[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
ladies and gentlemen
welcome to moderator of the last session
at habsburg stage of the day one
steve clemons
[Music]
hi everyone i'm steve clemens editor at
large of the hill in washington dc i've
been a
regular attendee at globe sec here for a
long time and this
topic about digital health digital rules
ethics in the digital space has been one
that we've been dealing with
at globe secure and body slava for many
many years
and i think what is what is happening is
we've seen a robustness of the
importance of this issue grow
there are initiatives right now i should
mention at globe sec
titled transatlantic principles for a
healthy online information space globe
sec has
has invested heavily in this uh and
there are ten principles which perhaps
we're going to be touching on a number
of these
i won't go through them here but what i
will tell you is that about seven member
nations 14 different large organizations
have signed on to these principles and
i'm told that down at the end of the
hall
just on this floor just down there there
is a banner of these principles and if
you believe kind of in this stuff
now maybe you don't maybe you're one of
the anarchists or you know
you know kind of you know you know game
this a different way you know and we
want to hear from all sides
but if you do believe in this sort of
digital health digital principles
working across borders and lines
they've asked you to feel free to go
down and sign that banner so
let me encourage all of you to do that
we have many many guests online as well
and they should figure out a way to get
you an opportunity to participate
digitally online as well let me tell you
who is joining us for our panel session
our three panelists today are all
virtual and i see all three of them here
it's great to see david carroll i wasn't
sure we're going to have him
david carroll let me start out for a
moment is the associate professor
of media design at the parsons school of
design in new york city
he is probably one of the world's most
important crusaders for data protection
rights
and i just want to put that on the table
he has uh uh
been the one who created the most
significant criminal liabilities for
cambridge analytica
over his own voter rights profile it's a
fascinating thing he was the subject
of a netflix show called the great hack
and so david it's great to see you here
we also have with us renata nicolet
is head of the cabinet for the vic in
the vice president's office for values
and transparency
for the european commission in brussels
she has a fantastic twitter feed i have
to
uh tell renate i've been enjoying your
tweets all day i just know you have a
great soul
uh so please go take and we have marcus
marcus reinish
who's joining us also virtually he's
vice president for public policy in
europe for the middle east
uh and africa so we've got different
corners of this of this conversation
here today
and i'm going to try to keep looking at
the camera where my guests are
but all of you i'm going to tell those
folks that are online you can
participate and those in the room or
those watching wherever file your
questions
uh in the globe sec app and i they will
pop up on my little
you know notepad here and we'll be happy
to bring them to you those of you in the
room
can also pose questions and you'll just
do so at the microphone
i think the issue of starting with the
questions you know i'm in media right
and i've been watching media become more
and more fragmented and the kind of
division
you know the discussion of what exactly
is media uh
is up for grabs today because there are
a lot of players that do not have that
that that dna of objective distance in
them
that notion of what public
responsibility and accountability they
should have
that's just the media dimension but
there are a lot of other players and
there are platforms like we have at
facebook uh twitter google but there are
many many others as well
and the rules across lines matter and
how we kind of shape a world
collectively together particularly as i
see it in transatlantic relations
dealing with some of the more insidious
players uh that are out there is very
important
but let me ask david carroll to help set
the stage if you would david
you know i i i really respect what you
did
in sort of looking at the question of
your own voter profile
which which became part of the cambridge
analytica story became part of a great
series
i'm interested in what you think or the
top two or three equities we should keep
in mind
as we discuss this issue of digital
health um
and and and how to get it right as we
move forward as opposed to just
necessarily relitigating the past but
give us your your your top of line
thoughts
well thanks steve it's great to be here
uh glad i made it at the last
uh minute um the big lessons learned
out of okay great the big lessons
learned
um out of the cambridge analytical
parable for the future
is you know number one the need for a
global standard
for data rights the ability for bad
actors to exploit
the differences between data protection
regimes
is a significant problem and if we are
to you know
basically data does not respect borders
it
it emanates around the earth like an
atmosphere
so we have to understand it that way and
we risk
splinter net if we do not achieve a very
strong global standard
the second issue is you can have the
greatest laws on the books
but if they're not enforced they really
don't matter that much
and unfortunately in the case of
cambridge analytica
the ultimate victory of me achieving the
full data request
was achieved by an act of journalism
because somebody leaked
the database to journalists the data
protection
regulator was not able to fulfill their
task
so even the best data protection
authorities
don't have the tools or the skills or
the resources
to tackle the biggest challenges of the
day and the future
and then the last thing is the problem
with my story
is that it emphasizes this personal
responsibility
for one's own data but data is a
collective issue and and privacy is a
networked problem
and so you know it is not my fault that
i
had a profile collected nor is it my
fault that i spent huge amounts of money
and many years
trying to get get at the truth when
really it affected
every registered voter in the united
states and we haven't really
reckoned with the way that privacy
invasions affect
entire communities even
well populations you for that david i
want to encourage our three panelists to
also feel free to react to one another
as we weave through this i'm going to
get to marcus in just a moment but
um renata i want to ask you a question
as you sort of look
at this broad subject of kind of
creating scaffolding and a platform
and a safe space for people's digital
uh rights and digital privacy and
digital communications and
you know just getting all of those
features right one of the things that
i've been thinking about here at
globesec there's been a lot of
discussion of china and russia
when you think about tomorrow's global
middle class
and and david carroll just sort of
referred to this in a way about the
fears of a splinter net
a lot of that is not going to future net
added global value
uh global middle class will not be in
the transatlantic relationship it will
not be in europe it will not be in the
united states it's going to be in
southeast asia it's going to be in asia
proper it's going to be in africa
and these are places that if you don't
somehow bring them into this
conversation
if you did have a splinter net if you
create rules that work in one place
but china with it with its allies and
its interests is not part of that
don't you think we run the problem of
we're going to get to the companies in a
minute but the company is being left out
to some degree
of that growth but i would love to get
your thoughts on what we need to get
right because we often talk about
setting rules up
but we don't talk about what the
economic consequences would be
if you've got a divided world
thank you steve for the question um
indeed i think it's it's quite important
to not forget
the global dimension of what we do here
because you know
this digital transformation that we all
live in uh is in the end something that
will unite us all
uh much more and and facilitate global
conversations and that's why global
convergence of rules
is so important and i see a certain
trend
um in that direction i was very involved
in the making of the general data
protection regulation
in the eu we were a first mover in that
context
and but nevertheless what we have seen
in the three years since these new data
protection rules
have been in direct application is
indeed
a bigger convergence worldwide towards
basic principles of data privacy and and
of course it's always good if
transatlantically we can kind of show
the way and today is a good talk
good day to talk about that because we
just had uh president biden
in town for an eu us summit and for a
nato summit
with very encouraging signals that the
u.s is back and
transatlantic corporation is back but
what we are seeing globally is actually
a convergence not only
you know in in the us and in eu
but also in parts of asia uh for
instance we have in japan or in korea
a very similar data protection regime so
that we could kind of consider these
these parties even also inadequacy
findings on our side
so our approach in europe is really to
contribute to inspire others to
contribute to a bigger convergence
worldwide
amongst allies let's not fool ourselves
there will be always you know uh
partners in the world
with hope it will be much more difficult
to align because
the basic principles of these strong
privacy rights is that you know the
individuals in the center
and you have your rights and you have to
enforce them and you have to defend
yourself against that
and that's not shared across the globe
but i think if we are united and work
you know in international forum whether
it's the united nations whether that's
the council of europe
uh to aim for a bigger convergence
that's also in the interest not only of
the citizens worldwide but also of
business worldwide
bernat before i jump to marcus um and
we'll have a little fun with i want to
ask you a question a few years ago
at the brussels forum sponsored by the
german marshall fund
i interviewed your um i think it was the
eu commissioner for a single digital
economy but he was very he was
responsible for some of the rules that
you wrote
uh in the gdpr which were just about to
come online
and i and i was talking about how europe
uh regulated this sector differently of
the united states
and i said do you think in the rules and
regulations europe was putting forward
you would get a facebook uh being
birthed
in in europe or a google or a twitter
and he said no and he said it on the
record so i can say it
he said you americans innovate we
europeans regulate
that's our social contract and so it was
a provocative
moment and so i just want to put that
back to you because that was your
minister who said that
and ask you what risks we what
what do we lose risk losing if we're not
careful about how we homogenize those
rules because part of this discussion
is also the incredible innovation in
platforms that have developed in a
remarkably
uh short period of time and i just want
to acknowledge what the minister said
back then but your thoughts real quickly
renata
yeah i think the the situation has
changed uh compared to a couple of years
ago where really in europe we just
discovered the digital single market as
a key kind of you know objective
on our side i think since then we have
quite an important discussion in europe
about digital innovation
even about digital sovereignty and we
see a lot of very promising startup
activities and also a lot of investment
flowing into this and if you think about
the recovery now after covert 19
there's a lot of money also from the the
huge kind of recovery kind of money that
we have put together in europe
to support our member states in the
recovery going into the digital
transformation
so i would argue that you actually are
faced today with a more assertive europe
when it comes to actually uh you know
also a catching up with the united
states on the innovation side
thank you marcus we're going to move to
you now and i want to say before i
mention another company other than
facebook a while back i had
dinner with jack dorsey of twitter and
it was a private thing to talk about
where the line ought to be and who
should tweet should the
with the president of the united states
you know be de-tweeted
you know where do you where do you draw
those lines how do you enter a world
where you're beginning to make
censorship decisions
and i have to tell you and this is
honestly
you could see the anguish in his face
and so i don't think we should take
lightly
these conversations because where you
put those lines matter but i
i want to ask you marcus about how you
and facebook
and i know you used to be at vodafone
you know this world well
what are the ways in which we should be
thinking that we might not know as
you've approached some of the challenges
of being one of the most popular
uh and one of the most impactful
platforms when it comes to political
discussions and political activism
but marcus your thoughts
yeah so first thanks steve and uh
extremely warm hello
to bratislava but uh where are you right
now by the way
i'm i'm sitting in just overlooking the
roofs of london that's where
i'm based and all right enjoying the
rest of the night we have
um but you know the anguish that you
were describing that jack dorsey is
displaying that's the anguish that that
i
display as well almost on a on a daily
basis because
you know we are pushed towards decisions
that are
ethically very very critical and the
question is really
who should make these decisions and and
i think we've said this and i feel this
personally
it it shouldn't be us it should be
democratic
uh elected um uh representatives it
should be governments it should be
um the european commission and and and
the co-legislators and
and i think it is um in a really really
delicate balance that you have to strike
you have to strike balances between
you know freedom of speech and harmful
speech you have to strike a balance
between safety and privacy you have to
decide
what is truthful and what is deliberate
manipulation and
and this is not i think a role that a
private company
can ever play and i therefore
really really you know happy to see as a
european as a proud european
that we do have um a european commission
a european institution that is actually
going down this route that is creating
the frameworks
um of the you know what safeguards
democracy what safe scout society and we
have sort of the
the alphabet soup of the dsa and the
edap and
so on but but these are really
instruments that we need and i just want
to go back to
vice president ansip who said you know
america innovates and
and europe regulates you know first
that's not true i don't recognize this
there's a lot of innovation going on in
europe
but but even if it would be true you
know europe has developed a muscle
of good and fair and cross-border
regulation and i think it's a it's a
very good contribution to make however
europe by itself will not be strong
enough to build the frameworks the
global standards that david was
preferring to
and it does need the transatlantic
partnership with the us and i think
you know that president biden is
currently in brussels is a fantastic
sign and that there will be
much more cooperation to create a global
standard and a standard as well
that addresses i think the counter model
that comes from china and i think that
is uh that is a concern for europe and
for america in equal times
let me uh i think david um has slipped
off i think he'll be back in a moment
because i want to go back with a heavy
question but let me ask you both marcus
and renata
uh one of my best libertarian pals from
germany has just walked in the door and
so i have this
you know sort of low rules you know
don't get too obsessed with government
mindset in favor of my friend over here
for a moment but as
as i think about this question and i
think i typically think about political
ecosystems as one
where the product of political pressures
you know the political gravity takes us
to an outcome
and i'm wondering in this space uh i
used to think as a blogger and one of
the early political
bloggers in the in the early 2000s i
used to tell people i didn't worry about
alternative truth i didn't worry about
uh folks challenging faction i didn't
worry about scandals
and and and uh conspiracy theories
because the internet at that time was so
disciplining that people would jump in
quickly uh
and fix and amend tell me where i was
wrong but you began to see
tribes develop and bubbles and people
who had alternative
uh facts and i'm interested you know as
both a platform
and as a government official this is the
big question i think we're struggling
with at globe sec
that is elevating democracy democracy
saying we need healthy
standards to preserve democracy i
sometimes wonder if you look out at a
great number of people
uh in all of our countries whether
democracies on their mind and rather
tribal auctocracies
where the rules are the way they want
them are just fine with them
so what does the what do the defenders
of democracy do
when an increasing number of people
don't care about it let me ask
renata and then and then marcus to
comment
well steve i think you're putting the
finger in the wand i think you know we
have far too long
uh simply thought that we can take
democracy for granted
that it doesn't need to be nurtured
every day that it doesn't need to be
defended
by all of us every day and i think not
the least you know the events that we
saw on capitol hill in the beginning of
january demonstrated that you know there
aren't sacred kind of you know
statutes of democracy we really have to
be out there to defend it
and the other part i would add is that
also your face as an early blogger
you know that phase where everybody
thought oh this is all going to be a
bright future where we just connect
people
uh that's over as well the naivety of
you know the digital transformation and
it's only good
that's long over and i think what we are
struggling with is indeed to find the
right balance between what you can
regulate
and what you can't regulate but where
you need to equip society in a whole
society approach
to be better prepared for it and um you
know just to kind of explain a little
bit what we do in europe about that
indeed as kind of democracy said we have
gone out
to kind of come with regulation but it's
built
on a number of years of very strong
experience of self-regulatory approaches
very close cooperation with the
platforms and you know in for instance a
code of conduct on online hate speech
or a code of practice against
disinformation that was very useful for
all sides to actually learn much more
from each other
and we have now kind of you know a
position to
regulate some things for instance to
regulate that platforms have to get rid
of illegal content online and if not
there are responsibilities and there are
sanctions
are coming with it but on the other hand
we also must admit that if we don't want
to create censorship
and also pay tribute to authoritarian
regimes in that regard
we need to kind of keep the internet a
free space and that means you cannot
regulate
everything there are limits to what you
can do on disinformation with
clear regulation and that's where a core
regulation approach comes in
and this is where europe has developed
or is about to develop
an interesting unique mix of regulation
where it matters and co-regulatory
approaches in
close cooperation with civil society
with media with
you know platforms to actually address
the vulnerabilities of democracy so that
we are better equipped
when there are disinformation campaigns
whether they are malicious
you know coming from outside forces even
or whether they are just happening
because in the echo chambers that's what
we risk
your candor is really appreciated marcus
let me ask you that that same question
but also ask
you know as facebook and your colleagues
look at it you know these large major
global transnational platforms
do you see yourself as a place where
you know you can have a federation of
tribes and that's fine
or do you see the democratic dimension
and the civil rights and the you know
the civic justice elements
of a democracy is sort of part of what
you're trying uh to inculcate with your
users
i'd be interested in whether that's one
of the points of tension you're
struggling with
yeah yeah absolutely and i again i mean
i think i echo what reynard has said you
know we
we need frameworks and we're working on
frameworks it's specific in europe we
need
co-regulation but we need actions from
platforms like us as well we have a
responsibility not just illegal we have
a moral responsibility to keep people
safe to protect societies to protect
um democracy and and what we do is
is obviously you know we tackle head-on
misinformation
we tackle head-on hate speech we tackle
head-on interference in elections and
now plenty of measures that we take you
know
um deleting millions of of fake accounts
every day of
expanding uh network of independent fact
checkers to identify misinformation
label it
demoted um that there's so much
that we can do and by doing this you
know back to your question david
is we we we we are actually creating
almost a
a global standard for this um because we
are the only
organization that has that global reach
but also we have a counter trend and and
i think you mentioned this before
and maybe also accelerated to covet is
that we have much more assertive
governments
and they also become more assertive when
it comes to digital matters they come
become more assertive when
it becomes to content that should stay
on the platform and sometimes that
content is
regime critical content that is
opposition con that is a really
difficult situation for us so
we have this tension of on the one side
across border service
that tries to reflect values of freedom
of speech of human rights and so on
but we also have assertiveness
nationally and we also see a
fragmentation and we see this
fragmentation in europe you know we have
individual content laws while we're
trying to work on a global network
on a european network and eventually
hopefully in a global network but what
you mentioned is this tension is
inherent and it plays out
between our global community standards
which are the rules that allow
what can be kept on the platform what is
taken off between
regional regulation and frameworks and
then national regulation and then
individual demands from
governments across the club so it's a
it's it's a very very difficult and
heavy mix for us
well thank you i think we've got david
back online there's david
david while you were um away doing
something else i ask the question
of whether people online or
increasingly in our nations our citizens
are
as obsessed with preserving democracy as
many people at this conference are
and whether or not they want to see the
ascension of their tribe and a different
set of rules and they're not really
they're really not empathetic or
concerned across science and i know you
are and i'm just interested as an
american citizen
you know in this space do you worry that
bifurcation of interest that is out
there that
that design that we may uh we makes make
some mistakes i mean i i just
i just you know as i sort of deal every
day in the media space and look the hill
is a very centrist place which means we
have all sides screaming at us
but when you kind of look at that you
you see
very different uh gravitational force
fields depending on where you are
politically how you think what matters
what you prioritize how you see the
world
and and as we talk about homogenizing
rules and systems that protect those
individuals who really don't care about
that they care about their side winning
i'm just asking what your thoughts are
well thank you um yeah um it's no
coincidence that
um president biden's infrastructure plan
is calling for
improvements to broadband because i'm in
a rural area and i'm having trouble with
my internet here
um so even the basics still have a long
way to go but
with regards to you know just speaking
personally during the pandemic i
relocated to a rural area
and some of my neighbors you know have
opposing political views
and so it's a really important moment to
just meet
neighbors and reconnect we have a urban
rural divide in the u.s that is further
exacerbated by
the the ways that social media and
digital marketing
further segments us into like-mindedness
for
the purposes of better performing
advertising
measurements and so it takes individual
citizens to kind of work against this
on very personal one-to-one ways
for me the reason to pursue the
cambridge analytica case
was because i was very worried about the
way that advertising technology and
social media technology
and the military-industrial complex were
all converging
uh to threaten the very notion of
self-governance
and self-determination and so i wanted
to lift a veil onto how
manipulation was occurring right there
on the surface
and below the surface so that people
could see
and indeed when people see inside the
machine it is the most effective way
to limit its impact that once we can see
it
it is less effective
at dividing us let me thank you for that
let me ask you all
uh another question i would mention i
can remind you all you can
ask questions through the app someone
asked me a defense industry question
which i'm not sure if it's but i'm going
to ask it if we have no others and you
can also ask questions here in just a
little bit at the microphone
but we have um a great innovator from
slovakia sitting in here the ceo of
tachium he's a big
giant in the artificial intelligence
world i remember talking to eric schmidt
of google at the time he said
i asked him how do you think you're
going to get the publics in our in our
world to trust ai
and he says well ai is going to fix bad
health diagnoses because
the health diagnostic system is so
horrible that'll be the other side
the other thing it will fix right away
is is identity theft and fraud
in financial he says they're going to be
practical ways that ai comes in and
changes
the prospects and and welfare uh of
people
in this conversation you know as i
listened to marcus talk about
you know i don't know the hundreds of
thousands of people out there i don't
know how many
you've got you know basically getting
rid of the millions of bad messages and
whatnot
but it's an active thing you're having
to do
to remove those messages and i'm just
interested in whether or not
we are locked in the wrong frame for
thinking about this that a lot of this
online health could in fact be put in
place
by the advances that are coming in ai
the advances that are coming in
can we can we build in to the systems
we're producing
something that more automatically
produces healthy outcomes or
is that um is that naive of me marcus
well you know first you mentioned this
already the ai
system is not just there to help elites
and to help take technology companies
it's there to help users and individual
citizens and
actually ironically the the place where
we deploy
the most sophisticated and most ai is
actually of determining and finding
um unto what content hate speech and so
on i mentioned 97
of hate speech is detected before it is
reported that's done through ai so
so ai is already built
to benefit the user but there's no
question
that it requires much more transparency
and and i agree here with with david you
know
that's the concern the concern it is a
black box and you don't know what's
going on in there and
actually when you look at it it's
relatively simple if you look at your
facebook news feed it's it's fairly
simple why things are ranked the way
the way they rank but i do believe that
there is
a need for for a framework to build sort
of the ethical element of ai
and again i'm coming back to this this
is not something you can leave to
private companies i don't think that is
something you can leave to even
self-regulation
and therefore the attempts again here in
europe and
europe is a is a leader in these things
is extremely welcome to have
a framework of how ai should be deployed
by companies
uh but also actually by public bodies
because it's not it's not just
it's not just us who deal with sensitive
data and
i would argue that actually some of the
the public institutions
um to think about health organization
health services um have much more
sensitive data that with ai has has
potentially concerning outcomes so
i think tackling it through the um
through a regulatory framework an open
transparent regulatory framework
um while at the same time putting an
onus on on companies like ours to be
transparent and then to actually also
recognize
um that ai is something that is used for
for for you this is not to polarize
people uh not to keep people on the
platform
as often often alleged because we're an
advertisement business
you know we have advertisers that don't
want to see the advertisement next to
polarizing content so there is an
incentive
to use ai for good and not for bad well
before i
before i jump to renate ask her the same
thing about ai
and how europe uses it say opposed to as
opposed to china or how facebook uses
facial recognition as opposed to how
china uses facial recognition
marcus let me ask you one other question
you know facebook has made the decision
to say bye-bye to president trump for a
couple of years
and you went through a process for doing
that there are a lot of other autocratic
leaders who i remember when emanuel
macron
spoke to globesec and he said very
bluntly in
english the populists in europe are
lying to their citizens
and so i'm interested in whether that
decision on donald trump
leads to the necessary banning of other
leaders
who uh mimic some of those behaviors
what are your thoughts real quick and
then we'll jump to
look at all our policies before the
decision on trump you know
never allowed that public figures can
incite violence i mean that's that
there's not necessarily a change to our
policy but definitely
what happened on the 6th of january in
the us is obviously a pivotal moment
and we had to make this drastic decision
and it was the right decision and as you
rightly say
this was a fundamental decision which we
put in front of our external
independent oversight board and and they
came back and they said
look number one your decision was right
yeah you had to
take trump off the platform number two
banning him indefinitely that is more
problematic because there is not you
processed it not transparent why you did
that
and back to you you need to find a
transparent process that you need to
communicate properly so
that that's where we that's where we
ended up in there but what we do as a
response to the decision of the
oversight board is to create standards
for public figures
that don't just apply to one public
figure to ex president trump but
actually apply
to all politicians to all public person
who potentially abuse
the ability of the platform to
communicate and thereby trying to
incite violence and cause harm thank you
for that renato let me ask you to
comment about
ai and technologies as you see them i
mean
brad smith who's also speaking here the
president of microsoft wrote about
advances in technology as tools or
weapons
and so we're talking about things that
can be used either way but but tell us
how you think about
you know ai and other uh techniques
coming into
the system to help perhaps right the
ship when it comes to digital health
and digital privacy and you know digital
accountability and responsibility
i strongly believe that we need to kind
of structure systems where technology
serves
the people and not the other way around
and for instance we are already using ai
systems very well today in kind of you
know putting order on the internet when
it comes to illegal behavior
there has been even a couple of years
back a global initiative
to fight against child sexual abuse
online
and here ai kind of was the solution to
actually detect the photos
very very rapidly so to just to show you
that you know even before the hype on ai
regulation
uh started emerging we've been actually
using it to put order in the wild west
of the internet
but indeed in europe we have also put
regulation on the table
the so-called ai act which is very much
driven by the idea of having you know
an ethic by design a human-centric
approach in ai
because we want to use the chances of
this technology we want to have better
health we want to have solutions on
mobility that are more adapted to our
needs
we want to use it in all sectors we also
want to kind of catch up with regard to
the huge investments
that are already happening in the u.s
and in china on ai
and this is a collective exercise with
member states that's what member states
want to do with us in the eu
institutions
but it's very clear that we have to take
a different approach from some of our
partners in the world
we don't want social scoring like in
china
we don't think that this is kind of now
something that we want in the european
area
so we have made a choice in this ai act
to also say there are risky areas
where we either want to have a high
level of regulatory observation
and supervision because it can really
turn it around when you're talking for
instance on using ai in recruitment
or in public services you know
that and if you want to have a
sustainable growth kind of
perspective on ai technology that is
really
trustful and that kind of consumers and
citizens in europe
fully have trust in then you need to
build it in from the beginning as we
have done with privacy because the whole
concept of the data protection rules
was to have a privacy by design
innovation and that's what we are trying
to kind of repeat with the ai act very
much driven by
we want to support innovation but in
areas where we
think they might be high-risk areas we
want to supervise a bit more thoroughly
and as this is a technological
revolution that is kind of changing
every day where nobody of us has the
real kind of concept for the next 10
years it has to be a flexible concept
where we can also add high-risk sectors
that only emerge when we see the
applications coming
so it's really an interesting way of
dealing with
a regulatory challenge but it's it's a
very common and united kind of front
that has building up
here in the eu where we say what we want
where we want to lead the way
hopefully inspire others but also make a
clear kind of difference between us and
others
right and so just a few minutes we're
going to go to uh questions again
there's some good ones being populated
uh over the app and i'll invite people
up to the mic here and we'll go as
quickly as you can but let me just
finally ask david a question and and
i don't know exactly how to ask this but
i'm going to you know david if you know
with our colleague and our friend here
from from facebook facebook has
developed
community standards it has uh signed on
it's one of the signatory two codes of
practice it has
made decisions that we've seen about you
know political ads twitter and other
places have done this as well
but marcus has shared with us today that
that companies even leagues of companies
cannot do this on their own they need
governments they need partnership
to do this and i'm just interested in
that legal scaffolding if you look at
the united states
the united states still does not have a
national privacy standard
europe does california does but the
united states is not there a lot of
things that europe has moved ahead just
to go back to that minister
and jumped ahead with regulatory
approaches that the u.s government has
not done
uh and i'm just interested since you
spent so much money
fighting for your rights in the american
legal system just real quickly what's
missing what could help
move forward and i'm not talking about
companies i'm talking about
public policy washington d.c what what
needs to be there that's not
sure thank you um and hopefully my
connection will hold
um the the key issue the one correction
i would make is i didn't spend a dollar
of legal effort in the united states i
spent it all in the uk
because the the uk and europe has
the basic right to one's own data the
right to know
and we don't have this right in the
united states
now it's available in california and
most recently the state of virginia
this is the most basic building block to
solve
many of the above conversations
especially the one that was just
going on regarding ai and accountability
of ai
the key idea that we tried to challenge
was the requirement of the company to
disclose
um all of the key aspects of
and uh
oh no you're back you're back keep going
david keep going keep going
i see you um thank you i'll try to get
it out
um that the key aspects of the cambridge
analytica case
was how did they build these profiles
where did they get the data sources from
how did their algorithms work under the
uk law they were required to disclose
that and they managed to conceal it
so we still have a lot of work to do in
enforcing the transparency that's
already mandated in europe
and how to build similar requirements in
the united states and other countries
that are working on regis regulation to
create this global standard
to create the adequacy of international
trade but the fundamental bedrock is the
right to know
and we have so much work to do to make
that visible to individuals
a key moment that i'll try to
capture uh was when channel 4
showed a voter a black voter a black
woman in wisconsin
and showed her her voter profile and
showed how she was marked for deterrence
to be discouraged from participating in
the 2016 election
and when she saw that her response was
this makes me want to vote even more
meaning in the
2020. and so the simple transparency
of what is behind the screen i think is
the most important thing that we need to
achieve
first and then all other data protection
issues and ai issues and ethical issues
and regulatory issues
sit upon that we need to make
the data rights issues central to these
conversations
thank you so folks what we're going to
do now i'm going to ask you to be as
brief as possible so that we can kind of
cook through some of these questions let
me start with one from joe just to talk
about bottom line issues this is an
interesting question i hadn't thought
about before he says
from an ontological point of view do you
believe there's something like a
universal
global norm of freedom of expression
including limitations renata your
thoughts real fast
well we have you know international you
know human rights standards even in the
united nations and their freedom of
expression is clearly included and
that's why you know i would say there's
already quite a global convergence on
the importance of freedom of expression
where we differ a little bit is you know
whether that's absolute or how it can be
reconciled with other interests such as
security
marcus i think you you would have
thoughts on that is there a
kind of universal building block in when
when when uh
mark zuckerberg put this all together
was there sort of a unit of belief in
that element of expression
that was part of the dna of your
platform
yeah it's the same answer you know that
there are global standards
the the issue is here that we have
either a lack of enforcement you know
coming back to david's theme
on on privacy or or a different
interpretation and sometimes the
interpretation is
is is that people don't recognize some
of these human rights and these rights
of freedom of speech
but also i think more subtly um and i
think renate made the point already is
that
the absoluteness of them and i think
it's just a you know as a european
working for an american company you know
there's
there's a different um ranking of where
freedom of speech stands where
the integrity of the individual stands
and and i think this this this is normal
because
speech is a cultural thing and sometimes
it's impossible to really have
deep frameworks that cover everything
and they go across the globe
so it's a big big challenge and back to
the question you asked before radio does
i i think you know
we we we we have to hold on to global
standards in our
in our community standards but that is
that is challenged on a daily basis
of course what's going through my mind
right now is belarus
and what we saw happen to a blogger and
pulling down a plane who actually had
that universal right of expression
just going through my head right now we
got a question right here yes go ahead
hi i'm ayman
from lebanon i run a freedom of
expression organization in the mena
region
how's it going oh badly this is why i'm
asking uh marcus
um you mentioned the great progress that
facebook made in terms of fighting this
information through fact-checking
networks
uh fighting election interference and
fighting hate speech
well i'm inspired by a great book be war
beware of small states by david hurst to
ask you about
supporting democracy where it's more
fragile where it's less
established where it needs to be further
nurtured
yes there is progress in terms of
disinformation in other languages
but specifically election interference
in smaller countries
and fragile democracies right under your
jurisdiction tunisia
algeria iraq lebanon horrible uh
information marketplace same for hate
speech and uneven level of attention
right during the israel-palestine latest
conflict right the attack by the horde
of supporters of muhammad bin salman
so what are you doing to these more
fragile countries
in languages that are not as widely
represented on the internet as
english and other major languages these
are the places where democracy is most
fragile and where we need to support it
the most
great question thank you let me ask
david carroll for his thoughts david
david david is um looking good
but we're going to jump over to renata
renata your thoughts and david if you
can hear me
you can jump in when you come back and
you're moving again okay renata
huh yeah a very big question i mean uh
all i can say there is that
um indeed i one of the of the issues
that we and also in our code of practice
uh where we are working where we've been
working in the past years with
platforms such as facebook we have
always made the point that it's so
important not to do this only uh
in certain uh jurisdictions but of
course we had an uh you know an eu
perspective but already in the eu as you
know very well
we have smaller states and bigger states
and different kind of languages
going outside of the eu um i mean we are
very clear in our kind of cooperation
with especially partners in the
neighborhood and that also includes the
southern neighborhood and the countries
that you were referring to
that we want to kind of you know also
engage with partners there
to address the challenges of the digital
transformation and here also this is
the disinformation but of course we
cannot regulate there
so what we can do is that to really
equip us
with our kind of initiatives that i have
tried to explain
uh to inspire others so that also other
can kind of build on that but
uh yeah otherwise you know yeah i
understand the problem
great thank you david did you hear the
the question
uh it was uh regarding um the
international fragile democracies and
yes yes yeah yeah
so we went to you first but you just
stared at us so yeah
yeah i'm sorry yeah my my my bad
connection today we i'm gonna have
martin call you up and get facebook to
help you
you know um yes
i think that the small state issue is
extremely important and
goes back to the question of a universal
data protection
um shield across the world that small
states are also exploited by bad actors
uh for abusive practices or to offshore
and
lo and laundered de heda so for example
the the last thing that we learned from
the investigation into cambridge
analytica
is that they were in the process of
offshoring to saint kitts
and nevins using the caribbean to shield
themselves from
data protection laws so we need to
understand that every citizen
in every country deserves equal
protection
under an equal set of of laws and rules
and then the problem that we also need
to address is that advertising supported
public interest platforms are inherently
there's a tension there that what is
good for a brand may not be good for
a public society and there are arguments
that the brand
creates an incentive to be good for
society but not at the expense of profit
so there are we need more public
interest platforms to compete with the
commercial ones and that's a huge
challenge
marcus can i thank you that marcus can i
ask you
to share your thoughts with that but we
also have a question here from ivan
uh that's come in online and he
basically wonders to what degree
is it's not like a small nation problem
but it's a small you know company a
small everybody
question if you don't have the
technological sophistication
or the money uh to invest in the kind of
protections we're talking about today
he's just wondering whether that you
know is is something where
the bad guys and the villains always win
and and i guess i would ask you i know
someone in this room right now
who has you know one of the largest uh
followings on facebook from palestine
particularly among young youth
and you know believe me mahmoud abbas
doesn't like this guy you know he's
anti-corruption and pro-democracy and
mobas has overstayed his term by 12
years
so when you look at that he's got a
whole farm
of people that that government and the
egyptians
have aimed at him and every digital
thing he does
and and i and and and even facebook has
been in this story to somewhat so i i'm
just
interested in how even if facebook can
deal with
government actors trying to undo the
rights of those people who were worried
about democracy and anti-corruption
and trying to take how do we help the
little guys succeed
against the resources of governments
that actually don't want
the values we're talking about today
marcus
yeah i mean we can't be naive about this
this is this is a
an arms race between the bad actors and
and
and and people who try to to stop this
behavior so
it will never be over and yes i think
you're absolutely right i mean this is a
this is a resource question to some
extent and i you know make a very blunt
point about this
facebook spent last year the equivalent
of twitter's revenue in protecting the
integrity of our platform
um i mean that that is a that is an
enormous uh
expense to make we have 35 000 people
who
you know keep the platform safe that's
that is probably i
haven't really checked it but it's
probably the biggest enforcement army
that there is an enforcement
group of people that there is but i
think there's a myth and i want to just
clarify it is that so if you're a small
state if you're a small group you just
fall through the cracks i don't think
that is right and when we think about
backed actors
there's definitely one which is behavior
yeah let's think about it
as as a bad actor you behave and what we
call is cip
um which is which is um sort of um
coordinated um in influencing of uh
outcomes in in a different country and
we spot that
we spot it everywhere that has doesn't
matter how big a country is how big a
group is
these are mechanisms these again
algorithms that help us to spot so every
size of political or geographical entity
benefits from this one and then you have
content on the platform
and yes that is a scale game moderating
content again
raises the the need for having a lot of
people on the ground for having the most
sophisticated
algorithms and it does become a
challenge for others and i i do remember
when i was on the same panel with
renatus um vice president when she said
look are you to pick to care
you know as a platform and my response
was we we
we are just big enough that we can care
actually because it's it is very very
difficult to bring up these resources
to deal with all these challenges on a
global stage
that's that is it and you know if if you
think it's still not enough
think about our competitors or smaller
platforms that come into this market and
what challenge they have
look we've got two minutes left so i'm
going to ask you lightning round
questions i'm going to mention
globe sets globe sex transatlantic
principles
for a healthy online information space
long title
too wonky but um uh the second
item in this says empower users to make
informed decisions about their data
i guess my question is i know that david
carroll cared about his data
but i don't know if most people do i've
always wondered you know do we need a
game app like
you know angry birds or we need
something that a lot more people than
attend this conference go through
where we educate about digital literacy
we talk about digital health
we talk about how they could be victims
so that you could get more of a demand
function
uh going uh on these questions that
we're talking about today
and i'm just you know just real quick
insights on whether you think again i'm
naive and thinking that's possible
because i don't see again gravity going
the right direction
i see a lot of people overwhelmed by
this topic and they largely don't care
they don't see it as something
they do it's kind of similar to health i
see a lot of problems in medical and
health literacy
people just kind of forfeit you know
responsibility to let others make
decisions for them
how do you empower and you know in to go
back to this
globe sec uh initiative how do you
actually want people to
want this david the number one response
that people have had after seeing the
netflix documentary the great hack
is what can i do to protect my data
and i don't have good responses to that
question so there is a hunger for it and
the tools
and abilities are not there we
we get our financial information
proactively disclosed in a monthly
statement
why isn't our data why aren't our data
profiles proactively disclosed
to us excellent thank you
um marcus your thoughts and we'll give
the last word to renata
i would go in a similar direction i i do
think you know there are people
probably as a fraction of population
that that doesn't really care generally
doesn't care as people that care but
i think what is important is that the
people who care have more opportunities
to express that care and to have more
control and have more transparency over
over the data and i think that's sort of
the gradual process
that that we work towards as a as a
private company with our settings with
our
uh product changes but also i think
that's where we go in with
all regulations think about the digital
services act think about
privacy regulation and so on so i think
it's a it's a it's a piece of movement
that that is required here
but more transparency more control
that's the way to go thank you renata
you're going to get the last word
i think steve i'm less pessimistic than
you about
the citizens in general i'm a journalist
it's my job to be pessimistic
absolutely but on the other hand i see a
real task here because
if we don't address the media literacy
and the digital literacy
in societies and at all ages uh i mean
there's a lot of talk about you know
education school education and fos you
know focusing on that but you have to
really think about you know all
generations there's also a vulnerable
group of elderly people
you know if we don't get that right the
digital divide and with all the kind of
the difficulties that come along with it
can really harm us
so i think we we have understood that
this is a huge kind of task for us that
along with regulation increased
transparency we need to kind of you know
really engage in
concrete programming and concrete kind
of you know tools
to enable users to actually be better
informed because otherwise if we lose
them we will not kind of find a way
through that
uh well listen what a great conversation
a short period of time i didn't know
where this was all going to go but i
thought we
actually did say uh and and reveal some
very interesting
uh parts of this discussion i really
want to thank uh renata nicolet of
of the european commission in brussels
marcus reinish of facebook i'm happy to
friend you if you want marcus we can
become pals
and and david i love facebook but david
carroll
uh from parsons school of design watch
the great hack
it's such an important show thank you
all uh right now our time is up i should
say that there is a program about to
begin
uh with the prime ministers of slovakia
in austria in the maria teresa room it's
gonna be tough to get in there you'll
have a lot more fun if you just hang out
in this room because it's gonna run live
here but let's give a big round of
applause to our panel thank you so much
thanks david thanks marcus thanks renata
i hope to see you in person one of these
days
that'd be nice bye very much
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
you