Governments around the world are increasingly using social media to manipulate elections and monitor their citizens, in a worrisome trend for democracy, a human rights watchdog said yesterday.
An annual report on online freedom by the Washington-based nonprofit group Freedom House found evidence of “advanced social media surveillance programs” in at least 40 of 65 countries analyzed.
The latest Freedom on the Net report said global Internet freedom declined for a ninth consecutive year, as authorities in some countries simply cut off Internet access as part of their manipulation efforts, while others employed propaganda armies to distort information on social platforms.
“Many governments are finding that on social media, propaganda works better than censorship,” Freedom House president Mike Abramowitz said. “Authoritarians and populists around the globe are exploiting both human nature and computer algorithms to conquer the ballot box, running roughshod over rules designed to ensure free and fair elections.”
Disinformation was the most commonly used tactic to undermine elections, Freedom House said.
“Populists and far-right leaders have grown adept not only at creating viral disinformation, but also at harnessing networks that disseminate it,” the report said.
The researchers said that in 47 out of the 65 countries, individuals were arrested for political, social, or religious speech online and people were subjected to physical violence for their online activities in at least 31 countries.
China remained the world’s worst abuser of Internet freedom for the fourth consecutive year as the government stepped up information controls amid protests in Hong Kong and ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, reaching “unprecedented extremes,” the report said.
Online freedom declined in 33 of the 65 countries assessed, including the US, the survey found.
In the US, “law enforcement and immigration agencies expanded their surveillance of the public, eschewing oversight, transparency, and accountability mechanisms that might restrain their actions,” Freedom House said.
“Officials increasingly monitored social media platforms and conducted warrantless searches of travelers’ electronic devices to glean information about constitutionally protected activities such as peaceful protests and critical reporting,” it said.
The report said disinformation was rampant in the US, focusing on the midterm elections in November last year, and that “both domestic and foreign actors manipulated content for political purposes, undermining the democratic process and stoking divisions.”
The biggest declines were in Sudan and Kazakhstan, followed by Brazil, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Improvements were measured in 16 countries, with Ethiopia recording the largest gains.
Despite the grim outlook, Abramowitz cited some positive examples of technology spurring democratic change, including in Lebanon, where people “are rallying their fellow citizens” for reforms.
However, advances in artificial intelligence “have opened up new possibilities for automated mass surveillance,” research director for technology and democracy Adrian Shahbaz said. “Advances in AI are driving a booming, unregulated market for social media surveillance.”
“The future of Internet freedom rests on our ability to fix social media,” Shahbaz said. “Since these are mainly American platforms, the United States must be a leader in promoting transparency and accountability in the digital age. This is the only way to stop the internet from becoming a Trojan horse for tyranny and oppression.”
While Taiwan is covered in Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World and Freedom in the Media reports, it is not one of the 65 nations evaluated for the Internet survey.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg and staff writer
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion