BHR and Big Tech:

News Roundup 

Curated by Voltaire Veneracion (26 April 2022)

April ’22 Stories:

• Musk-Twitter deal raises BHR concerns

• RightsCon 2022 releases session list

• NGOs call on Big Tech to conduct rights due diligence

• Meta’s encryption expansion to benefit rights, NGO finds

• Maria Ressa, Barack Obama call for content moderation in democracy forum

Musk-Twitter deal raises BHR concerns

Human rights groups fear the rise of hate speech on Twitter’s platform after Elon Musk’s takeover of the company.

Musk is a self-described “free speech absolutist” who has been critical of Twitter’s policies on content moderation.

Among the groups that want to keep Twitter’s most vulnerable users safe through content moderation are Human Rights Watch (HRW), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Amnesty International (AI) USA.

Read the full Reuters report today here.

RightsCon 2022 releases session list

RightsCon, the world’s biggest gathering of digital rights defenders and other stakeholders, has published its program or session list here.

The public may view the title, host, format and program category of the 6-10 June 2022 summit’s over 500 sessions on such themes as Artificial Intelligence, Governance and Elections, and Privacy and Surveillance.

Get free or paid tickets to Access Now’s virtual event here.

NGOs call on Big Tech to conduct rights due diligence

In a joint letter dated 13 April 2022, Access Now, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and 29 other NGOs called on Twitter, Meta, Google, Telegram, and Tik Tok to conduct substantive human rights due diligence. 

They also asked the “Big Five” companies to ensure the free flow of life-saving information, while consistently applying content moderation policies in Ukraine, Syria, Myanmar, Palestine and other crisis zones.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) invited the tech giants to respond to the coalition’s letter. Twitter sent a response (albeit a two-sentence one), while Google, Meta, Telegram, and Tik Tok did not.

Read BHHRC’s developing story timeline here.

Meta’s encryption expansion to benefit rights, NGO finds

Meta (formerly Facebook) published last 4 April 2022 the findings of its commissioned human rights impact assessment on its plans to expand end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default to Messenger and Instagram DMs (direct messages).

The multinational technology conglomerate released the report after The Washington Post published a feature on the landmark study conducted by Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), an NGO promoting corporate social responsibility and- according to writer Joseph Menn– a reputation for independence.

E2EE technology, says Menn, “prevents anyone without direct access to the devices of the sender or the receiver from viewing messages.”

Meta paid for BSR’s study from 2019 to 2021.

BSR’s assessment concludes that expanding end-to-end encryption would enable the realization of a diverse range of human rights. It also recommends integrity and safety measures to address unintended adverse impacts to human rights.

Of BSR’s 45 recommendations, Meta says in its response that it would implement 34, partly implement four, assess the feasibility of six, and take no action on one.

Read the complete human rights impact assessment on Meta’s encryption expansion here.

Maria Ressa, Barack Obama call for content moderation in democracy forum

Former US President Barack Obama and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and journalist Maria Ressa discuss the threat disinformation poses to democracy in the first part of a conference streamed live from 6-8 April 2022 by The Atlantic and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

Maria Ressa used her media company Rappler’s in-depth analyses of coordinated disinformation in Philippine politics to highlight the importance of social media’s content moderation and respect for human rights. 

Putting political disinformation in the global context, she reminded her mostly American audience that US elections are coming soon.

Anne Applebaum, David Axelrod, Jeffrey Goldberg, and Adrienne LaFrance also spoke on the first day of the conference.

Watch the event’s recording here.