 with, oh, sorry. Hello, my name is Courtney Raj and I'm in the Senior U.S. and Technology Policy Advisor for Article 19 in the United States and I'm delighted to be here today at this panel organized on the sidelines of the Summit for Democracy during the Civil Society Forum. We are going to discuss today over the little less than an hour the intersection of technology and freedom of expression. Specifically, we are looking at how technology and freedom of expression are both great enablers but also great challenges. So technology is a great enabler of freedom of expression but it also poses new challenges and amplifies old ones at the scale and scope of communication technologies expand. The dream a decade ago of social media and digital communications heralding a new era of citizen engagement and democratic promise has been shattered by the monopolization of the information system by a handful of platforms whose design and approach has deepened polarization, nurtured extremism and provided new tools to those in power who would manipulate and control the public sphere. As recognition that self-regulation is insufficient to protect against harms from genocide, to terrorism, to prolific harassment, governments around the world are exploring how to regulate the intermediaries we depend on to express ourselves in the public sphere. We are going to delve into these issues today, talk about the legal approaches being taken by democracies to regulate expression, self-regulatory efforts to combat disinformation and extremism and rethinking liability and accountability regimes all in the challenge of protecting freedom of expression for all. What are the trends and the sticking points and how can democracies ensure they protect freedom of expression? We're going to get into this now with our three excellent panelists Craig Newmark, Vivian Schiller and Barbara Boroskva. So Vivian Schiller you are the director of Aspen Digital and have a story career in journalism and technology including as global head of news for Twitter, worked at NPR, New York Times, etc. You recently headed a commission on disinformation or sorry a commission on information disorder and you can explain why we think about it information disorder versus disinformation. Could you tell us about why did we need that commission and what were the main findings? Sure. So first of all we called it information disorder rather than the more colloquialness and disinformation because we wanted to take a more expansive look at the issue. Not just the pieces of harmful content but why we are suddenly in a situation in the United States and around the world where the truth is being evidence-based reality is being undermined whether it's about COVID climate change, harms to underrepresented communities, elections, democracy and more. It's a crisis. And so this group came together and I should say the work of this group was informed by the global context but focused on the United States to try to come up to sort of call the best ideas that are out there from researchers, policymakers, some of the good work of tech companies and more to try to come up with a portfolio of actionable solutions that might make a dent in the problem. So the commission bundled of the recommendations around three priorities, reducing harms, increasing transparency and building trust. So I don't know that we have time to go through all of them but I'll just mention for example in the category of increasing transparency those included recommendations about protections for researchers and journalists to access data through online platforms and enabling and empowering and frankly enforcing tech platforms to provide that non-personally identifiable public data for study to understand some of the roots of how content travels and how harmful content is being targeted. Some of the other recommendations specifically again about increasing transparency include recommendation to require platforms to publish information about high reach content including the account reach and impression data. Also another recommendation that would require platforms to disclose their content moderation policies and practices and share a limited time archive of content that's been taken down because of those policies and just one more in this category and I'm happy to go through all of them if we have time is about ad transparency. This requires platforms to disclose information about all paid ads and paid promoted posts on their platform. This would help us identify which communities are being targeted by whom and with which content. So that gives you a little bit of a taste and if we have time I'm happy to talk about some of the other recommendations. Thank you so much Vivian. One of the series of recommendations in the report is targeted at the media recognizing that the media are both a standalone field but also deeply implicated in how information circulates online, what information circulates online, etc. And I want to turn now to Craig Newmark who is perhaps most famous for creating Craig's list which has in some cases been linked to the decline in classified advertising and the economic structures that underpin journalism. But on the other hand you're also the founder of Craig Newmark Philanthropies and you have put your money where your mouth is one might say in terms of supporting journalism. I understand that you know you're very interested in some of the antidotes to the information disorder that we've just heard Vivian talk about including some of the proposed solutions. What do you see as the biggest two or three challenges that we're facing right now in democratic countries as lawmakers in the media try to grapple with the challenge of the technologically mediated information environment that we're in now Craig? Well first the effects of Craig's list on the media. I used to agree with you but recently the economists have done analyses and briefly speaking they tell me I'm flattering myself if I think Craig's list had much of an effect. TV news had much of that effect and when it comes to the spread of disinformation in the U.S. and across western democracies it appears that TV news and other forms of mainstream news have been responsible for the amplification of disinformation. That's true also of news distributors like social media platforms you know including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. So the problems have been that mainstream media and social media platforms have been amplifying the distribution of disinformation and that's the biggest problem that we have. When it comes to news media or the social media platforms what seems to be the best course of action is to remind people in news media that they are amplifying disinformation that they are practicing often something called both sidesism and practicing also something called false equivalence where they present one side of a story which is actually purely disinformation and I have a lot of faith in the people who work at news outlets and they tell me that they want to be reminded over and over again that what they're doing isn't ethical it isn't trustworthy and to help them present that to their management with the hope that their management will commit to trustworthy behavior. I'm working more intensely with people at social media platforms to do the same thing because they're pretty committed to stopping the flow of disinformation. They seem to have increasing strength in social media platforms and that strength is about to increase in the near future so I guess I'm speaking as a nerd who believes in people I just keep working with people inside organizations helping them do what they know is the right thing. I'm only committed to this to the next 20 years or as long as I live and I will do so persistently. Thanks Craig can you tell me what do you mean by that the power of these platforms is likely to increase? The power of the people who are working together banding together to get their management to do the right thing is increasing for example as they reveal what's been going on in social media platforms and newspapers. Very helpful to think about I mean to the point that these technologies are ultimately created by people and the platforms are as governments are composed of people who are doing their jobs and potentially trying to make the technology better. With that I want to turn to Barbara Bukowska who is my colleague from article 19 and as you know it's kind of Craig is talking about the maybe the self-regulatory aspect of addressing some of these challenges working from the inside out you know trying to have better practices internally putting pressure by staff by NGOs on the platforms to do better but at the same time we're seeing that regulators and lawmakers around the world are also interested in forcing platforms to be better. A lot of several of the recommendations in the report that Vivian was involved in also have recommendations for lawmakers on how to put better safeguards and protections around social media platforms and other technology platforms. So Barbara what should we be thinking about as we figure out how we try to balance between safeguarding and perhaps mandating greater transparency of these platforms while still protecting freedom of expression? I was muted so sorry I hope you can edit it. Thank you Courtney but you know I will look at what we can do from the law or policy or kind of regulatory perspective in a way that it can safeguard freedom of expression but I want to actually start with looking at the broader concepts we are discussing today and even this concept of information disorder because that principles is the fact that we have had a system where order that information was in perfect order and everything was like you know great and we are talking about post-truth as if we had ever had the period with truth I don't know when it was and also we are working with these concepts which are not legal they are messianic truth and you know and so on and you know so what we rather talk about is more information ecosystem or the information evolution right which has a lot of problems and there are really problems and there are real issues with this information or hate speech causes but we really have here the evolution of the media digital technology we also have unfinished evolution of the traditional media or transformation of traditional media and that's what Craig was talking about the you know polarization there decline of the standards media broadcast media becoming more and more you know polarized than bipartisan or partisan and and then at the same time we have public who is expected to navigate in this really complicated information ecosystem but then at the same time we also have severe economic crisis right so we have the crisis market bearers inequality in a society and then often the narrative is that it's disinformation which leads polarized society rather than looking at the fact that might be you know economic causes that divide the society and the disinformation is then a symptom of the problems we have rather than the cause so I think that should be the starting point for our discussions and also that the human rights framework actually provides us with a framework for this this issue and now like to your question what we can do from the law and regulation so here I want to highlight a few problems because the situation is really complex and what do we see when we look at the governments and you know international bodies that are trying to regulate the system we actually often see that there is more they are sending more political messages and want to show that something is done rather than investing really proper time to to look at underlying causes of these problems and really investing in finding the solutions which will be evidence-based and where we have really good good good background to think that they would really solve the problem at hand right which they are not doing so they are coming with this like partial laws this very vague laws they are trying to you know regulate certain content of speech or telling the companies you must remove this content very quickly and so on and this then leads to to very vague and overbroad legislation and it also puts companies not democratically elected institutions or courts for adjudicatory bodies who have tools and are socially responsible to interpret the law in making the decisions of what people can say and what they can't say online but also on the other problem on the other side the states are actually not really looking at the ecosystem in which these companies operate because if we look at the at those few companies we are talking about because you know there is internet and the digital companies are numerous but when we look at the problems it's really few of them Facebook Twitter Google and now like emerging ones none of these problems with this information would exist if these companies did not have the majority of the planet on their platforms and they didn't have the business model which they have at present and that business model is based on personalization of data personalization of the content extraction extraction of data and locking people in those systems so if we want to resolve the problem of this information we can be or aren't problematic content as hate speech or terrorism or whatever we must look beyond that content women must look at the infrastructure in which these companies operate address their dominance address their business model and to allow competitors and alternative players with better business model to enter to the market and also to those big companies and going back to what Craig said that the self-regulation doesn't doesn't work it's really does not work and then they will not change the business model and there there are made by the regulators to do so and then we can look at what regulation we will have that will respect human rights and will be not detrimental to freedom of expression for all of us and to the society right well I think it's really refreshing that you know finally in 2021 we are talking about the business models because I think that there have been you know people who have thought that the content moderation debate is somewhat of a you know an attention grabbing issue but not really getting down to the fundamental issues that are at the root of many of the problems that we're talking about the targeted advertising the manipulation of emotions and sentiments Vivian and in the report that that you guys recently released there are some recommendations around targeted advertising but I want to ask you you know in light of what Barbara said and also the fact that you know you worked at one of these these companies do you think that tweaks around the edges in terms of say greater transparency in terms of rethinking the business model sorry in terms of rethinking targeting advertising transparency etc is that enough to really address the challenges that we're facing and protect freedom of expression or do we need to fundamentally rethink the business model of these large you know global trillion dollar platforms we absolutely do and and you know our report gets gets into that quite a bit you know the transparency recommendations are just part of the answer they're absolutely necessary though because we don't if we can't understand it it's critical that we understand we as a society via researchers via journalists have access to the data to understand how content whether it's algorithmically targeted or that goes viral organically how and why people respond to that so so I don't want to let's not throw the baby out with the bath water by saying it's insufficient that said the report does make recommendations that have you know perhaps in your construct a little more teeth for example we have a recommendation in the united states I want to go too down far too far down this rabbit hole but there is a much talked about on the in the in the corridors of power in washington and in silicon valley and among people that study this space something called a section 230 of the communications decency act of 1996 which is quite a mouthful and I won't go into all of the details about it because it would take too long but the point is it gives platforms it also gives many other many other online businesses including news organizations immunity from the content that the users immunity from liability for the content that users might post and there's a lot to be said about why that's important and the commission does not recommend dispensing with section 230 not by a long shot however section 230 protections now extend beyond what was originally contemplated considering it was developed and designed in 1996 so one of the recommendations of the of this commission is to say the moment a piece of user generated content is amplified using ad tools that are provided by the platforms it no longer has section 230 that the platform no longer has immunity or liability from that piece of contact and further that if that the platforms algorithms or its other technology products to the extent those also amplify harmful information are also not that the platform should not enjoy section 230 protection so if implemented that would go a long way it will both protect freedom of expression which is important to every society around around the world and is particularly enshrined in in the United States in the in the First Amendment but also removes liability from that removes the profit motive for that harmful what started as free expression for it being sort of weaponized and targeted at communities to try to manipulate them really fascinating addition I think to the conversation around section 230 and the broader issue of when intermediaries should experience liability or not and you know one of the aspects I think of thinking about that and one of the differences of what you know while there are some similarities with news organizations there are also differences in that you know one of the things that defines journalism are professional norms and standards and that those are created by journalists and news organizations themselves in free countries and democratic countries and you know today when we think about kind of news integrity and trust we also need to think about that in the technological environment you know and so I and I think about that in relationship to 230 because it would seem that that might be part of how we think about responsibility but you know let me turn to Craig because you mentioned you know journalistic standards the role of the mainstream media not just the mainstream media but kind of traditional media in the in the information ecosystem there are a lot of interesting kind of news integrity initiatives how to you know indicate trust online can you talk about some of those the ones you think most interesting or promising and how that might offer kind of a self regulatory approach to addressing some of these problems there are two paths I think to this end there are a number of centic centers of journalistic ethics like at the columbia journalism school point institute the marco center who are helping us better understand what are the ethics of greatest interest in the news today like the fact that it's considered wrong to bear false witness that is to amplify disinformation or to practice both sidesism the other path has to do with getting the support of news organizations across the world getting them to commit to codes of ethics with some enforcement uh two worldwide efforts and I think we need more than one there's reporters without borders based in paris they have the journalism trust initiative which is signing up news outlets across the world to commit to codes of ethics which which encourage trustworthy behavior and then uh have enforcement regarding untrustworthy behavior the trust project in the u.s uh project unto itself is doing similar things with a more focused approach on codes of ethics and enforcement right now the enforcement mechanisms for the trust project are being put in place with journalism trust initiative just falling a little bit behind the idea is that if a news outlet or news distributor wants to be considered trustworthy they would commit to the principles of the journalism trust initiative or the trust project and subject themselves to compliance requirements and if it turns out that they're not being honest with people they can be called out so these are things that are genuinely happening um they are in process and accelerating I'm pretty glad that there's two of them because the more targets they're out there for bad actors who practice disinformation life is harder for them if there's too many targets to go after this is a kind of self-regulation I'd like to believe there's a role for regulatory bodies and governments but I do know in the u.s the environment is probably uh too toxic for them to make much progress and I am aware also of uh of countries elsewhere where bad actors have taken full control so there's probably no hope for this kind of thing and how so how does that though translate in the technologically mediated information environment where you can be the most ethical news organization have the best journalism ever but if the algorithms don't amplify that content and make that content visible if it gets drowned out through coordinated online harassment how how how are these are these initiatives dealing with that and if so how well um I do know what happens uh in some of the biggest social media platforms the problem is that they do have people who are really good at ferreting out inauthentic uh sources of information they're pretty good at identifying who are the uh disinformation superspreaders the problem is that the social media platforms don't do the easy part when they know who's uh attacking uh the u.s or any other western democracy for reasons unknown they just refuse to take action uh typically the social media platforms know who uh know who is spreading disinformation they've tuned their algorithms to amplify the spread of that disinformation but for reasons which I really don't understand they make things worse by tuning their algorithms to spread disinformation why I don't know you'd have to talk to someone who like knows human social behavior and I'm a nerd it's like uh have you met me thanks craig well with that I want to go to tibian because you know you worked at twitter um you were the head of global news hence I would assume that you would like to have had news amplified over disinformation you know what craig's saying does that does that ring true and and when you think about say some of these new you know news integrity initiatives and trust initiatives can those are those part of the answer for tech platforms well they certainly can be I mean one of the objectives um about the uh uh the journalism trust initiative and that the and the trust project sorry they do the names do tend to conflate a little bit but they're both distinct projects going for the same aim though for both of those as well as other similar efforts is that the data that uh that that that the data of the uh around about those news organizations who are credited becomes a signal um to the platforms in terms of what kind of uh posts are are amplified or appear higher up in your news feed so that's um so that's one of the uh that's certainly one of the um objectives um I was in twitter it was 2014 so honestly that may have been you know um 18 14 um in tech years things were uh quite different uh quite different then so I'm not sure how useful that is but certainly the reason that I became part of twitter is because I uh saw it's it what it was and how it had much greater potential to be a provider of high quality um news and information there are a lot of problems with twitter today um that said I think if you compare their content moderation practices at least they're probably doing better than most and in turn you know you also have a very long career working with some of the best news outlets um in the united states is not the world which are really fundamental pillars of democracy do you think that news organizations you know okay new york times maybe is is in a different category um than most but you know can journalism compete in this environment you know is it possible to even have sustainable journalism anymore do we need to you know really figure out how to rebalance power do you think well uh a lot of news organizations are sorry for all the wind I've been I've been exiled to outside as I'm as I'm traveling for um Thanksgiving holidays with my with my family so uh uh first of all we have to try there's no democracy without journalism period full stop so uh new uh business models for news organizations are highly challenged yes the new york times and a few others are an exception but at the local level which is absolutely critical given um uh decades of uh consumer research that shows people trust their local news organizations more than they trust this uh artificial abstraction called the media um as as local news it has been hit worse than just about any other form of news it's critical that we find new ways to support news organizations to be able to bolster their their ranks to provide that critical local information that people will trust first of all when there is no local news that void is filled with um all kinds of noise and garbage that might appear on a facebook uh a private facebook news group or on next door or on what are what are now being called pink slime sites which are basically basically that means these are uh highly partisan um publishers spewing information not based in fact masquerading as local uh local news and so without high quality news the void is filled with garbage second local politicians local businesses and any other potential wrongdoers are not held accountable and also it harms a community cohesion we live in a time of unprecedented polarization um if we can't stitch communities back together which news organizations can can help do then we're in a world of hurt indeed and if we think about um the challenges that the united states is facing you know in many ways they're potentially even more acute in places that have not had as robust of an independent pluralistic media system you know democracies that are um more challenged that are smaller economic base or or new democracies you know thinking about afghanistan before the Taliban retook power or me and mar before the military coup there you know we they don't have the same power to influence platform policy they don't have the same um powerful you know media institutions lots of these you know these countries are are still developing that pillar um barbara given the challenges uh that you know many democracies are facing do we need to think about imposing more legal requirements on tech platforms you know we know that facebook has been linked with genocide in me and mar we saw how the Taliban in afghanistan leveraged social media as part of their you know overtake of power there we're seeing that now in sudan as well so is it enough to to wait you know to to let the media and and tech platforms kind of do their own thing or do we need lawmakers to step in in democracies like the united states or europe where these firms are based in order to protect democracy elsewhere well we already have these initiatives happening in the democratic country so like in the european union we have this proposal the digital services act and digital markets act which is looking at the platform regulation and the obligation that can be imposed on them on uh on by the regulators but i think that we need a board of cautions and also with this the fact that we are here talking about the democratic summit but i agree with what vivian said about the problems in the media and how the boy is built with you know a lot of garbage but i wouldn't be taking this brushstroke for the whole world because we also have the countries where we don't have free media at all right when the media are controlled by the government where independent investigative journalism can't be officially functioning or doesn't have an access to these official outlets and we don't even have to go as far as you said uh Courtney to Afghanistan we can go to Poland or Hungary like Poland all the all the local press was recently purchased by the government it's a conglomerate actually the electricity company or energy company so and for then the social media are the way to report independently and get this information to the union right so when you talk about the regulation you also need to think of what are the democratic institutions in the country whether we have independent courts whether we have independent institutions independent regulators and whether the legislation which might be okay or might be might be solving some of the problems let's say in the EU how this will be applied in some of these other parts of the world are complicated when we don't take these other issues into consideration but also what was said by by Vivian and Craig before we also have to talk about and again we are at the democracy summit that this is not just about what individual users or bad media are doing a lot of this information or half the information is actually coming from the state actors or from their proxies right and this is a new because this existed during the during the Cold War and so on but now the state obviously applies the new technologies to to to spread the propaganda even to their domestic population but also internationally and this is really the threat to democracy that this is the threat to state sovereignty and you know human rights protection but that aspect is will probably not be solved by you know human rights framework because this is about the state's relations and you know geopolitics and so on and in the past during the Cold War the OSCE there was a discussion about some you know treaties about the how we are gonna use that this you know propaganda wars and have some rules so maybe there needs to be some discussion about as well and states it's coming to some sort of a truce or agreement what they can do but when we are talking about about the companies within the states and what content they remove for the users we need to have transparency we need to have accountability but we also need to make sure that the regulation if it's imposed on them is not captured by those different state interests and commercial interests because then that will be detrimental to freedom of speech a giant challenge to prevent capture by private and governmental interests no doubt but that said I think you know it's interesting to hear I think taking kind of the global perspective and you know I want to go back to you Craig because you mentioned the role that individuals in these technology firms are playing and you know much of what we do know about the role that several major social media platforms have played in the information ecosystem is because of leaks from from employees because of research that was done internally and then leaked you know whether that's the troll networks in Azerbaijan and Turkey or again some of the other examples I mentioned I guess I would ask you you know as as we are in the lead up to the summit for democracy and President Biden is gathering together heads of state from around the world including for example President Duterte of the Philippines who of course is presiding over a you know a mechanism that is that is putting Maria Ressa one of the world's leading journalists and the winner of one of the winners of this year's Nobel Peace Prize you know facing up to a hundred years in jail is I want to put the same question to you know is it enough to rely on you know the goodwill of employees and the tech platforms themselves or do we need strong democracies to step in and and put in place some of the safeguards that will protect those in more fragile democracies or non-democracies okay there's multiple parts there I think government should help out but in many countries including the US the environments are too toxic I think for government intervention people smarter than me say there are ways that it can happen but I'd have to defer to them what I do feel is based on my own experience my own success over the last 20 or 30 years basically any of the success has been by accidentally being in the right time at the right place and in my attempt to simulate normal social behavior and my simulation of social skills I've worked with a lot of people in technology companies in newspapers and so on and just regular everyday people and whatever the only thing that ever seems to work is to relentlessly remind people to nudge them in a more productive direction that's actually worked for me again over the last 20 or 30 years it is the history of craigslist and for that matter it's the history of much of the the United States so I would hope that government intervention could help but maybe not in these trying times meanwhile I am beginning to have some success with people in the background in news and more to the point in social media platforms among my fellow nerds it just means I have to be persistent it means I have to keep working with people and just never ever stop we definitely cannot stop especially since this is airing just two days before the democracy summit kicks off and we know that there has been a whirlwind of preparations and that there will be some announcements about various commitments that will be made we understand that that is likely to come from the states themselves and there will be another summit next year in person where we'll see how those states do so as we wrap up this session I'd like to just ask each of our panelists briefly what would you like to see one or two commitments coming out of the summit from these invitees who are most of them so-called democracies some living up to the term better than others what are the commitments that you'd like to see them make with respect to protecting freedom of expression and technology Vivian I'm going to start with you and then Craig and then Barbara sure you know I could name about 50 different things but I just want to pick one that I feel like we haven't spent enough time on which is freedom of the press aside from put the platforms aside for a second freedom of the press is under incredible risk increasing risk around the world we talked about what's happening in the Philippines with the Tertane Maria Ressa we are seeing it now in many of the former eastern bloc countries Russia Belarus Hungary Poland is under threat Turkey Brazil some of the Central American countries like like Nicaragua some of the you know bubbling up while not at the same level we saw under the Trump administration of the United States and on and on and on and I would like to see strong universal support for press freedom and including some form of having some teeth for those that do not allow or enable a free press that sounds great I'd love to see some teeth as well Craig on to you I don't know a lot about how the world works in general I just know one smart thing that is that as the US government and others become smarter at fighting disinformation and smarter at protecting our company vis-à-vis cyber security that the agencies which do this get the active involvement right now of those entities in the US who are really good at respecting the wishes of embodied in the Bill of Rights of the founders of our country they need to remember that we have things like due process and the rights of the accused they need to remember that you're innocent until proven guilty and they need to seriously think about how the Bill of Rights interacts with matters like incision and backdoors the concrete suggestion that I've already made in Washington is incorporate the smartest of the online rights groups like the EFF epic CDT get them in the tent now because I think they'll help protect our country the US in terms of what the founders intended as expressed the Bill of Rights we always have to Craig I think you just hit mute as we have to remember that there's always we have to protect the the rights encoded in the Bill of Rights the rights of the accused due process and the notion that you're innocent until proven guilty well that would be something that it would be amazing if all of the countries and the leaders coming to the Democracy Summit could commit to that since that's certainly not the case with Maria Ross and so many of the other countries there I got so excited about it as you saw I muted myself well thank you Barbara I want to turn to you for the last comment what would you like to see coming out of the Democracy Summit so I think that we actually put was just to recapitulate the problem is that actually what our discussion shows is that we have a very difficult task at hand because I think the problem can be summarized with the centers that some people want the companies to protect us from the government and then some government that some people want the governments to protect us from the company so it's really a conundrum which we have and it will not be easy to come to the solution but I think that the summit is more broader than digital technology and what I said at the very beginning is that we really need to see these issues in their complexity and we really need a commitment to solving these underlying social causes which we have in this society to address inequality to address the independence of the institutions rule of law and so on because any of the problems we have with the companies will not be solved if we don't address those underlying problems but also we need a commitment to the freedom of expression standards which the governments often conveniently forget and also that the commitment to freedom of expression doesn't involve only restraining themselves and not to like arrest journalists and so on but also create this you know conducive and enabling environment for freedom of expression for different voices to flourish but also for different types of the media and given the problems we have in the media environment then as I said lack of independence but also challenges to small media outlets and this dominance to have different types of support to global civil society and journalism through helping them to sustain their work and also supporting alternative business model which will be alternative to these extractive businesses but also which will enable to people and you know communities to access information they need and then we also need a transparency not just from the companies but also transparency from the government so transparency over their actions access to information and clear communication from the states over their actions and over their policies so media civil society and citizens can also scrutinize their governments so that will be my hope that the global democracy summit commits to or it commits to these these standards. Thank you Barbara um obviously we can't just choose one when there are so many things that we really need to come out of this democracy summit and you know I want to thank our panelists and maybe I'll just add my two cents here I'd like to see a doubling down from the government to provide better access to information and not require journalists to always go through FOIA because when you have better information that will make journalism better that information will then be available in lieu of the disinformation that circulates so easily and I think that we are seeing at least in the Biden administration some reaction in terms of appointments to the FTC and the FCC recognition that there is an issue with the business model and so hopefully we'll see a commitment to some of the recommendations that came out of the information disorder commit commission report as well as commitments to engage with civil society as Craig said um and so with that I'd like to conclude and thank you on behalf of Article 19 which works internationally and domestically to promote freedom of expression and access to information and protect all of our human rights so with that thank you so much for joining us today