 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening again. We are about to start our meeting. Today's webinar series number three, the infodemic misinformation and disinformation during the COVID-19. It is my honor and pleasure to introduce to Mr. Fabricio Horschild and the Secretary-General and Special Advisor of LISTA Corporation the co-host of today's webinar. Mr. Horschild, please. Thank you very much. It's great that you're joining us for this third webinar, which I'm very honored to host together with my colleague and friend from ITU, Doreen Bogdan. And we're very lucky once again to have many distinguished speakers. You'll recall that this is the third of a series, the first two focused on connectivity and how COVID has in essence accelerated digitalization. Digitalization has proved a massive benefit to those who are connected in terms of work continuity, studies continuity, social continuity. But of course, that leaves those who are not connected even further behind. So the digital divide, the inequalities associated with the digital divide will in essence be exacerbated and we had two webinars where we came up with some practical ideas about what could be done. But of course, where connectivity happens, it's also important that it leads to content that is both safe and helpful and enriching. And of course that is usually the case with a very large part of the content that we're exposed to. But we have to acknowledge that there is also a lot of stigma, hatred and misinformation. And that's what we're considering today. Now, of course, disinformation spread through media is not new at all. It's as old as humanity. I mean, I did my studies in Germany and I learned in great detail about how disinformation and stigma contributed very much to the First World War and subsequently to the Second. I lived in pre-digital times the war in former Yugoslavia where stigma, hatred and disinformation also played a major role in the outbreak of the war and its subsequent execution. So disinformation is certainly not new. What arguably is new is the scale and speed and low cost through which it can be spread. I mean, somebody drew the analogy once of how Osama bin Laden in the pre-digital age had to go about getting information propaganda out there with videos that with huge costs and huge difficulty and huge security risks had to be taken to traditional media outlets with the hope that they would be spread. Today's terrorist leaders don't have that problem at all. They can just go online and get their content out like anybody else. The problem is that this spread of disinformation in a way that is largely unchecked can have very lethal consequences. There are studies that have been done in Germany to show how amplification of social racist, social media content led directly to attacks on sentences for asylum seekers and refugees, often with casualties involved. And that we've seen this also in COVID and I'll come back to that. Of course, the key question that always comes up is, well, how do you contain the spread of disinformation while upholding the freedom of speech? I have to confess, sometimes I think the complexity of that is over-stated. I mean, traditional media, at least in countries with the history of freedom of speech, have been long negotiating the balance between upholding the diversity of opinion and diversity and freedom of speech while ensuring content is moderated and responsible. So that is not a new problem either. And obviously with some pitfalls, it has been negotiated by traditional media in many countries for decades. So I think we should also be cautious about seeing it as a new problem. And I think we should also be cautious. And of course, this is a personal opinion. The freedom of speech is often used as a mantle for spreading hatred and distrust. And I just think in America today how many people believe that President Obama is not an American citizen and was born elsewhere and all the conspiracies associated with that. Because under the banner of freedom of speech, the idea that he does not have an American birth certificate has been given complete free reign in a completely unmoderated way. So the banner of freedom of speech can actually be used to suppress the truth. And so I think one needs to be a little bit careful. You know, Ricky Gert Javez, who we all watch more Netflix these days, and I've been watching Ricky Gert Javez, the UK comic. And he makes the point that freedom of speech entitles us to our own opinions, but it doesn't entitle us to our own facts. Nor to our own science. And I think we have to be aware of that distinction. I mean, I'll tell you a tragic case that got a lot of coverage here was that of a preacher, an evangelist preacher, who disregarded all the COVID warnings and went on holding services and avoiding social distancing. Only himself to contract the disease. And he died. And there were, I watched an interview with his children, which was really heartbreaking where the children said, the problem is we don't believe the media anymore. The problem is we don't know what to believe. So all the media is full of lies. We don't know what to believe. And when we've reached that stage where the, for the public at large, there's an inability to distinguish between what is truth and what allies because everything is possible with no moderation, with no content control, with no authority making any attempt whatsoever to distinguish between what is false facts and what is truth. It's extremely dangerous. And that's a little what happened to that specific family with very tragic consequences. So I don't want to preempt the many great ideas that will come from our speakers out of this session, but I think something's already clear. We do need better user education. There's no question of that. But we also need better moderation of content on platforms. And I think a lot of that has happened. There have been big advances in that respect around COVID. And then I'd like to put out a point out that I heard from a Harvard professor who studies this who made the point that as important as user education is that one of the problems is the economic model that underpins platforms, that in essence privileges sensationalist and often false content. The economic model is we go on these platforms and it's free. But of course, it's not free to the platforms. They have to create an infrastructure to do that. And that is all financed through advertising. So platforms have been interested in keeping us hooked as long as possible to be exposed to advertising as much as possible. And the best way to hook us is through sensationalist content where narrative is privileged over truth. And that leads to a distorting factors coming into the content. Now that may be a slightly controversial idea, but it's certainly there out there among those who studied this seriously. And something I think we also need to consider. But I'll leave it there and I'll hand over it to my dear colleague Doreen. And I just like to thank also my UN colleagues UNESCO and UNDP who are going to be in on this. And I look forward to a very rich discussion. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much, Fabrizio. Good afternoon, good evening and good morning everyone. Fabrizio has raised some chilling points about the nature of information sharing during a global crisis. And in times of public panic, rumors are quickly born and have quickly multiplied. It's a phenomenon almost as old as language itself. And as a colleague reminded me 2000 years ago, the Roman poet Virgil observed that no other evil we know is faster than rumor thriving on speed and becoming stronger by running. Of course, our problem is that the very networks that we now rely on to keep ourselves connected during this crisis are the same networks that are supplying the speed that is nurturing the misinformation spawned by this crisis. I am, I would say encouraged by the fact that despite maybe a history of some hesitancy, the digital community has reacted rapidly and responsibly, I think. Social platforms have taken action to limit widespread information sharing. We heard from Facebook certain a Clegg of actions that Facebook was taking to remove false misleading COVID related posts to also strengthen their team of fact checkers. They're also partnering with WHO to share reliable health updates. We know that Twitter, Google, and YouTube have also pledged to remove false information from their feeds, to remove links to fake news, and also to take down inaccurate videos. However, with all the will in the world, taming this huge, what we would call digital octopus has proven more challenging than we ever expected. Forbes recently noted an Oxford study revealing that anywhere from a quarter to almost two thirds of false and inaccurate COVID related content can still be found on the main social platforms. One well-known example of particular concern to my organization is the rumor alleging that 5G is somehow responsible for COVID. This has resulted in dozens of 5G masks being vandalized across Europe in the need for rapid intervention by bodies like ITU, GSMA, WHO, to debunk these false claims. Will this be enough to stem the tide of misinformation? I would say I fear no. Two weeks ago, the Broadband Commission launched an agenda for action on COVID-19 where we stressed the need to empower people with quality journalism and evidence-based information to promote media and information literacy to detect, and Fabrizio, you alluded to this, the importance of being able to detect misinformation and also to advance understanding on the dangers of sharing falsehoods. We know that digital networks can be an extraordinarily powerful force for good in rapidly disseminating accurate information across communities, especially in emergencies, but what about the 3.6 billion who still lack access to the Internet? The WHO, ITU, UNICEF, and telecom operators are trying to address this issue by teaming up with the operators, as I mentioned, to share updates via SMS to reach an estimated 2 billion or so people that are still using 2G phones. So we're sending out health updates on COVID-19 through SMS to tap into that market that is still using 2G phones. We're also encouraged to see some pretty cool things happening in Rwanda and other countries where they're using drones to broadcast public information to help keep communities safe. And I do hope that my colleague and friend Guy is going to tell us a little bit more about what UNESCO is doing and its partnership with radio stations to make broadcast quality COVID-19 information freely available in multiple languages. This current crisis is an opportunity to learn what works and what doesn't so that we can understand how to use the tech equivalent of social distancing, let's call it maybe digital distancing, to actually stop viral misinformation in its tracks while at the same time harnessing the reach and ubiquity of technology to promote public health and safety. I'm really excited about our discussion. It is so timely. We have a stellar lineup of panelists and of course we have two great strategic partners, as Fabritio mentioned, UNESCO and UNDP, and we have an awesome co-moderation team my two colleagues and friends, Robert Opp, the chief digital officer at UNDP and of course Guy Berger, the director for strategies and policies in communications and information at UNESCO. And with that, I will hand over to Robert and Guy to get us going. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, esteemed participants, dear colleagues. It's a real pleasure to be here, but I should have a caveat just to begin with, because as co-organizers we are rather cognizant that you have two male moderators. However, please be assured that our lineup of speakers by design has really intentionally corrected that imbalance. So let me begin. UNESCO, because of our work in freedom of expression in media and internet, we've been doing a lot of work on this topic, including the gender dimensions of it. We note that the World Health Organization has, of course, called this critical period an infodemic by which they say there's true and untrue content and it's difficult to distinguish the facts from the fabrications in it. And we quite agree with that. Going a bit further, we note that there's a bit more that meets the eye because between what science knows to be true and what science knows to be false, there are also still many unknowns. The difficulty is that some people are not only promoting falsehoods, they are presenting the unknowns as if they were known. Now, in that mix, UNESCO believes that freedom of expression is a rat and it's also a powerful tool for countering the pandemic and countering the falsehoods, including the falsehoods about the unknowns. As Dr. Renew mentioned, we've been working a lot with radios around the world to supply content that is factual, that is accurate about how to protect yourself, about the real science behind what we know. We've also been doing a lot of work in media and information literacy with a slogan, don't go viral and think before you click. So our support for freedom of expression as a rat is dealing with the problems of false content, these problems which, as everybody knows, can and do have life and death consequences. So I mentioned very briefly that we have published two policy documents recently and I will paste the link in the chat shortly. These two policy briefs unpack what we call the disinfodemic, which is a toxic mix of the malicious disinformation and the unwitting misinformation. What our UNESCO policy briefs point out is that exactly the same content can function as both. For example, alleged cures can start as an act of disinformation like with scammers who are promoting the sales of fake products and the identical content can then be innocently shared onwards by people with helpful motivations and that becomes then an act of misinformation. At the same time, what we can see in this is that irrespective of the intentions, which are not irrelevant to how we address them, how we address the problems of this and misinformation, irrespective of these intentions, the falsity of the content can cause real harm. Now today's discussion is a chance to dissect and dismantle this disinfodemic and to share the good practices about how different actors are trying to engage with it. So in the structure of today's webinar, we have speakers and then we have some respondents and then we'll have an open Q&A. And in this structure, we'll look at four points. So very simply, we'll start looking at the big picture of the issues involved, some of which have been touched on. Then number two, we'll go to the supplier side of this infodemic. Then we'll go to the transmission side and lastly, the reception side. So to repeat that, the big picture, we'll start with, that looks at the issues of the norms that are global, national, once at stake here and how we can uphold freedom of expression and also deal with disinformation and misinformation. Then we'll move to the supplier side and we'll look at increasing the production of information as against the disinformation and misinformation. And we'll look at the supplier side in terms of how people are trying to not only increase production but also decrease in disincentivize when it comes to production of disinformation. So we'll tackle it at source. Then we'll come to the transmission side. And the transmission side, we look at interventions in transmission, which is denying the oxygen to the distribution of disinformation and misinformation. And equally in transmission, we'll look at how can those actors there promote the availability and the status of real information, especially quality journalism. So that's tackling a distribution. And then the last moment, as it were, that we look at is the audiences. When people receive consumer and process content, how can we help people spot the difference between information on the one hand and this and misinformation on the other hand, and how they can act wisely. So that's tackling it at the audience level. So to kick off the discussion, where we're going to go through these four points, I pass the floor to my colleague, Robert from UNDP, and he will make a couple of general remarks. And then we'll start off with a big picture. So over to you, Robert. Thank you. Thank you, Guy. And thanks to Fabrizio Berlín. As always, it's great collaboration to work on these webinars and some of the issues that are really the most pressing in the world today. I don't want to repeat what's already been said because I think the opening remarks from our other speakers have been very comprehensive. I would just add simply that at the United Nations Development Program, we are hearing from a significant number of our 170 country offices that misinformation is really and truly a pressing issue for them. In over 40 countries, we're working with governments that are interested in strengthening communication, messaging to people about COVID-19 to really establish those credible channels that will fight the disinformation and misinformation. It's absolutely critical that we get out there and support in terms of both the role of governments, civil society, UN organizations, and private sector. And that's precisely what we're bringing together here today in terms of a great lineup of speakers that we have. Guy has already gone through the structure of the conversation and I will actually just take us straight into the first part of the conversation now, which as he mentioned really focuses on the big picture. And the first issue is around some of the specific communication challenges the countries are facing when it comes to COVID-19 and the disinfo pandemic as the Secretary-General has called it. Our first speaker today is her Excellency Ambassador Elizabeth Thichy-Fieselberger. Ambassador Thichy-Fieselberger is President of the Human Rights Council. So it's an enormous honor for us to have her with us today. Ambassador, you've called attention to the dangers of misleading information and the potential for hate speech related to COVID-19 in increasing discrimination and scapegoating. So from your perspective as President of the Human Rights Council and from a global norms point of view, what are some of the challenges that you see globally related to COVID-19 and the pandemic and the misinformation pandemic? Good afternoon. Very happy to see many familiar faces even though it's only on the screen. And thank you very much for having me at this important discussion. When I listened to Doreen, I thought that the Director-General of WHO who is equally based here in Geneva, Dr. Tedros Gebreyesus, I didn't know he was quoting Virgilis when he said that fake news spread faster and more easily than this virus does and it's just as dangerous. Now what is it all about? The corona crisis is a highly complex situation and people feel that. But at the same time, there is a kind of spontaneous longing for easy explanations. And for some reason people prefer to be told to them by somebody they know than to the scientific evidence which they get from somebody they don't know. This gut reaction is being exploited by politicians, by media people, by bloggers, even by search machines and of course by people who want to make money. The corona crisis is a great opportunity for people who want to scapegoat, who want to sow discord, who want to spread conspiracy theories or simply present themselves or their own political or economic system favorably at the benefit of somebody else and maybe distract attention from some mistakes which they might have made. Now this infodemic, as you call it, encompasses many aspects of the corona crisis, its origin, its spread, the incidence of the illness, the symptoms, action taken by governments as well as cures. And as we have all seen, some of the cures proposed by way of this information really show a sense of humor. So I'm not going to comment on that. But we are seeing at the same time in this crisis that the internet is more important than ever because for many people in a situation of lockdown or quasi-lockdown it is a kind of lifeline. So one could look at all of these issues from a wide variety of angles and this will be done during this webinar. I am going to focus on the human rights aspects. And I will start by saying that there is a lot of human rights which are involved one way or another in this entire crisis. First of all there is of course the right to life. And some of this information in this case is not only unpleasant or a nuisance but it really is threatening lives. Which is why the right to information and that is correct information is so important in this context. A group of special reporters on the freedom of expression from the United Nations Human Rights Council but also from OECE and from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have got together and defined together that the right of information also involves the right to seek, receive and import information. And WHO adds that that includes risk information. What we also see is that women are particularly hit by the corona crisis disproportionately actually and so are children. That has to do not only with an increase of domestic violence in unstable families but also in a situation where children no longer go to schools because they are locked down and very often lose their jobs because often they are the first to lose jobs but that means that they are losing their right to information as well as their right to independence. All of this is even more true for vulnerable groups like older people, people with disabilities minorities, indigenous people refugees, migrants people who live in extreme poverty who who live in countries which had a humanitarian crisis before the corona problem started. We have seen that the majority of governments worldwide have taken corona related measures all of which had to make some kind of trade-off between lives and livelihoods between health and personal freedoms like the freedom of association and the freedom of assembly and we have seen that given the choice people tend to accept these limitations. But there is a danger that politicians might find these limitations very attractive because for them they offer shortcuts. A group of human rights experts have come together on the 16th of March and issued a statement where they defined very clearly restrictions and I quote restrictions must be motivated by legitimate public health goals and should not simply be used to quash for example dissent. They must be necessary, proportional and non-discriminatory. And the Human Rights Commission of the Council of Europe put it very clearly that combating disinformation must never prevent journalists and media actors from carrying out their work and may not lead to content being unduly blocked on the internet. We are not sure this is being respected everywhere. What we are seeing is there are lots of additional cyber policing and surveillance technologies well beyond what appears to be necessary. We are confronted with the phenomenon of official narratives and those who question them being the subject of detentions and prosecutions and other unfriendly measures even. We see that a lot needs to be done to counter this infotemic. And if we ask what are the things to do I think things have to be done at various levels. First of all they are governments. Governments and legislators. They must make sure they respect the three criteria necessary, proportional and non-discriminatory measures. Some experts say that penalizing deliberate misinformation would be disproportionate. They think one should rather revert to the tools of civil law things like consumer protection information starts to endanger lives that might be a different story. I can see the moderator raising just to find that there is a job to be done for governments. There is a job to be done by companies because they have to know what content to take down and they should make transparent the algorithms they are using for that. The Human Rights Council which I have the honour of chairing is a huge machinery which encompasses governments international organizations, civil society but also independent experts and of course there is the High Commissioner for Human Rights who has spoken out on the corona crisis and who keeps analyzing what is going on and so do these special mandate holders. On the whole 70 special reporters who serve the Human Rights Council who help to get information from all over the world including regions which are difficult to access. I think all of this constant vigilance is very important. I found a phrase in a newspaper recently which I like very much and I am going to quote it there for what needs to be done in this case it should be like a safety belt and not like a handbrake. Thank you very much. Thank you Ambassador and yes I forgot to mention our rules of the game we have asked our guest speakers for four minutes of intervention and when we hit four minutes I will be a guy and I will be putting up our hands so Ambassador apologies to you and to other speakers when we do that it's not to be rude it's simply to try to keep us on time but thank you so much for those globally focused remarks that are really indicating some of the issues that we have to address and as I turn now to our next speaker the right honorable Lord Newberger of the UK Lord Newberger thank you to you for being with us today you've sat on some of the most significant human rights and constitutional law cases in the UK you are currently chair of the high-level panel of legal experts that has been set up by the media freedom coalition how are you and the panel of legal experts viewing this issue of misinformation and COVID-19 from a legal perspective? I think if I can approach your question sort of fairly, initially fairly generally in the short time you quite rightly have allotted me the COVID-19 pandemic emergency has been cited by governments across the world to justify the introduction of measures which in normal circumstances would unacceptably encroach on fundamental human rights including in particular freedom of expression this is understandable and it can be justified but only if the measures are reasonable in themselves involve the minimum possible interference with fundamental rights and come to an end once the emergency abates Article 19 for instance of the international covenant on civil and political rights permits restrictions to be imposed and I quote for the protection of public health if they are and I quote again necessary and proportionate now misinformation is an understandable target for legislative action and when that information involves clamping down on statements which risks people's health like encouraging as Guy has mentioned people to treat themselves with treatments that don't work or even harmful dare I mention bleach statements which incite attacks on properties by falsely blaming them for the pandemic or statements which incite attacks on property by suggesting for instance that 5G masks somehow spread the virus as Doreen has mentioned one can well see why restrictions may be justified but it's always important to remember I think that freedom of expression is not limited any legislation to cope with the virus doesn't leave a permanent scar on freedom of expression even more we have to be careful that the crisis is not unjustifiably invoked to justify legislation which stifles justified criticisms of governments or which in other ways encroaches on fundamental freedoms in ways which in truth have little to do with the crisis or even which go further than is needed with the crisis particularly relevant I think for present purposes as truthful speech honest opinions genuine debate and even reasonable questions are suppressed false information whether from governments or others can flourish in other words unjustifiable restrictions clamping down on the supply of lawful information questions and debate enhances the deleterious effect of this information which we're so concerned with it would serve to worsen the infodemic and even well drafted and sensible legislation which properly deals with the crisis should contain a sunset clause to ensure that it becomes history once the crisis has ended so dealing with the present crisis does involve encroachments on our liberties which would normally be unacceptable that's a price worth paying but like with any purchase we should pay as little as possible and we should also remember another price which is encapsulated in the well known statement that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance I have as Robert has just said the privilege of chairing a high level panel of legal experts on media media freedom set up before the present crisis was even a glimmer in anybody's eye we are preparing reports on various important issues to ensure guidance to countries and governments and others about the importance of freedom of expression and remedies for when it's broken and attempts to ensure consistency across the world we have in light of the present crisis issued a brief statement about freedom of expression a couple of days ago and it remains as important now some might say even more important than the present crisis than it ever has been thank you very much thank you so much lord nobler for speaking about the balance between personal liberties and what we need to do as a society and a global society our next speaker is mrs mercedes aramindia she is president of the unidad regulator of the servicios de comunicaciones in the government of borguare mrs aramindia thank you for being with us we would like to hear your perspective from the government perspective we at the united nations development program have been working with you on a lot of misinformation issues more related to national elections but now turning to the covid-19 pandemic we'd like to hear your perspective from a national government trying to ensure that citizens have access to credible sources of information and yet are protected from the negative effects of misinformation mrs aramindia hi thank you for the presentation good morning good afternoon and good night for others well first I would like to start by thanking for the invitation it's a pleasure for us to participate in this conference and share our experiences secondly I want to celebrate this kind of instances which are essential for the development of the ecosystem for the exchange of views and the ability to work together the first cases of covid-19 were detected in uraway on march 13 just days after the new government assumed its functions on march 1 immediately the government announced a national health emergency plan and different measures such as conduct and awareness raising an information campaign explaining the characteristics of the virus and how to prevent the spread since the first moment the government emphasized the importance for the population to assume this situation following the recommended guidelines and trying to show in an easy way the seriousness of the situation the principle was to report explain and verify everything that is happening linked to covid health, social and economic aspects with transparency and continuity in this sense press conference were held daily giving technical details and all verified information of the virus also the government continuously worked and dialogue with various actors generating valuable and verified information together with private actors and civil society developed specific communication campaigns and a free application in which all the information was reported being easily accessible to all likewise telemedicine was enabled through the app allowing people to make inquiries about their symptoms sending the information to the users health providers and monitoring fortunately there were no serious problems related to the lack of information or fake news that affected the plan or had repercussion in society nonetheless the government is doing a specific public campaign asking people to be conscious and share only real information because of the risk of spreading fake news in this sense as you mentioned it is important to mention that on April 2019 in Uruguay the political parties signed an ethical and political pact against false news in which they agreed not to generate or promote false news or disinformation campaigns to the detriment of political opponents and also they committed to promote among their affiliates the need for good co-existent practices in the management of social networks it is important to say that it was this pact it was a result of a multi-stakeholder work done between main Uruguayan political parties with United Nations, UNESCO Azure Foundation and Apple also it's interesting to said that some initiatives such as verifika.eu arise to help people to verify if some information was true or not. In short the response consisted among other aspects of coordination clarity and unity in the message constant work with the whole society making use of technology, measuring, investigating and helping the entire population through various channels overall the best way to fight disinformation is with information coordinating and working together with all the ecosystem and using technology and digital media which are great tools to be closer and that help us to universalize the access to information. Thank you. I'm pleased now, thank you for those comments from the government perspective. I'm pleased now to hand back over to Guy who's going to take us to the next section of our speakers. So thank you to that first section of speakers and of course we did deal with the big picture we heard about norms, we heard about laws, we heard about regulation and about self-regulation. So that's super that sets the context. So the sessions that we're moving into now are going to look at the question of transmission and production and how those deal with information and disinformation. So I want to just start with the question that we have here Monica Becker who's the Vice President of Global Policy Management from Facebook and we have Irene JLU Google News Lab Lead from Asia Pacific Countries and I think it's super to have you colleagues, thank you for being with us. I know that you're involved in a lot of different aspects that you impact on production, you impact on reception of audiences but you're also at the center of transmission. So let's focus on that. It's clear from a few limited figures that have been released that Facebook said it removed in March 40 million problematic posts related to COVID-19 and Google has said that you have blocked, well you are blocking 8 million scam emails about coronavirus every day. So it seems that there's a massive scale there and I think it would be great for us to hear about how significant the scale is in terms of your total content and if you can give us a bit more granular information although time is tight about for example, how much you label, how much you delete if you have anything to say about the formats, video or text is mixed also with hate, what's the uptake do you have super spreaders, what are the inauthentic accounts? Now that's a lot to ask you in four minutes each but please select the most interesting perhaps the information that people don't know about yet and give us your response. So first Monica over to you, four minutes thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me here today and I'm happy to dive into these questions. It is a lot to get through in four minutes and so I'll do what I can. I lead the content policy team for Facebook that's basically the team who's responsible for the rules for what people can post on our services and there are a number of things that we've been doing to respond to the virus itself everything from supporting health and economic relief efforts and trying to make sure people can stay connected with their communities but there's also quite a bit that we are doing as you point out to try to connect people with accurate information accurate health information and to reduce the incidence or the spread of information about the virus first in terms of connecting people to accurate information we've launched a coronavirus information center that you can find through links at the top of Facebook or Instagram newsfeed and this center this hub of information has the latest news resources and tips from national and global health authorities like the World Health Organization in order to make the information even easier to find in January we started showing educational pop-ups with information from the World Health Organization and the CDC or other relevant local health authorities when people search for COVID-19 related information and we're doing the same thing on Instagram at people search for COVID related hashtags these efforts we have now directed more than 2 billion people to these reliable health resources and more than 350 million people have actually clicked through to get to more information from these authorities in our messaging products we're also directing people to global health authorities and local health ministries so they can get regular updates about the virus right now that includes authorities more than this but it includes authorities in Argentina Pakistan the UK India Indonesia Singapore Israel South Africa the list goes on connecting people to this accurate information is a top goal but we also want to make sure that we are removing misinformation that could contribute to the risk of physical harm such as the risk of contracting or spreading the virus in doing that we are working hard to ensure transparency and proportionality that the Human Rights Council President and Lord Newburger so rightfully emphasized so first of all we're removing misinformation when it contributes to an increased risk of physical harm this is not a new approach or a new policy we've been doing this since early 2018 including in the health context and I can think of one recent example is when we removed misinformation about the measles outbreak in Samoa where it could have misinformation could have led to an increase in the outbreak since January we've been applying this policy to information about COVID-19 and removing posts that make false claims about cures, treatments the availability of essential services or the location of the severity of the outbreak that would include something like physical distancing doesn't help reduce the spread or you should drink bleach or 5G technology causes the virus we've removed all of those and we've also banned ads in commerce listings that imply the same now we have to regularly update the claims that we removed based on guidance from the World Health Organization and other health authorities and anytime that we're removing misinformation from somebody we're pointing them to our policies so they can understand why we've drawn this line and where exactly we're drawing it now for claims that don't pose a direct safety risk we are still taking action this would be something like conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus what we do there is we connect people with accurate information by partnering with more than 60 fact checking organizations that are certified through the independent fact checking network and then we label the post false as well and we see a very low click-through rate once we have labeled things as false finally we're also trying to block ads that are attempting to exploit the crisis for instance ads that contain misinformation or ads or organic posts that are trying to sell medical masks hand sanitizer, service disinfecting wipes COVID-19 tests we've got teams that are working on all of these aspects but it really is a moving target this is a dynamic situation every week there's new information from health authorities and every week the needs of our community change we're very committed as a company though to staying abreast of the latest developments with the virus and with the online speech that we're seeing that we can help do our part to make sure that people are coming through this crisis safely thanks that was really interesting and I think people will also very much welcome your commitment to transparency and I think we look forward to more statistics about particular actions you're taking on that but you're clearly very busy and you packed it all into four minutes so thank you so much so let's move on to Irene then so Google what are you doing at the level of email the level of search and maybe you also want to mention something about YouTube all in four minutes Irene over to you sure good evening everyone from Singapore just a quick note is storming like crazy I said so if you hear thunder and lightning nothing terrible is happening it's just the weather but thank you very much for having us here I'd love to talk about kind of what we're doing as Google by way of introduction my name is Irene Liu and I work with the Google newslet so my job at Google is to work in the field with fact checkers and journalists all around the region and I will definitely get to the products as you asked but I'd like to actually just take a quick step back because I think that one thing that to me is so interesting about where we are in this moment is that of course as many of the speakers have mentioned misinformation is not a new phenomenon and COVID-19 is the latest instance of why it's so important for us to continue this fight and Google has been working to counter misinformation since its founding bad actors have basically been trying to move up in the ranking since the beginning of the product but I think that one thing is really interesting about where we are in misinformation is that in fact while yes the suppliers of misinformation often have a motivation whether it's to sell something or to incite hatred or what not or just to troll people those who are disseminating misinformation or spreading it actually usually do it out of good intention because they want to share information with people and this coincides with the moment in time when trust in any information is at its lowest levels and so I think that this is a really important point because the fight against misinformation is not only to make everyone skeptical about what they see it's also to find beacons of trust and I think that's where Google really feels that they need to we need to serve that role you know our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful so that when people are coming to Google they're already on that mission to find information so how do we make sure that our platforms are serving up what they need and we do it in a few different ways and I'll kind of put together a framework which I think is over arching over the entire company right the first thing we want to do is want to reduce the spread of misinformation on our platforms so Guy you mentioned that our systems have detected 18 million malware and phishing Gmail messages a day related to COVID-19 we've also detected more than 240 million COVID related daily spam messages and the volume is incredibly significant in terms of search we have human raiders thousands of human raiders in local language around the world who are constantly assessing the quality of our search rankings and one thing that is very striking is that I actually learned when I first joined the company from journalism was that 15% of all searches every single day are brand new and so we're constantly trying to make sure that when someone is seeking some new information and as we know with COVID-19 the searches change on a day-to-day basis we want to make sure that that information is high quality that it serves it answers the question this the user is looking for and it's from an authoritative source in addition to that we are working to remove information that is not high quality on platforms such as YouTube you know of course search we are indexing the internet the internet which is hosted in all over the world in many different places YouTube is our own platform and so when we see content that violates our policies we do remove it and in the context of COVID-19 most of the violative content is related to our harmful or dangerous content policy so really that's really talking about content that is telling you to do dangerous things as remedies or cures or instead of seeking medical treatment and so that's one area that we're really focused on when it comes to YouTube another thing that's really important to us is to make sure that when users are coming to us and using our many products whether you're talking about search or news, YouTube maps, any product that we are providing context information where people need it in the context that they need it so for example we also work with fact checkers around the world and we make sure that the content that they are producing fact checkers as well as journalists that content is shown on all of our services whether you're talking about search or news or YouTube and really making sure that when someone's looking for information that we're providing that additional high quality authority information. One thing that one statistics what I find really really fascinating is that on YouTube they have since the COVID-19 pandemic has really blown up they made a point to create information panels to make sure that you're linking to sources of information such as the World Health Organization as well as local health sources because we know that the localness of information in language in terms of context in institutions that matter to individuals really does matter in terms of increasing trust and since we've launched these panels YouTube has delivered 14 billion impressions to those authoritative health sources and you know more importantly or just as importantly there just make this my last comment is the partnerships that we have to really foster the ecosystem to work with news organizations and fact checkers and make sure that we're building programs and supporting those efforts to make sure that the supplied information is really available to our users when they need it. Thank you. Thank you so much Irene I think it goes without saying that you know the transmission stage is probably the most vital stage in the whole process because your actions determine what gets transmitted and we understand the huge volumes of problems you're dealing with at the same time to commend you for giving attention to giving more priority and more visibility to quality information now amongst the suppliers of quality information of course is the media and I'm sure they would like you both Facebook and Google to give more prominence to them but let's hear it from Liz Corbin herself who can tell us a bit about what's happening in the media sector to strengthen the supply of information as well as their role in exposing and debunking this information Liz Corbin your deputy media director and head of news European Broadcast Union over to you four minutes please thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everybody thank you very much for inviting me here today if you don't know the European Broadcasting Union we represent 70 public service broadcasters across 56 countries so yes trusted quality journalism is something that we know something about and I'm very grateful to the organisers for putting me after our contributors from Facebook and Google because they did raise a number of issues that I can talk about as well so I'm going to be talking about fake news today that's a phrase that I noticed a number of speakers today have avoided it's not a phrase that I like to avoid because I feel that this isn't about political and academic arguments it's about what real people what audiences, what the public think we're talking about so it may sound more polite to talk about disinformation, misinformation but it does take us one step further away from the people that we're talking to so I'm going to, for the purposes of answering today's question, I would like to separate fake news into three different categories I want to talk about short-lived fake news mad or crazy fake news and persistent fake news because there are different tactics that we can use for different types of fake news so I want to look at some recent examples of what EBU members and other news organisations have been doing about them so let's look at one particularly dangerous but very short-lived example of fake news, it was an imposter tweet, Twitter account which popped up and declared that the British Prime Minister had died, this was when Boris Johnson was in hospital the EBU and a number of other international news organisations have come together to create something that's called the Trusted News Initiative Participants in this initiative send out alerts to each other to prevent the spread of imposter content so that journalists themselves don't get tricked into sharing or amplifying this content in this particular case it was the BBC which is a participator in the Trusted News Initiative particularly within hours to send an alert to the network on that, Twitter was also alerted it was a dangerous piece of content but with quick action by quality news organisation and on this occasion a quick reaction from Twitter meant that that was a short-lived piece of fake news so quick action collaboration can really between news organisations can make a real difference so then to a crazy high impact fake news and a couple of speakers have talked about it the connection the alleged connection between 5G and coronavirus it's the stuff of fantasy it's mad it's crazy but people have read this on social media let's be clear they haven't seen or read or heard about it from news organisations they've read it on social media platforms and they've believed it to such an extent that some people have been tracking mobile phone masks this is crazy but this is major real life impact so what do we do to tackle this one well real life impact means real life real headline news and that meant that the debunking of this myth has been so high profile it's been loud enough to reach most audiences but the problem with these myths is that they can resurface and we need to remain vigilant so that is also the responsibility of the platforms which host this content we've heard a bit about the efforts they're making but unfortunately it's just not good enough news organisations are working flat out to call out fake news more and more but if this content is still out there and it is we gain its strength I'd like to point you to a recent Reuters Institute survey they looked at a wide range of fake news posts which had been identified by fact checkers even after they'd been identified on Twitter 59% of the posts were still there on YouTube 27% on Facebook 24% finally and I've seen your timing in recent fake news I think you've got 5 seconds okay fake news is immune from some fact checking we need to floodlight this darkness we need to be out there with a really really prominent with trusted quality journalism and for that we need all platforms everybody to work together to improve the quality and the accessibility of trusted news content thank you thank you so much Liz that was very very interesting I'm glad to see the broadcast is so active in the space so I pass back the floor to Robert and he will handle the last part which is looking amongst others at the audience of how we can actually strengthen critical media literacy so over to you Robert thank you so much Guy we're seriously behind in our timing so I'll just forego any introductions of the subject and get straight into our next speaker who's Mr John Omo the secretary general of the African telecommunication unit to speak to us a bit about that response aspect thank you Mr Omo thank you very much the invitation I think such opportunities are tremendous in terms of dialoguing and influencing public policy and actions that our government the private sector and the civil society and our people can take in terms of dealing with the problem of disinformation and misinformation now the ATU is the regional organization in Africa that deals with ICT development and linking Africa to the world in that regard and as previous speakers have said the issue can be approached from you know the point of supply or generation of information transmission and reception from the supply side you'll see that a lot a number of governments in Africa have declared states of emergencies and lockdowns in various forms and shades some with respect to certain regions or cities and you know time within which one should not be outside one has to be at home a number of our governments have stressed the importance of working from home and that of course comes with the issue of increased need for internet services in our places of residence we live in a continent where governments are still quite trusted with information and so most of our governments in Africa do almost daily press briefs ministries of health and ministries of information virtually on a daily basis and so that provides a useful source and trusted source of information in terms of the facts in terms of infection rates in terms of people who have been found to have the virus and what the government is doing in that regard governments in Africa have also deployed a number of ways to deal with information to the public information for that matter the director of BDTITU gave the example of drones in Rwanda being used for public information the FM radio in Africa is still the most trusted source of information for government, a number of regions still lack access to internet for various reasons that I've mentioned in a short while there are a number of government and industry sats because of increased use of internet for education for online working there is quite increasing cyber crimes and so most of our governments have alerted our sats to ensure that there is more vigilance in terms of misinformation I mean misinformation and where crimes are committed on the internet you'll see that a number of governments in Africa again balancing on the need for information the right information for that matter have criminalized information and I think more so at this time for good reasons that misinformation can lead to consequences that are undecided a couple of governments have also launched fact checkers with the assistance of industry I must say a number of credible media houses have also involved launched their own fact checkers for example that happens in Uganda and Kenya now in terms of transmission a couple of civil society groups working with the private sector and governments in this regard have come up to ensure that criminal activities that deal with misinformation are reported to authorities and so quite trusted civil society organizations doing tremendous work in that regard there are also campaigns by internet organizations in terms of the content that they host and the need to fact check now in terms of reception empowering users through education again as I've said the FM radio is still the biggest media in Africa and so used quite a bit in terms of reaching out to our public and we also have targeted administrators of social media networks to ensure that they act as a gate in terms of ensuring that the networks that they administer social networks that they administer are not used for purposes of head speak now turning to specialized groups in Africa illiteracy is still widespread in Africa and the more vulnerable groups are women and children 700 million people in Africa are still unconnected for various reasons largely economic most of our rural population if at all there are phones my apologies for interrupting but would you please be able to wrap up your remarks yes I'm just about to so government has intervened in a couple of ways to ensure that there is infrastructure especially during this time to reach people who are already and reach in rural parts of Africa in that regard thank you very much for listening to me and just let me go straight to our next speaker who is Mr. Adama Dieng who is the Undersecretary General and Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide for the UN he's also the United Nations focal point on hate speech but I thank you very much Robert I think I can't but when you say that I'm extremely pleased to see that all the speakers have shown really that they are sharing a common denominator I mean what we are speaking about is of course very important how we can address and counter speech and here I'm referring to misinformation but from the onset let me simply say that I would discourage the use of the word prevention when we speak about hate speech we all know that in international law I mean when we speak about a really hate speech we are referring to those cases of incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence and also incitement to genocide therefore not all forms of hate speech falls under these categories and must be tackled through other measures and that's why I think talking hate speech means addressing it in a holistic way and in full respect of international standards and in particular freedom of opinion and expression I think this has been said and because right now of course some governments are passing legislation to address fake news address cyber criminality but we need to be extremely vigilant otherwise what we will see is simply authoritarian leaning countries using this COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to further repress human rights now I should add simply that for the UN Secretary General I think this is extremely important and right now my office is drafting a guidance on how to address a hate speech in the context of COVID-19 and I'm glad that the Secretary General will also come certainly on this important issue and as you all know one of the commitments set out in the strategy Secretary General launched in June 2019 in regard to addressing a hate speech one of the key commitment is education that is something Fabrizio from the beginning of this session highlighted education is key and for the same reason my office with UNESCO were entrusted to prepare a ministerial and inter-ministerial conference on addressing and countering hate speech through education and I think this hopefully this conference will take place for the end of this year it was planned to be sometime in June but with this pandemic had to postpone it will be having an expert meeting in Paris virtual meeting in about two weeks time now I think the other important aspect I would like to highlight is that many UN field presences are developing context specific plans of action on hate speech based on the UN strategy and plan of action and these action plans include recommendation to reach out to groups which are not easily accessible online including vulnerable groups traditional media for instance the radio newspaper demand very valuable tools to reach people in the most remote area but here my favorite tool is the radio radio is medium should not really neglect because in the most remote village in Africa everywhere people will have their radio so that's something we need to do and make sure also that the local languages are used and not only speaking about the French whatever but the local language and in this regard I was extremely pleased with the innovative way Rwanda displayed by using drums and I think that is something we have to talk about. I will stop here and I will be glad to answer any question you may have on my presentation but I'm glad also that the tech companies, Google, Twitter Facebook have accepted to join us in the United Nations early June see how they can ask tech companies to support our efforts in addressing these critical issues over to you. Thank you to Mr. Yang for his so we have nine people lined up and in order to hear all their voices we're going to have to really keep them very tight please just one thought one minute let's move on Mr. Victor's Makarov's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Republic of Latvia Hello everyone well very quickly one thought one experience that we have had we started preparing for the COVID-19 disinformation crisis well before the crisis itself began and my main point is you need to establish trust, trust in the institutions of government and trust in the media so our number one thing that we've been doing is independence media and freedom of speech but you have that you have a chance of dealing with disinformation it's not a miracle cure it's difficult to achieve but that's been our approach to things because when you have independence media then you can talk media literacy then the government has a chance of giving the citizens the vitally important information on health issues and so on and so on censorship I think is one of the worst things that can be used and restriction of freedom of speech is the most wrong thing to do because obviously you destroy the trust in the communication so no miracle cure but we are not trying to sanitize our information environment we are trying to immunize people to help them become resilient to the disinformation messages well thank you I think that's an excellent point trust so that's key for the context I think it covers everything so Friedrich Konander the head of counter influence branch Sweden I guess you're juicing content to counter misinformation hello everyone I would like to stress that this is a view from a Swedish government agency's perspective I have three key points basically I can make this as short as possible when you counter misinformation or disinformation you will have to start early it is very hard to catch up you must be able to you must enable collaboration between relevant social actors and you have to have a very long term perspective in your activities and when we've been working with this in our experience all successful myths or disinformation exploits an unexposed vulnerability or grievance in the population and to that end we have chosen a vulnerability driven analysis to understand concerns and grievances when it comes to counter myths or disinformation with the focus of understanding and mitigating the population concern this is based on the assumption that we can identify and manage our own vulnerabilities better than our adversaries and exploit them then we can take appropriate measures to credibly communicate with our population and to that end we have produced a handbook and trained our crisis management system on how to identify and counter myths or disinformation directed towards our society we also acknowledge the need for international cooperation when it comes to counter myths or disinformation coordination of efforts within the public sector but also within the private sector and organizations and we also found that the close relationship with social media companies and tech companies is very important to be able to act swiftly so to sum it up to counter myths and disinformation start early enable cooperation and have a very long term perspective thank you very much and perhaps if your resource is available your handbook can put a link in the chat so we had three people and I think they may have three quick comments to make so first of all let me ask Barbara Bukowska if she can take the floor and yes hello everyone and thank you UNESCO for inviting article 19 to make the contribution I want to just mention one thing which has not been so far mentioned or explored in a greater detail and we have heard from Fabrician from many speakers that there is a problem on the social media or how social media deal with the fake information disinformation and also how traditional legacy media can provide sufficient counterbalance to disinformation and the need for independent and free media however I think that we also have to look critically how traditional legacy media have performed during this crisis because in many instances they actually haven't provided the counterbalance to social media to inform and balance with the diversity of views and correcting the information but they also often stooped to their level and also how they actually report about false news for information and whether by reporting or augmenting some of this information they actually contribute to spread of false information and some sort of hysteria in the society so we see a lot of this happening at present and actually I think that this highlights the importance of a media outlets and journalists adhering to the highest ethical standards including equality principles when they report on Covid-19 and how they report about Covid-19 whether they do it accurately by us, whether they are avoiding stereotypes or whether they are unnecessarily reporting or referring to race, nationality or ethnic or region and also how at this time and age it's actually very important to support effective system of self-regulation and ensuring Okay Barbara, sorry I will need to catch you there but thank you for that comments from article 19 and please put a link to your report in the chat and people can go and check your report so we have Aliska Perkova from Access Now please Aliska, over to you Hello, thank you very much for inviting Access Now to this excellent event today, I will try to be brief Access Now has also recently published a report where we tackle the spread of misinformation during the Covid-19 crisis especially in the context of the state of emergency that has been proclaimed by several countries around the world. We specifically focus on the adequate access to information and its importance to fight against misinformation that if not being tackled properly in line with the democratic principles can enable the spread of online hate speech against certain parts of population as we saw across the globe. The report is very specific in that regard that we bring in several practical examples from various regions of the world and I have already shared a link here in the chat. If I should raise one more issue that maybe wasn't addressed that well today, that would be the issue of the use of automation by the online platforms during this crisis. Platforms, of course, due to the obvious reasons were forced to rely on the automated tools for content recognition in the context of Covid-19 misinformation. Often this is being maybe or there is a danger that some policymakers might use this argument as a proof that automation can provide a silver bullet solution to different types of harmful content such as online hate speech which is deeply context-dependent and or online terrorist content where we see the same automated tools often generate false positives and negatives and produce mistakes that have serious implications for the right of freedom of expression of online users. I think I have to stop you there but I think you made your point very well those are very important points. Henrietta Esterhezer from she's chair of a multi-stakeholder advisory group Internet Governance Forum. Just a quick note in my capacity as chair of the Internet Governance Forum please come to the IJF later this year in November. We are picking up on precisely these topics in various ways. There's a thematic track focused on trust. The issue of fake news has come up already in workshop proposals. National and regional Internet Governance Forums are going to have a session on the topic and high-level sessions are being organised by the host country to allow governments and companies to share lessons learned and finally I'm really happy to announce that the UK government has granted the IJF more than $300,000 to upgrade our website and sharing information and good practice particularly policy solutions will be one of the areas of the website. Thank you Henrietta so we all hear you and we will all come to the Internet Governance Forum. Robert Skinner Senior Special Advisor Department of Global Communications at the UN one minute to you please. Thanks Guy and thanks for putting this together. This is exactly the kind of partnership and conversation we need to have around taking on this misinformation situation. I just wanted to mention briefly that the Secretary General has mentioned a couple times the COVID-19 communications response initiative that we're working at United Nations which I'm working on with the head of that department, Melissa Fleming. I just wanted to say that I think there's a lot of thought on the misinformation on the health crisis which is actually where we should be right now. WHO has done a great job with that along with partners both in and outside of the UN system on this and thanks to all the partners and thanks to everyone for participation on this but one of the things that we're starting to think of is the misinformation that we know is already starting around impacts of the actual health crisis whether it's on food, economy, employment and where those conversations are going and knowing we need to get ready for that as well as the third phase which the Secretary General has talked about the recover better build back better phase and knowing that we're going to need these partnerships to continue for the long term around all these issues as we go forward and so we need partners, we need trusted information providers out there that can continue to help us through all the phases of this crisis we know what's going to go on for a long time and we need people to stick with it and we look to all of you to be a part of that so we look forward to working with all of you and being part of the conversation. Thank you Robert I think that's great we need to know the story continues Faisal Jamil your services for communities, advisor for the emergency telecommunications cluster of food and agriculture organization one minute please. Yes thank you I just wanted to bring in the perspective from the humanitarian emergencies point of view while we have a lot of conversation here about misinformation from the angle of where too many information are too much or information device from the bad intention just to put into a whole discussion the angle of people like Rohingya crisis where people cannot even buy legally a SIM card or speak another dialect of language which no radio channel actually broadcasts or outside Bangi situation where people either have digital literacy no networks solo affordability that there's not even a phone so in the absence of absolutely no information how does the rumors spark out and how does that comes into being and becomes a monster in its own we have examples from Ebola and we have situations to learn from it just to put in the perspective of humanitarian crisis I'll stop there thank you thank you that's that's super important we we have to think of online and offline offline media including media word of mouth media not just radio and broadcast and print the last intervention I'm going to give the floor to is Dr. Julie Percetti who's from the International Center for Journalists and co-author of the UNESCO community briefs one minute please Julie thanks guys so as people have been saying quality journalism is a major force for identifying and exposing disinformation agents and its distribution networks we've made that point in those briefs we've also raised concerns about the possibility of responses to the disinfidemic as we're calling it to hobble the work of journalists so I wanted to highlight those two points but another pertinent point is that there are also targets of the disinfidemic and it's essential therefore that we recognize them as potential victims of attack on and offline in association with disinformation that's been very much a feature of the phenomenon with regard to political disinformation so while my co-author and I congratulate the internet communications companies who've spoken about their great and swift if it's here to try to limit users exposure to the disinfidemic and ensure they have access to trustworthy COVID-19 information we really strongly recommend that the lessons learned during this urgent response to COVID-19 be applied with the same urgency to political disinformation and that's disinformation that threatens not just journalists and journalism but their critical role in democracies internationally so we'd like to underline that point please thank you so much I'm sure that the participants will take that and see how they can consider that going forward so dear colleagues dear participants I'm really sorry we didn't have time for the Q&A so it remains now to have the summing up phase but please do indicate your hands in the chat room and then you could send also to esteemed colleague Young Hee Kim who's been the center of organizing this and receiving all the registration so if you have further points please send them on in summing up let me just make very quick points from my point of view and I've been watching this as well I think it's evident multi-stakeholder participation is really key in this surprise surprise but it's relevant to the context to the supply, to the transmission and the reception no single actor can solve this problem we need many and we need to be able to reach that point number two we have to work on the level of norms laws, regulations, self-regulation education, journalism these are all super important things we have to build trust to the public I think that's clear we have to work across a range of fronts then I want to say that as I indicated earlier we can't reduce everything to truth and falsity because there are indeed facts and there are indeed debunked myths about COVID-19 that we need to fight but we also have to recognize there are these unknowns, these ongoing scientific assessment of the uncertainties and because of this, because everything is not black and white, there are gray areas that should not be traveled upon and so because of this there's a legitimate democratic debate about what facts are most significant how do we act in relation to them and this is where freedom of expression and press freedom fits in because we cannot allow ourselves to kill deliberation based on fact evidence-based policies and at the same time as we respect this right for debate and discussion and value it in its world for contributing to get us through this period we have to promote the facts we do know to be true while countering the disenfantemic of proven falsehoods but not treat the world as if it's purely binary and not closed on discussion and my last point is please do diarise next Monday, 4th of May there will be a super high level online discussion to mark the world press freedom day which is on the Sunday, the 3rd of May the topic is press freedom and tackling disinformation in the COVID-19 context convened by our director general of the Uzulee, it will be at 5pm at CET European time, please watch the UNESCO website for details and thank you for my part to everybody for this really rich contribution, it's really something that everybody will take away many points from. So with that I hand back to my co-moderator, Robert and I'll catch you I hope next week at the UNESCO Webinar 5pm CET on Tuesday thank you thank you very much Guy and I just want to add my voice of thanks to our speakers today who chose to spend their time with us Fabrizio and Doreen also and Junghee from ITU and Fabrizio's office who pulled this all together and to you Guy I won't sum up because I think you've done a nice job of that but my take away from this is really that something that Irene said that we need to create beacons of trust and those beacons of trust can be created from the partnerships, multi-stakeholder partnerships and cooperation of course and there's role for tech companies, there's a role for civil society, the legal authorities the regular regulatory authorities it's going to take all of us together to make this happen and the last thing is that we're starting to see of course a discussion around the digital acceleration that COVID brings this discussion has been precipitated by the COVID crisis my hope is that all of the discussions that are precipitated by COVID are actually able to be built on and carry forward after the pandemic we really need to accelerate this discussion beyond just misinformation about COVID into the political realm into the social realm to really protect those who are most vulnerable and those who are furthest behind it's now my pleasure to turn over to UNDP's Assistant Secretary General for External Relations and Advocacy Ulrika Modir who's going to say just a few words before closing with Fabrizio and Doreen Ulrika. Thank you Robert and I will do that in less than a minute because I've heard a very rich discussion and I'm very happy to see the number and the variety also of colleagues checking into these kind of discussions and that they're also more to come just on behalf of UNDP as you know we have been given the technical lead on the socio-economic response and of course as also Robert was saying Skinner we need now to look also forward into the future and we stand ready to also be that hub for these discussions onwards but also for the practical work that we need to do to support colleagues on the ground in a coordinated way as much as we can and as informed as we can the majority actually of the calls we have had with our colleagues at country level from the very beginning of the outbreak in China have all of them included these discussions about both myths and disinformation and this tells us that this is something that we need to look very much into we need to work with it right now and we are doing that also in partnership with some of the colleagues here on this call because our colleagues are calling for support right now but as Robert said let's just see how we can also bring these rich discussions forward but also more action on the ground as we develop also the socio-economic response this needs to be an integral part also in the third pillar of the response moving also also hopefully into the building back better even though we don't want to go backwards but actually building something very different and that's what we have seen so far so thank you very much for the rich discussion and I'm looking forward also to participate in further discussions and to have the platform of UNDP and the presence of UNDP to support these efforts over to you Robert thank you Ulrika I think I get to jump in now so a big thanks to you Robert and to you Guy for your brilliant moderation we were up to almost 300 participants at one point that's terrific and again apologies that not everybody got to jump in there's so much ground to cover here this is such an extremely critical issue at this point in time I think Guy and Robert summed up well for me my sort of quick takeaways collaboration absolutely essential let's keep sharing information lots of good stuff came in on the chat and we'll try to summarize that and share it back it's good to see all the actions that everyone is taking but at the same time that need to find the balance between preserving human rights and freedom of expression while tackling disinformation also the importance of old tech I saw a lot of that coming through on the chat so let's not forget about radio let's not forget about 2G let's not forget about television these where we can help to to send the correct factual information out to those that don't have access to to the internet and then of course the big point of multi stakeholderism everybody's got a role to play in this we all have to do our part from the news organizations and we heard from from Liz we need quality journalism to the responsibilities and actions of the platform we heard from Facebook and Google and of course all the different government measures we heard the norms, the laws self-regulation that's all been incredibly useful and of course the role of the individual and this is where I think Adama stressed the importance of education I think that's absolutely key we need to do more in terms of media and information literacy to detect and dispel misinformation I think that's important for all of us as individuals also as parents to help our kids through this and the last thing Robert you picked up on this as well this beacons of trust I think that that's such a good takeaway we need beacons of trust someone else called it trusted voices and I think Elizabeth you also said we need a safety belt not a handbrake and that gives me the opportunity to also give you a glimpse of what will happen next week at our webinar so join us next week for webinar number 4 where we get into the challenging issues on online safety and cybersecurity so on behalf of the ITU team thanks so much this has been incredibly rich very important we're not done digital acceleration Robert I hear you we got to get there and back over to you Fabrizio thank you very much thank you thank you very much Doreen I just like to underline the point I mean I think he came across here that the infodemic is massive and while there are many excellent initiatives to counter it it is an ongoing concern and the efforts are not yet to scale and it clearly takes engagement from many actors governments need to remember their responsibility to uphold the public good civil platforms need to assume their responsibility as media providers civil society need to play their role freedom of speech is of course key but freedom of speech cannot be a justification for indifference to dangerous and harmful content that ends up hurting people and undermines trust in science trust in institutions etc I just like to conclude by underlining the apologies to those who couldn't speak or those who were cut off I'm really unfortunate I think if we're frank some of us abused of our access to the microphone I probably abused my own time at the beginning I promise you we'll get better at this next time round I hope we won't be in a position where some of us overextend at the cost of others being able to speak I'd like to thank Doreen and ITU all ITU colleagues Rob and of course Ulrika for coming in and I hope very much to see you next week and thank you again for your engagement and wishing you all a safe and a good week the meeting now is over