can connect with.And that is I think one of the challenges that we will have is precisely to integrate experiences from very different sides of the world.Any comments or any questions to Maria about this.That seems not to be the case.It's an invitation for us to wrap up the workshop.Let me tell you, let me first of all express our thanks to the hosts of the Internet governance forum, let me take that, and supporters in the room that have helped us technically to make this work.I would like to thank very much the panelists, Maria, Nicola and Ala'a for having introduced these issues.I think having allowed us to explore the variety of matters that actually connect with this.I think the difficulty is that, or the challenge is it's not so simple.The responses are indeed multi stakeholdered, if you want, but so are they very multiple in terms of realities, di mention, in terms of impact as well and in terms of understanding, depending where you are.I think we could probably agree that education is certainly part of it, education as part of literacy, part of citizenship.Education also for people who may be have a more direct role online.And that is something that we also want to address to the campaign.But also the question of research.We need more research and more sharing of maybe what works.I think that the examples that have been brought are extremely interesting and could be a starting point to say well, in some countries we do this, others it's not possible.Interesting to know why that is the case. Because I think we also need to learn more.No question of the online off line communication.To which extent are they the same.Obviously we could say that they are the same and they are not the same.I don't know if that is satisfactory conclusion.At the same time, we need to find the answers together.The challenge, that is why I put the emphasis on the young people, I think Nicola especially brought very interesting examples.We need to find answers together with the users, together with the citizens of the internet and together with the young people.It's not answers that we have even in the council not ready made because we do not have them to start with and they only make sense if they are discussed and brought there with young people.The campaign for us is also a means for that, to find out more what young people think about these things.And because indeed the research is not so much, I would say.I don't know if you would be happy with this preliminary conclusions like this.If you would be happy, I would really very much like to thank you for your participation.I do hope that you can continue talking and discussing.It's not the end of the story.Seems like just the beginning.Thank you.>> (Applause).(Session ended at 10:45).**********This text is being provided in a rough draft format. 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