11 Oct 24 | Brazil, Israel, Mexico, News and features, Newsletters, Palestine, United States
Hello, readers. This is Sarah Dawood here, the new editor of Index on Censorship. Every week, we bring the most pertinent global free speech stories to your inbox.
This week, headlines have been dominated by the ongoing devastation of the war in the Middle East, where the death toll is now more than 42,000 in Gaza, and more than 2,100 in Lebanon. Monday also marked a painful milestone for Israelis and Jewish people everywhere, as the first anniversary of Hamas’s attacks, which killed 1,200 people. You can read Jerusalem correspondent Ben Lynfield’s forensic analysis on the region’s risks to journalists and press freedom below.
Attention has also been on the destructive Hurricane Milton in Florida, which has killed at least 16 people. The climate event has resulted in human tragedy, physical damage and the distortion of truth, with false information and AI-generated images accumulating millions of views on social media, including a fabricated flooding of Disney World in Orlando. Such imagery has been seized upon by hostile states, far-right groups, and even US politicians to advance their own aims: Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reposted the fake Disney World photos to its Telegram channel, whilst Republican members of Congress have proclaimed conspiracy theories of government-led “storm manufacturing”. This emphasises how crises can be manipulated and monopolised to stir up division.
But while disinformation can undermine democracy, so too can information blockades. This brings us to some important stories coming out of Latin America. In Brazil, the social media platform X is now back online after a shutdown in September. The platform was banned by a top judge during the country’s presidential election campaign, in an attempt to prevent the spread of misinformation. But as Mateus Netzel, the executive director of Brazil-based digital news platform Poder360 told Reuters, social media bans not only restrict public access to information, but can undermine journalists’ ability to gather and report on news. Elon Musk himself was using X to post about the development of the ban, but this was inaccessible to Brazilian journalists. “In theory, there are journalists and outlets who do not have access to that right now and this is a very important restriction because they need to report on this issue and they will have to rely on indirect sources,” said Netzel.
We also heard frightening news from Mexico, where a local politician was murdered and beheaded just days after being sworn in as city mayor of Chilpancingo. Whilst we don’t yet know the reason that Alejandro Arcos Catalán was killed, his murder is yet another example of journalists, politicians, and other public figures being routinely targeted by criminal gangs. Bar active war zones, Mexico has consistently been the most dangerous country in the world for journalists, topping Reporters Without Borders’ list in 2022.
Meanwhile, in El Salvador, climate activists are being silenced through false imprisonment. Five protesters, who fronted a 13-year grassroots campaign to ban metal mining due to its devastating environmental impacts are now facing life in prison for the alleged killing of an army informant in 1989. The charge has been condemned by the UN and international lawyers as baseless and politically motivated, and echoes heavy-handed prison sentences being handed to climate protesters globally, including in democratic countries. As Index’s Mackenzie Argent reported last month, human rights lawyers have called out the UK’s hypocrisy in claiming egalitarianism whilst disproportionately punishing environmental activists, pointing specifically to the sentencing of Just Stop Oil’s Roger Hallam to five years in prison in July. These two stories, although taking place 5,000 miles away from each other, underline how climate defenders are currently on the front line of attempts to be silenced.
13 Sep 24 | News and features, Newsletters, United States
Who could have predicted that Donald Trump would unite George Orwell and Taylor Swift in the form of an Index newsletter? But that’s the strange world in which we’re living.
This week I’ve been obsessively telling my Index colleagues about Laura Beers’ excellent book Orwell’s Ghosts, which is full of insights about today’s political climate through the lens of the Animal Farm author’s wisdom. One part that’s really stuck with me is the relationship between free speech and the truth, as Orwell saw it.
“Orwell could never endorse a world in which ‘alternative facts’ were given free rein,” Beers writes, reminding her readers about the famous Nineteen Eighty-Four line where Orwell describes freedom as the right to say that 2 + 2 = 4. As Beers points out, it is very much not the right to say that 2 + 2 = 5. Objective truth matters.
Anyone with even a passing interest in the US election will know that this week has been a goldmine for talking points on truth, lies and misinformation. It is the perfect moment to be reading this book.
When ABC News hosted a debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump this week, it was also the first time they’d met in person. After shaking hands, the debate began with gusto, Harris quickly getting under Trump’s skin. What was particularly interesting about this debate though was the on-the-go fact-checking live on air. It’s something we’ve never seen to this degree, and the fact that ABC feel it is needed now is telling.
On the issue of abortion, Trump asserted — not for the first time — that babies in the USA are being executed after being born. Moderators took down the false claim: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”
Commentators on the right were quick to denounce this new era of fact-checking. It was unfairly skewed towards Trump and they were picking him apart more than Harris. There is of course a simple explanation for that, which is that he told more lies. According to CNN, Trump delivered more than 30 false claims while Harris gave one, although additional claims of hers were misleading or lacking in context.
The award for top untruth of the night goes perhaps to Trump’s claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pet cats and dogs. The internet quickly got to work with memes of The Simpsons’ dog Santa’s Little Helper giving the side eye to cat Snowball II. But ABC moderators were speedier than the meme-makers and set the story straight live on air, confirming that there had been “no credible reports” of this alleged neighbourhood pet buffet.
Of course, the lie didn’t come out of thin air. As The Economist breaks down, the “allegation had been circulating in right-wing circles on social media, boosted by Elon Musk”. Amid anti-immigrant sentiment in some circles, a Facebook post “cited fourth-hand knowledge” about the cat-eating claim. A half-truth is still a lie. And when it comes to a Facebook post based on fourth-hand knowledge being pedalled by a would-be (and former) president, we’re not even close to the realms of a half-truth. Two plus two does not equal four. Two plus two equals Lassie for lunch.
Social media has played a starring role in the misinformation story. Perhaps now is a good time to move on to X owner and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s post directed at pop superstar Taylor Swift.
Following the TV debate, Swift endorsed Harris in an Instagram post to her 284 million followers (to Trump’s 26.5 million and Harris’s 16.9 million, just to demonstrate the sway she has), where she talked about her concern over AI-generated content claiming to show her endorsing Donald Trump. Beneath a picture of the Shake It Off singer holding her ragdoll cat Benjamin Button, she wrote: “The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth,” and signed off “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady,” riffing off the sexist trope used by Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance towards Harris and others.
While not distracted by SpaceX (one of his other companies), which yesterday launched the first ever privately-funded spacewalk, Musk found the time to post: “Fine Taylor … you win … I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.” If we know anything about Swift it’s that Musk is about to become the villain in an upcoming hit single.
Trump also reacted to Swift endorsing Harris. He said the popstar would “probably pay a price for it in the marketplace”.
Swift might say: “Haters gonna hate”. But when powerful billionaires and presidential candidates are deriding cultural figures for having a political voice, and objective truth becomes optional in a democracy, there is a problem. As this and other elections continue to unfold, it’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure that two plus two continue to equal four.
23 Aug 24 | News and features
Why do we tolerate X? Elon Musk’s poisoned well is fast filling up with far-right propaganda, disinformation, hate speech and now, it would seem, adverts for machine guns and grenade launchers from Iran-backed terrorists in Yemen. This is the reality of the free speech utopia the world’s richest man promised us when he took over Twitter. And yet we continue to populate it with content. I do, Index does and many of you reading this will continue to do so. When Dr Johnson said in 1776 that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money” he could not have imagined a world where 335 million blockheads provide free copy for a billionaire.
It’s not just X. The social media business model depends on us all selling our labour for nothing to feed the exponential growth of the platforms.
As Musk has grown closer to Donald Trump, he has begun to openly use X to publish his own personal propaganda for his favoured candidate. His “civil war is inevitable” intervention in Britain’s summer riots demonstrates that he is actively prepared to foment division and racial tension in a country he knows little about. As the US election approaches, Musk seems intent on turning X into an ideological sewer.
So why do we stay? We stay because the rewards are immediate and addictive. We are paid, not in cash, but in dopamine hits and the validation of our followers. And it’s not all negative. Twitter was once a fantastically useful resource for journalists, providing connections, expert knowledge and hard news from an unprecedented international network. When I broadcast to my relatively modest 15,000 followers, the response is more direct and personal that in any other medium I have worked in, including mass circulation newspapers. For a small organisation like Index, X is a vital way of communicating our work with dissidents to our 80,000 followers around the world.
In recent weeks, there has been a noticeable movement away from Musk’s platform. In the UK, journalists have led the X-odus to Threads and Bluesky. In the case of Threads, owned by Meta, it’s not quite clear why it is better to write content for Mark Zuckerberg rather than Musk, although some are remarking that the tone is less openly hostile. Bluesky is positively benign in comparison, but with just six million users it has none of the reach of its nastier competitor.
Personally, I have ended up tripling my workload as I now post not just to X, but to my loyal and impeccably behaved band of 395 followers on Threads and 81 followers on Bluesky.
It would be odd for a free expression organisation to advocate for the boycott of a social media platform, but we have regular discussions internally about the ethics of remaining on X. We will, of course, keep you informed.
There are two stories we have been tracking this week in Thailand and India that would benefit from wider international circulation. The first is the dissolution of the Move Forward party in Thailand, which won the most votes in last year’s elections. Party leader Pita Limjaroenrat promised to end the practice of military intervention in Thai politics, break up monopolies and reform the country’s lese majeste laws, which restrict criticism of the royal family. Limjaroenrat told the Guardian this week: “They’re coming after us. They’re exterminating us.”
Meanwhile, this month marks the fifth anniversary of the Indian government’s decision to strip the state of Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomy. Since then we’ve reported on the many ways in which people’s free expression has been attacked in the region, from newspapers being closed and journalists arrested to mosques being closed. Last year, India’s supreme court backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s position on the contested region, which has been ruled in part by Pakistan and India since partition in 1947. Local elections will take place next month and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi pledged last week that he and his opposition alliance, known as the INDIA bloc, will commit themselves to restoring statehood.
12 Jul 24 | Europe and Central Asia, France, Germany, Netherlands, News and features, Russia
A network of accounts flooded social media with disinformation in the run-up to the European Parliamentary elections a new report has found.
The report was commissioned by the Social Democrats in the European Parliament (S&D) grouping together with the Dutch delegation GroenLinks-PvdA and produced by disinformation specialisists Trollrensics.
It reveals that organised networks of thousands of accounts, which the researchers believe are of likely Russian origin, actively influenced public opinion on X in France and Germany during the elections while voters in the Netherlands, Italy and the English-speaking public were also affected by the troll networks
Trollrensics’ data analysis showed that at least 20% of all tweets about the French far-right politician Zemour came from this troll network, for example. However, the research company estimated the actual percentage is significantly higher as the networks manipulated the X algorithm to amplify specific themes.
The research also found that German political party AfD received a huge boost thanks to the troll army. At least 10.7% of the tweets about the AfD came from the disinformation network.
The network focused mainly on spreading pro-Russian propaganda, messages about anti-vaxxers with anti-vaccination narratives and anti-LGBTIQ+ messages.
Thijs Reuten, an MEP for the S&D, said, “We commissioned this independent study as we were curious about the extent of online foreign interference and how measurable it is – especially because this sometimes seems so hard to ascertain. This study has shown that significant influence took place during the European elections. Troll armies managed to make topics trend and at the same time make certain news reports less visible.”
Reuten added, “This clearly shows our democracy is vulnerable and that foreign powers are willing to spend a lot of money and effort to sow division in our population. We need to defend ourselves better against such organised attempts of foreign interference. I expect the European Commission and the intelligence services to be on top of this. Our open society is in danger if troll armies are able to manipulate social media and, therefore, the public debate”.
