On Friday 22 January, Liberal International in cooperation with Radikale Venstre hosted a high-level event to launch our join campaign on the Liberal Principles of Digitalisation and Human Rights.
Bringing together Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age, and Maria Ressa, journalist and CEO of news organisation Rappler in the Philippines, in a conversation moderated by LI HRC Chair Astrid Thors, this event explored the importance and urgency of securing human rights online.
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who leads the European Commission’s work on digital regulation and who is well known for taking on the big tech companies in as Commissioner for Competition, stressed the importance of the digital and physical world matching each other. What is illegal offline should also be illegal online. But she also warned against governments trying to take on the roles of arbiters of truth.
“Many of my colleagues in the Commission grew up behind the Iron Curtain. They are forever vaccinated against a ‘ministry of truth’ where the state approves what is true. […] We need independent democratic mechanisms for citizens to appeal when their rights have been violated by companies.”
Maria Ressa, who joined the conversation from the Philippines where she has just posted bail for her tenth arrest warrant for fabricated charges for which she risks up to 100 years in prison, stressed that we must remember that the digital world is real and that what happens online has consequences in the physical world. Her own story shows that threats online are not just theoretical, but have real life consequences.
“I have been a journalist for 35 years, and I have never had the protections of being a journalist stripped away in real life and online, but that is happening now,” she explained.
“Lies laced with anger spread faster and further than hate, and the platforms that distribute news are therefore biased against facts. Without shared facts we cannot have truth, or trust, or democracy. What we saw in Washington DC on 6th January is the culmination of this.”
In December 2019, Liberal International conducted a survey among our member parties, asking whether they had developed policy on digitalisation and human rights. To our surprise, only 1 in 3 parties responded that they had. This realisation laid the foundation for the campaign that Liberal International, with the generous support of Radikale Venstre, is launching this week.
Both panellists stressed the urgency of taking action to empower consumers and change the destructive business models of many big tech companies.
“We need to treat this like 75 years ago when the atom bomb went off, this is an existential moment for humanity,” Maria Ressa stressed.
“The Cambridge Analytica scandal was a wake up call with no snooze. There is no way of changing this without legislation, the business models are so strong that it is impossible to change them without pressure from society,” Commissioner Vestager said.
“Everywhere there is a fight for the very fundaments of democracy. It is inspiring to know that Maria Ressa keeps fighting and that LI is lifting this discussion and engaging with civil society at the global level,” she concluded.
Astrid Thors summarised the discussions by lifting that both speakers had conveyed both a sense of urgency and a sense of hope. While Maria Ressa shows what the consequences can be if digital rights are not respected, she remains hopeful and is an inspiration for all.
With this campaign, Liberal International and Radikale Venstre wish to illustrate and explain what human rights mean online, why it is important to protect them, and what should be done to do so. Too many citizens are not aware of what their digital rights are, or how they relate to our rights in the physical world. This campaign will strive to raise awareness and to increase the knowledge of digital issues for liberals everywhere.
