The devil will be in the detail of the 'Christchurch Call'

Wednesday, 24 April 2019

Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have agreed to be represented at the Paris summit a spokesman for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said.

ANALYSIS: World leaders and technology companies will probably reach some sort of accord on social media and online extremism when they meet in Paris next month.

But the devil will be in the detail of the agreement they reach, suggests Colin Gavaghan, director of the Centre for Law and Policy in Emerging Technologies at Otago University.

Normally, when politicians attend international summits, the text of the agreements they sign is agreed beforehand and then ratified at the meeting, rather than actually being negotiated there.

The summit in Paris on May 15 hosted by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron will be a little different from most, in that representatives from many the world's biggest technology companies, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter will be among the participants.

* Alleged attacker 'wasn't from New Zealand or Australia, but from the internet'

French President Emmanuel Macron has often brushed up against Silicon Valley interests.

* NZ privacy commissioner right to delete his Facebook tweets**

It may be one of the first times we see political and technology leaders addressing an important global issue as equal, or almost equal, partners at the table – depending on whether the companies choose to send their top brass – which is perhaps significant in itself.

But in other respects it appears the summit will follow the usual format for such meetings, with some sort of agreement being a 'sure thing'.

The drafting of the text of the accord that will be signed at the summit, which will be called the 'Christchurch Call', appears to be well underway, though that job is not yet finished.

There are clues as to what it will contain.

A spokesman for Ardern said the Government wanted the text to set out 'parameters or actions where countries and companies agree to take action'.

He also said the Government wanted the agreement to be 'reasonably specific rather than too high level'.

But Ardern cautioned that the Christchurch Call would not amount to a 'draft set of regulations' that social media companies would need to follow.

She also suggested that the focus would be on trying to prevent footage from terrorist attacks being shared online, rather than on the distribution of extremist content more generally.

'This is not about freedom of expression. This is about preventing violence and extremism and terrorism online,' she explained.

'I don't think anyone would argue the terrorist on March 15 had a right to live stream the murder of 50 people. That is what this call is very specifically focused on.'

Agreeing concrete steps to achieve even that narrow goal would be incredibly hard.

Technology experts appear in agreement that the technology does yet not exist that could have automatically identified the live stream of Christchurch shootings as a terrorist atrocity while it was taking place and being streamed live online.

There is also no need to use a large social media service, or even live-streaming at all, to distribute a video.

While Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have used video and audio-matching technology to gradually rid their websites of copies of the Christchurch video, it was also being distributed by people who simply posted links to it – hosted on nefarious websites – in their social media posts.

Just so long as people can set up websites and post content to the internet anonymously, it is hard to see how that could be prevented.

Gavaghan cautions the more people that are brought to the table, the more 'general and vague' international agreements tend to be.

The risk, he argues, is you can end up with texts that are pitched at such a level that 'no-one could disagree with them' but which don't tend to mean anything in practice.

The role, if any, of the United States in the summit will be something to watch for, he says.

'They take their First Amendment considerations very seriously indeed, and that has been a real bone of contention between the EU and US-based companies.'

But Ardern said the fact that the problem was 'extremely difficult' was not a reason not try to find a solution and many would agree with that.

Sensibly, she has also made it clear upfront that she believes the summit should be the start of a conversation rather than the end of one.

The fact that it appears representatives from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter will attend the summit is also encouraging.

That may be partly because they want to shift responsibility for solving the Christchurch-shooting problem from their businesses to governments and regulators.

But they do appear to have recognised that the game has changed.

The sheer novelty of the summit hosted by the two young politicians should save it from any risk of obscurity.

If they do look at the broader issue of social media platforms being used to propagate extremist views more generally, then the practical challenges are likely to multiply.

Material promoted by terrorist organisations would already be illegal in most countries, Gavaghan says. 'They are quite an easy target to identify and get shot of.'

But the boundary between less extremist content and legitimate political views would inevitably be hard to define, he argues.

'A lot of the casual everyday normalisation of racism and extremist views comes in at a level probably far below anyone's hate speech laws.

'The daily output from the Daily Mail and the Express and the Sun probably does a lot more to normalise racism and anti-immigrant views than some of the really extremist stuff, but what can you do? It is not plausible to ban that.'

That doesn't mean the landscape facing social media isn't, or should change, he believes.

'The days when the likes of YouTube and Facebook could take the view that they are simply a neutral platform for other's people content and not a publisher – that has gone.

'But the question is, what is it reasonable to expect them to do?'