Samantha Power speech in Sri Lanka was 2/28/19
It’s long, but basically about social justice (excerpt below)
Full text of the speech delivered by Ambassador Samantha J Power at the event to mark 30 years of Parliamentary Politics of Minister Mangala Samaraweera.
Ambassador Samantha Power.
Celebration of Minister Mangala Samaraweera,
Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall.
Colombo, Sri Lanka
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Gratitudes:
• His Excellency President Maithripala Sirisena
• The Honorable Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
• The Honorable Minister Mangala Samaraweera
http://srilankabrief.org/2019/03/samantha-power-on-celebration-of-mangala-samaraweera-nevertheless-and-strive-to-build-a-better-world/
Excerpt:
When it comes to companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which failed for too long to grapple with the dangerous uses and effects of their products, it does now finally seem that they are seized with the abuses that their platforms have enabled. Excellent investigative journalism, public outrage, and the threat of oversight has certainly helped. But these companies need to prioritize contributing to the health of democracy as a goal, right alongside making yet more money.
I was encouraged to hear that Facebook has committed to serving up to 20,000 Sri Lankan children in a digital literacy program to be run this year, and that they are participating in the Information and Communication Technology Agency’s SMART Social Circles initiative, which aims to prepare people to better discern, as Mangala puts it, “the good from the bad, and the true from the false.”
This is important: the education and leadership of well-rounded, tech-savvy and civic-minded young people is going to be critical to reigning in the negative effects of new technologies. However, given the human consequences, this is a drop in the bucket. We need to think far bigger. In my country, I would like lawmakers and policy leaders to think about a number of approaches:
– Instituting regulations and heavy fines for failing to remove hate speech;
– Greatly restricting the ability of advertisers (or nation states disguised as such!) to micro-target users with messages designed to mislead and enrage;
– Re-thinking the type of anonymity afforded to users so as to cut down on the spreading of lies with impunity;
– And probing seriously whether some of these tech monopolies have become so dangerously big – and so dangerous to open society – that they need to be broken up.
Governments like yours also have an essential role to play. You are going to have to insist that Facebook uphold its “Community Standards” for all of Sri Lanka’s national languages, or face serious repercussions. It is simply not acceptable that Facebook has not invested more in equipping itself to monitor posts in languages like Tamil or Sinhala. A platform with this much influence and reach cannot get by just doing the bare minimum— Facebook needs to be far more transparent, so that experts and civil society can guide the company in how to do better in the context of the unique challenges Sri Lanka faces.