FINISHED FILE

ASIA PACIFIC REGIONAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BRISBANE 2023

MALICIOUS CONVERGENCE: ADDRESSING EMERGING TRENDS OF GENDERED HATE SPEECH IN SOUTH ASIA

August 31, 2023
10:00 A.M. LOCAL TIME

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>> Again, LGBTQ plus people and women.  Obviously nothing new, but we felt that this was particularly of notice to us which is also why we approached DRF to really see if there were parallels happening across.  So in Sri Lanka according to native research one in four people a friend experienced with violence of a sexual nature but some reports also say it could be as high as 62 percent particularly including queer, trans people.  Now obviously we also have other issues with active technology (Away from microphone).  That's a vast gender gap in access to technological devices and infrastructure.  There's also a big gender gap in who is able to safely navigate the Internet and the spaces and so queer and people as is the case in a lot of south Asia Sri Lanka is behind on legislation, I think particularly the Internet has become a bit of a safe space for self facing despite facing exacerbated risk and harassment as well.
So I think after last year, after the 2020 government protest in Sri Lanka, a key part of that was the moss mobilization of protectors using social media space.  This meant that in what we call the post protest period the surveillance on the space has also increased spontaneously.  There's been a lot of renewed interest in legislating around the rumors of fake news bill.  We have a cyber security bill that's been drafted right now.  We passed a data protection bill some time late last year.  And these have cause add concern the cyber security bill for example is regulate authority which has really empowered to search devices and what they call key national infrastructure, information infrastructure which would have serious impact on international stability or all the affected functioning of the government on economy of Sri Lanka.  This is directly from the cyber security bill.  They provide sweeping powers with this broad ban of grounds for them to do this.
And of course populist politics have cited the digital safety women and children as the grounds to bring in stricter laws to the digital space.  So the in middle of all of this we had a private member bill proposed in August of 2022 to repeal section 365 and 365A, of the penal code which are used to criminalize homosexuality, to arrest, torture, like sexually harass queer and trans people in this country.  When this bill was proposed there was a lot of resistance from national level.  But what we saw on the space was social actors who were all underground in 2022.  A lot of new pages and groups set up with specifically text messaging and titles.  I'm very sorry I can't show my presentation because there are issues with the portal but there was a significant and rapid increase in hate speech, targeting queer and trans people.  Particularly we what we know is gender disinformation to target.  This included, you know, talking about how queer ‑‑ being queer and trans meant that it was a mental disorder, that it was sexual deviancy, that homosexuality was a mental illness.  There was also claims how this falsified statistics of how queer and trans people increased the numbers of HIV in the country.  Very clear gender disinformation that also had a lot of hate speech.  Parallel to this were the influx of pages and groups that were also antifeminist which was very interesting too.  This some of it sprung quite organically.  Also because a lot of women advocating were advocating for LGBTQ plus people.  Again there was a lot of conversation on the supposed impact of the destruction to culture that female anymore brought about and this really culminateed in me when comedian Natasha was faced with a wave of misogynistic threats, a lot of able list threats used all based on an out of context clip of one of her stand‑up comedy set.  Previously targeted by these same actors and the claim was and in the end she was arrested on the claim that she defamed Buddhism through her performance.  And here we see the interest in law around social media again on the basis of protecting (Away from microphone).  Again here there was a lot of disinformation.  There was one particularly concerning information that was used claiming that she tried to take her own life several times.  And how this is indicative of how the quote/unquote mentally ill were attempting to destroy this country.  Very much like the harassment to the queer and trans.  I'm almost out of time so we'll get to this in the Q&A.  I think my position here is we really need to reframe how we think about combating gendered harms, particularly gendered hate speech because no longer is it just hate speech.  I think often we fall into the trap of siloing hate speech from disinformation.  But disinformation has now become a more delicate to actually push gendered harm through but then the danger that really more than hate speech is that populist states and actually has a relationship with this information and in that sense I think so platform accountability really has to take this into account that it no longer has to be about combating gender hate speech.  It really has to look out the way disinformation is being used to push these hateful narratives.  We can get to more in the Q&A.  With that I'm going to Passover to my colleague Prahlad from point of view India.  Thank you.
>> Thank you.  Hello and good morning, everyone I'm Prarthana, point of view, an organization based in India that works towards building safe and inclusive spaces.  For my presentation I'm going to focus on gender based violence in India particularly the emerging manifestations of online hate speech.  I'd like to begin by acknowledging this is 2023 and all eyes are on ‑‑ of big tech are on a lot of south Asian, with 719 generating revenue of 175 billion U.S. dollars in 2022 expected to shoot up to $1 trillion by 2030.  So in this context I felt that it was important to look at what kind of behaviors and content are being seen and more importantly being pushed and sponsored in various ways.  I'll be looking at control of sexual minorities on social media around the time of key policy and political debate.  Also look at the use of tech facility disinformation like my colleague that was used for misogyny and talk about recommendations systems on these platforms and how they too amplify antifeminist views.  I'm going to share two stories to validate what my fellow panelist said, that is the connection between the larger project and the lack of political will to address these problems and flag the gap in platform accountability and legislative framework.  So in keeping with the trends on the global level sphere, some key flash points for new regressive patterns of hate speech in India that I've noticed were during the marriage equality hearings.  When deli had a position seeking to criminalize marital rape in 2022 it had got a lot of reactivity on social media from organizations posing under benign titles like saving the family foundation.  Were attacking feminist activists.  This is by the fact that crimes against women had grown by over 15 percent in 2021, particularly domestic violence.  A recent study conducted by Michigan university also found this action on Twitter around the case began before the actual court deliberation, suggesting that the goal and I quote is to influence public opinion around it prior to the judgment, end quote.
The same patterns repeated this year when the supreme court was hearing publications on marriage equality.  It is worth noting that the State thinks this matter should be legislated by the parliament rather than decided by the court.  So without the political will marriage equality failed also to pass and what was really interesting is that around the same time online smear campaigns from Twitter users sharing very idol posts were amplified by the recommendation began claiming that a positive verdict in this case would negatively impact the family court system.  It's not a part of Indian system but rather a western concept.  And when the chief justice very historically said that the gender should not be defined in today's world in the course of this hearing, he too became the subject of intense scrutiny.  Another instance very recently saw the use of fake news to weaponize rape.  In a state where gun violence is under way and the Internet has been shut down and this is a very important point to note as India is the world's biggest Internet shut down offender.  So in a state with no Internet for over 100 days and counting a hard copy print of screenshots section violence against women falsely reported (Away from microphone) had been circulated early May ‑‑ and I will end with an incident which gender rights based witness back in 2021 when a prominent trans lawyer and activist was relentlessly trolled online for contributeing to the implementation of the center's new education policy.  Gatekeeping and excluding LGBTQ voices and experience in spaces like higher education institutions or medical education, stem education is nothing new.  It continues even to this day but the fact that Trans activists cannot occupy space on the Internet without anonymity should really beg the question who has had the privilege of disability?  Who gets to loiter on digital spaces and express themselves freely?  And why is only a certain conception of transness that conforms to the normative idea of what a trans person should look like or professionally be doing allowed safe passage while others are objectified and dehumanized to no end.  So coordinated gendered hate speech into protecting ethno nationalist agendas such as these incidents that I referred to are often fueled by gaps in legal framework.  We'll get that to the in the Q&A.  I'm hoping for more reflection from my esteemed guests on the experiences and insights on their context as well.  About you really what emboldens such behavior patterns is the lack of basic unit of action and if we were to take a recent example, the men accused of staging virtual auctions for prominent Muslim women under get up page and the bull lye app are all out despite there being prima facie resistance again them.  The recommendation on them social media platform also working to favor or amplify or push the post that then to receive more engagement on these platforms also bringing to question content moderation policies deployed by these tech companies work.  I'll end here but I'm hoping to here more flexions from you all to see from digital right Pakistan to say some insights from her practices.
Thank you.
>> Thank you so much, Prarthana.  I hope I'm audible.  My name is Seerat, and I am in Pakistan and the gender hate speech that we have been referencing in Pakistan over the last couple of months that has just (Away from microphone).  So given some context, Pakistan ranks as (Away from microphone) connect and we rank at 26th out of 100 countries in which we see how the report focuses on obstacles to access for the Internet, vials of the users on the Internet.  Pakistan is a wide variety of problems related to the Internet around Internet shutdowns, data privacy and increasing trend engendered hate speech.  Gender minority experiences on the Internet are very different from the men in the country and they are using (Away from microphone) I don't know line most of the time and it is important to highlight women and marginalized community particularly sexual minorities in the country resort to self censorship in terms of the pictures and videos that ‑‑ in terms of the actual lived experiences that they have in their country.  It doesn't matter if a picture is explicit or not it or if there is was explicit or not.  If for instance a picture is being used without anybody's consent then it can be a problem for a woman and a minority in the country.
ERF is an organization we have a cyber harassment help line which we launch back in December 2016 and we receive a range of cases around online harassment.  We provide three basic services which are a legal assistance, digital security assistance, and psychosocial well‑being through the companions who reach out to us and since December 2016, the help line has received around 14,376 cases.  59 percent of these cases have been from women.  And it is ‑‑ I just want to highlight that this is nonprofit organization started.  We have limited resources but despite that we have seen the increasing number of cases that ‑‑ around cyber harassment that we have been getting throughout the 82 errors.  And these cases range from NCAA, NCP, nonconsensual pornography, NYC, user information, profiles, hacking attempts, blackmailing and threatening messages.  The help line has also received a considerable number of cases from the transgender community and in 2022 alone the help line ‑‑ cases and the transgender community in 2022, we had around one person approximately who reached out to us but I want to highlight that the figures that I've mentioned earlier who represent the actual harassment in the country again as I mentioned we are not a nonprofit organization and we have limited resources most people do not know that we are available as a resource to them and most cases of online harassment who are reported in the country because of the back lash.
People faced when they file online harassment complaints with law enforcement agencies in the country.
The law enforcement agencies in Pakistan are not unfortunately sensitized enough and the response they have to a cyber harassment complaint is very to the amount that you have.  It's very difficult to file a complaint in the country.  Moving forward I'd like to focus on what has been happening in terms of gender information in the country.  In 2018 Pakistan passed one of the post progressive bills in the world I think which was the transgender persons protection act.  The act itself allows transgender people equal rights to education, basic health facilities, their transgender identity on their identities and passports and gives them the right contest elections.  In August 2022 last year a smear campaign started against the act and the law itself was passed in 2023 ‑‑ 18.  So in 2022, two political parties argued that the law was against the teachings of Islam and challenged it in the federal superior court.  Now, once they started campaigning and orchestrated campaign started taking place we saw an increase and a rise in ‑‑ against transgender activists in the country and also transgender individuals in general.  We saw that there was violence online and offline and the threats were very graphic in nature and they had to on multiple incidents ‑‑ even events that were public they had to be canceled because of this particular campaign that was targeted online.  There were ‑‑ what was interesting to see was that woman influencers and certain woman figures started a page around how the ads was an attack to ‑‑ in the country and launched an entire campaign against the community and in May of this year, the federal treasury under the section 2F3N7 of the transgender act 2018 that made gender identity the right to self perceived gender identity and the right of the transgender people ‑‑ to Islam principles.  The code C Smith the sections deemed ‑‑ so a law was passed but after this orchestrated campaign online, we saw how the federal trade intervened and it actually did allow the sections 2F3 and seven of the transgender act.  And ‑‑ particularly interesting because it highlighted how it used women and it pinned women against transgender individuals of the country and used it as an excuse that if transgender individuals have access to woman spaces in the country, then woman will not be feeling safe.  This was an argument that a lot of woman influencers also took forward and which also resulted in a lot of attacks that transgender influencers and transgender individuals in the country started facing.  Mostly I would also like to highlight that most people in the country do not understand gender, do not understand binary.  Some people also use intersex individuals against transgender individuals and do not know the differentiation between the two.  So creating a bylaw creating a category biologically valid community as a foil for the transgender community.  And this is something that we have been missing for quite some time now but now there's more debate around it.  Some individuals from the transgender community also argued that they would not like to be associated with the Act.  More information and disinformation and led to more hate speech online.  Any content that we have been receiving from the transgender community we have been escalating it to social media companies.  Again, I'd like to highlight that this is something that a nonprofit organization is doing and the resources and needs and rite now the biggest challenge that we face when we too get cases like these are from the fed companies.  Law enforcement agencies and state is already going ‑‑ having to crack down against transgender individuals but we also see that big tech companies do not respond back in a time sensitive manner or do not take cases of gendered minorities or transgender seriously.  We also witness that now that a law has been overturned we would like big tech to acknowledge that the conversation around the ‑‑ this law took place on social media itself.  So social media companies have the power to influence people when it comes to gender disinformation online.  We do see with AI and algorithms being over all key of ‑‑ emergent technologies and this is something that I've also heard in a couple of other sessions that emergent is technologies but something we really need to revisit of how we're going to see it in the Asia Pacific because of the fact that algorithms and AI can also be used against certain genders and we can't rule that out at all at this point.  I think I give the floor to Rumki because I would be happy to answer all the other questions in the Q&A.
Thank you.
>> Thank you, Seerat.
So what I will be saying, that will be our reflection from Article 19, works for freedom of expression, right to information very broadly but we do focus very specifically on particular themes that goes for protection, that goes for account of ensuring, account of transparency, media, freedom, combating hate speech, sexual diversity ensuring human rights for diversified people who belongs to other identities, sexual identities other than men, women, and we work on digital security ensuring civic space, civic rights and many more.  So coming to the point of gendered hate speech in south Asia particularly in Bangladesh, I'll start sharing with you about the legal framework that does exist in Bangladesh.  If we say it helping to ensuring the antidiscrimination, yes, but it's no as well.  So there is one strong antidiscrimination act in Bangladesh as per the constitution of Bangladesh constitution Article 28.  It says that the state shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, or places of part.  And the second one is women shall have equal rights with men in all spheres of the state and of public life.  That ensures the equally created.
There is another high court read that says that issued guideline to prevent sexual harassment of women and children in all governmental and nongovernmental institutions of the country including educational institutes and it says that there shall be a committee that will be report where any women children they will be reporting and our experience, our random experience from Article 19 we did a mapping in last couple of years.  We realized that these read is there, the law is there but the execution of this law, this act is not anywhere.  It doesn't exist ‑‑ like we cannot count the percentage actually that how much it is helping ‑‑ it is being implemented.  There is another revolutionary act compared to the social context in Bangladesh that has been enacted that says in November 2013 the government announced the recognition of Hisja in all national documents those who are other than men and women actually.  The term is like female mind in a masculine body and the term that the government declared is third gender rights.  Okay, so third gender itself is a discriminatory term and it is not inclusive actually with any other sexual identities other than men, women.
And on the contrary of the constitution article 28, there is this 377 penal code that prohibiting citizen right to sexually diversified people.  So the people will be claiming ‑‑ or declaring themself expressing their identities being other than men women and Hidjras, that will be a criminal offense by law.  So it is like it's 153‑year‑old colonial law that has been carried out until now.  So these are the legal framework that ensures and, you know, prohibits the right, the citizen right, the civic right and human rights over all.  And culturally, politically socially there is some example.  I'll share with you.  There is one political party established political party and their constitution says that women in politics and leadership is prohibited.  Women shall not play any role in anywhere as leader of the political party.  So this is a systematic mechanism I'd rather say that people are working on that.  It is being nourished and somehow it does exist because of the social context.
Article 19 about online harassment if we talk about Article 19 observes media monitoring that we do conduct media monitoring on an every day daily basis and our observation says like if you go for particularly journalists, talk about journalist that is online harassment, trolling, hate speech for the women generally list and to be very specific those on the electronic media it's enormous and it's ugly.  It goes until like there is no level that can be tolerated.  And it is not been punished.  Addressed.  It is a practice that goes on.
And what we do about Article 19 actually advocates for intersectional gender approach.  That is more inclusive men, women, and any other identities that people long to and for that we recommend advocate for incorporating this intersectional gender approach in policies strategies legal framework and in practice everywhere within the mechanism workplace outside workplace in the system in government mechanism and everywhere.
So a couple of recommendations that we have been waiting for I'd like to share with you is ‑‑ No. 1 is increased capacity building on womens and all other sexually diversified people's human rights, nondiscrimination and gender based violence among key actors including policymakers, the judiciary, and law enforcement personnel.  No. 2, would recommend for mainstreaming gender and intersectional approach into the design budgeting and implementation of all policies for protocols mechanisms on the safety issue in a way that takes into account the different different risk fasters and the need to instructional inequality and unequal power relations.  The third one is about promoting broader recognition and an authoritative definition of online gender based violence in line with international human rights law.  And in collaboration with relevant stakeholders so that gendered online attacks are not disregarded normalized and rendered invisible.
Would like to recommend to sign and ratify convention No. 190 understanding the elimination of violence and harassment in the world of work which recognizes the right of everyone to a world of work free from violence and harassment including gender based and online violence and harassment and its domestication into national law.  So we'd love to address more if there is any for the question comes from you.
So this is the ‑‑ I'm opening the floor for the question and cessation.  So if there is any question, please raise your hand and we can talk.
>> Okay.  Hello.  Thank you.  This is very great opportunity to participate in as a, you know, questioner.  My name is Cameo working at open Korea as a researcher.  I want to emphasize that I'm also a feminist and I just want to share South Korea's situation related with the session's topic.  Gender disinformation has happened in South Korea either and it has been very serious social problem.  I can take two different cases.  One is the gender disinformation for current first lady Connie Kim.  Actually there was a rumor that she was a high class call girl called Julie dealing with male politicians.  Presidential election 2022 a person opposed of a woman who looked like her and several men next to her and wrote down the word Julie's man.  It was criticized her for not qualifying for first lady based on sexual purity.  Made the claim that she doesn't deserve to be a first lady.  However, it was not because of her sexual purity but because of her suspicion of stock price manipulation.  And second one is validating the idealogy of female game illustrator.  If there is a female game illustrator might be inclined to ‑‑ might be validating the idealogy of females ‑‑ if there is a female game illustrator might be her interest in feminism.  For instance sharing feminism book or the imagine of T‑shirt, white T‑shirt with the sentence princess don't need a prince, stigmatize her and ‑‑ companies to fire her so she can get a chance to renew the contract and drop from the labor market due to her bad reputation.  In south Korea is serious male centered society.  So women are always devalued with this information based on the sexuality or purity and gender idealogy.  And I've read the report perspectives on gender disinformation and I absolutely agree with the idea on the role of media houses.  In south Korea society there is also a strong criticism of media coverage that emphasize desensationalized part of the event.  However, the problem of devaluing women through sexual purity is not easily solved yet I believe that in order to solve the problem of generated disinformation we need to solve the problem of sexual purity that only applies to women.  I think the very idea of using women sexual purity's a basis of ‑‑ for attack should be neutralized.  In Korea there are attempt to break the link as a link between women and sexual purity.  Of course, it's not actively happening.  For example, relevant social societal organizations do not deny womens to have sex and argue that the society should appropriate women to desire to have safe sex as a human right.  This includes the right to take comprehensive sex education, the right to access proper healthcare for sexually transmitted infection and the right to choose to continue to terminate a pregnancy.  In 2020, there were several incidents where teenage girls were sex Lee exploited by men after sharing content expressing their sexual curiosity and desire on Internet.  Their personal information being exposed.  While young women condemn the men who committed the crime there was a criticize lack of safe spaces for teenage girls to express their sexual needs and curiosity due to the frigidities female ‑‑ should be sexually ignorant.  It emphasized that women were denied their sexual rights.  This argument challenged our society which often blamed to women were not sexually pure when they were sexually assertive.  I think yeah, that's all I can say about the question to the topic Session and I think I want to ask if this ‑‑ southeast countries also.
>> Are you asking to someone specific you wanted any representative?  Okay.  So I'll be asking on the board if anyone is willing to take the question?
Seerat or Saritha, Prarthana?  Do you want to address it or ‑‑
>> Seerat:  Sorry, could you the question be repeated?
>>
>> Yeah, actually did neutralize the sexual purity of women, yeah, in south Korea it happened already and that is not actually but, yeah, some activists think that is core solution.  So I wonder is it adaptable to southeast country because, you know, those countries are more conservative or more patriarchal.
>> Before I Tweet out to the panel, I would like to say that it is adaptable and legal mechanism is very much important to stop this practice.  You know, it is ‑‑ the best practice is ‑‑ it's an example of best practice that you have adopted it, it will take time maybe for having the implementation but if we can adopt it yes, that will be another leading way.  Yes, over to you, if anyone wants to add anything.
>>
>> Seerat:  Pakistan's experience.  I do understand your question but I do think south Asian countries and again just speaking from experience that they're more conservative in nature so it's very difficult sometimes to adapt to a lot of mechanisms that work in the southeast Asian side and I do think the context is very different because there is more patriarchy embedded in the systems that we use embedded in the statements not against woman, against anybody who does not follow the stereotypical gendered senior types we have in the country.  So I do think there is a lot of structural issues that need to be addressed in the country first and this is from the state level and from an individual level as well and think then we can move on to a lot of other things.  Right now the biggest challenge wearing the clothes that we want to wear, having access to public spaces that's honestly there is a problem around that also.  Like women cannot use public spaces as well as men do in the country and that's also a problem.  We see that in online spaces.  Again, thing's a lot of work that needs to be done at least in Pakistan that's what I can say.
>> Thank you.  Anyone have other questions?
>> And also just a note, there are two hands up in the Zoom room.
>> Okay.  Yeah.
>> I'd really like to thank all of the speakers for wonderfully insightful talks about these issues.  Very, very important issues.  My perspective is slightly different in Australia we are about to have a referendum to give our Indigenous people the right to have more of a say in policy that is effect them and as a result of that there has been terrible hate speech based on racism to many Indigenous people and I just wanted to speak of what these views were.  Do you think that racist hate speech and information is ‑‑ has exactly the same potential solutions as the gender based and the transsexuals based discrimination that you've talked about or are there other elements as well that come in to racist hate speech?
>> Again, before tuning into the panel, I would like to say, you know, to establish any legal mechanism we all do have shared responsibilities.  Like the high ‑‑ I shared with you about Bangladesh, there is this mechanism but it is not being practiced.  Particularly if I talk about the media houses, we have examples, case studies about these, you know, starting from protesting to execution of this high court read, it doesn't exist.  There is no committee and if we go back there is example that when someone raises their voice or protest against any sort of sexual harassment we have our experience that she lost her job.  For years she didn't get any job in any media houses, Article 19 took initiatives to train her and provide her job and she's now well established.  That's another thing.  But she had to go through a tough time, you know?  So this is how ‑‑ what I understand to say that is she had responsibility of every actor.  When I'm not being able to avail my right I need to raise my voice, report it, do the documentation, monitoring and follow it up and continuously we feed to raise our voice to establish at least what we do ‑‑
>> Rumky, I'm so sorry, given the limited time I'd really like to take that question given that hash tag social media listening on board international hate speech and gendered hate speech, right?  So something I wanted to actually bring up but then didn't have enough time was actually about that from accountability when it comes to this type of messaging.  I fully agree that the modalities are very much the same and I think in my presentation I made it very clear that gendered hate speech and disinformation is proliferated by international list actors in the state agenda.  One of the things we saw this time around for example claims that LGBTQI Q plus people or queer and transgender identities are a mental illness, right?  First of all, there's scientific evidence this is not the case.  There's established psychiatric evidence that this is not the case and this has been when COVID ‑‑ a lot of ‑‑ particularly meta cellphones put a label saying hey this information is not verified but this is disinformation but we don't say engender disinformation or international list information.  This is quite unacceptable given the work that organizations like hash tag, like DRF have been recent years with even close connection and the label but they can't even ‑‑ put ago label maybe don't start this information.  We're not asking for censorship but we're saying that the modalities are very much the same we can no longer fight this data silos.  Look at its connection to international disorder.  They are part of the same machinery.  Censorship around certain bodies big connection structural changes are going through are actually enforcing by restriction legislation that are designed by design to curtail of citizens.  So absolutely and I think the solution can no longer be hate speech one way but we do it for the engendered disinformation.  No we need to look at the intersecting connections between the two and address more holistically.  I think that was the point of us bringing up the panel as well when we really talked about what we wanted to say in this panel that really was the intervention and we really hope to take it forward because we have been working in silos and very little success.  Reframe approaches particularly given that platforms I think the way their community dialogues function the way their ‑‑ sorry, moderator and regulated content further enable the siloing and that is something we need to push back against as advocates.
>> Rumky:  Thank you.  Is there any other question.
>> I don't know line.
>> Rumky:  Okay.  Could you please read it out, the online questions?
KS, perhaps you can just unmute and go ahead.
>> Southeast Asian organizations have their own moderation policy session yesterday we also talked about this.  I think we'll go even beyond.  We'll go even further than recognizing convergence of disinformation, hate speech.  I think that this information, if we apply the international ‑‑ under dominant international human rights law disinformation by itself cannot be moderated by the states.  These crimes have been criticized by the humanities so far but it is the crossroad, intersection with hate speech where disinformation needs to be remedied.  So someone talked about racist hate speech.  Someone talked about ‑‑ and gender day speech, it is where disinformation meets hate speech where we need our work, our nonsiloing opening of sharing the solutions and when we do that and in ‑‑ it was a few days ago the report that trusted flaggers program of meta is broken, I think ‑‑ I mean, it's my guess, one of the nonresponsiveness, one of the reasons for nonresponsiveness of the platform is the siloing of the categories.  When something comes in, they try to check the box on disinformation and then when they see one box unchecked for ‑‑ I don't know, likelihood of harm, they say okay this is not disinformation and then they look at the ‑‑ compared it to the checklist for hate speech and then they cannot complete all the boxes.  It's not hate speech requiring moderation, you should not do that.  The platforms don't have to work like a government.  They don't have to emulate government.  Platforms are not party to international human rights law in many ways protective of free speech too much.  The platforms can go beyond that and try to make a safe space for their users and I think that's where we need to strike so to speak.  And if he just focus our effort on hundred percent harm based principal instead of trying to cut up the speech space into different categories like the governments do we can achieve more.
Thank you.  I'll stop there.
>> Very glad to have you here.
Prarthana:  A lot of times in terms of ensuring justice ‑‑ for survivors of gendered hate speech violence which have often spilled off into bodily harm as well in many cases and I'm glad that you brought up moderation as well because a recent study ‑‑ media centers human moderators.  We always ‑‑ we tend to think that automation is automated but intervention element to it as well but the way it has been made a competitive environment so the way call centers work in I understood is a single human moderator views close to 6,000 posts reported every day in a single day which is absurd.  It does not give you enough time.  It gives you around four seconds to review complaints and which is why when you tend to get on that prereporting complaint after complaint and you get back ‑‑ and speaking of how disinformation just to address the previous question as well which is really interesting because I grapple with that as well how do I sort of correlate and find solutions for hate speech engendered hate speech trying to bring those together as well because that is what our work is also about.  For example we work with constituencies like text waters, right and often because of historical reasons how do I deal with ‑‑ gendered violence in their mode of work because that has shifted online.  Just to bring that into the fore I wanted to talk about one particular example of how recent media matters report if I'm not mistaken ‑‑
>> We need to wrap up.
>> No worries I'll just put it in the pane on chat.
>> Thank you so much.  Do we have anymore time for any other questions?
>> I just have the short input because based on the session that we had yesterday as well as exploring youth's social media content creation and I think culture is a good point where we can intersect on this topic because different cultures may have different definitions of what hate speech is and the example you gave now the term Hijaas the feminine mind‑set and masculine body why couldn't it be the other way around and why isn't that included in the conversations so that's something I'd like to add.
Thanks.
>> Rumky:  What I want to tell you addressing that that is the question actually we have been raising up and we have been giving objection and our advocacy very inclusive and the right should be upheld by everyone regardless any consideration?  Do we have anymore time?  So thank you very much everyone for being engaged into the discussion and thank you for sharing your ideas, thoughts, and experiences.  I do thank all the participants and guests who have joined me online.  I thank my panel and thank you APrIGF for giving us the floor.  Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
>> The next session in this room is going to happen in five minutes.  It's going to be G20 in India and digital inclusion, the impact of shut downs. 

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