Month: June 2020

Source: UK Parliament

Democracy under threat from ‘pandemic of misinformation’ online, say Lords Committee

The UK Government should act immediately to deal with a ‘pandemic of misinformation’ that poses an existential threat to our democracy and way of life. The stark warning comes in a report published today by the Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies.

Report: Digital Technology and the Resurrection of Trust (HTML)
Report: Digital Technology and the Resurrection of Trust (PDF)
Select Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies

Committee Chair

The Chair of the Committee, Lord Puttnam said:

"We are living through a time in which trust is collapsing. People no longer have faith that they can rely on the information they receive or believe what they are told. That is absolutely corrosive for democracy.

"Part of the reason for the decline in trust is the unchecked power of digital platforms.
These international behemoths exercise great power without any matching accountability, often denying responsibility for the harm some of the content they host can cause, while continuing to profit from it.

"We've seen clear evidence of this in recent months through a dangerous rise of misinformation about COVID-19. We have become aware of the ways in which misinformation can damage an individual’s health along with a growing number of instances where it is our collective democratic health that’s under threat.  That must stop – it is time for the Government to get a grip of this issue.
They should start by taking steps to immediately bring forward a Draft Online Harms Bill.
We heard that on the current schedule the legislation may not be in place until 2024.
That is clearly unacceptable.

"We have set out a programme for change that, taken as a whole, can allow our democratic institutions to wrestle power back from unaccountable corporations and begin the slow process of restoring trust. Technology is not a force of nature and can be harnessed for the public good.
The time to do so is now."

Recommendations

The report says the Government must take action 'without delay' to ensure tech giants are held responsible for the harm done to individuals, wider society and our democratic processes through misinformation widely spread on their platforms.
The Committee says online platforms are not 'inherently ungovernable' but power has been ceded to a "few unelected and unaccountable digital corporations" including Facebook and Google, and politicians must act now to hold those corporations to account when they are shown to negatively influence public debate and undermine democracy.
The Committee sets out a package of reforms which, if implemented, could help restore public trust and ensure democracy does not 'decline into irrelevance'.

Publish draft Online Harms Bill now

The Government has failed to get to grips with the urgency of the challenges of the digital age and should immediately publish an Online Harms Draft Bill that covers the impact of disinformation.
This should give Ofcom, as the proposed Online Harms regulator, the power to hold digital platforms legally responsible for content they recommend to large audiences or that is produced by users with a large following on the platform.
The Committee point out that many content providers are in effect in business relationships with platforms that host their content and the platforms have a duty of care to ensure the content is not harmful, either to individuals or our shared democratic principles. This should be backed up by the power for Ofcom to fine digital companies up to four percent of their global turnover or force ISP blocking of serial offenders.
Ofcom should also be given the power to ensure online platforms are transparent in how their algorithms work so they are not operating in ways that discriminate against minorities. To achieve this Ofcom should publish a code of practice on algorithms including internal and external audits of their effects on users with the characteristics protected in the Equalities Act 2010.

Regulate political advertising

The report calls for political advertising to be brought into line with other advertising in the requirement for truth and accuracy. It says the political parties should work with the Advertising Standards Authority and other regulators to develop a code of practice  that would ban "fundamentally inaccurate advertising during a parliamentary or mayoral election or referendum". This Code would be overseen by a Committee including the ASA, the Electoral Commission, Ofcom and the UK Statistics Authority and would have the power to remove political advertising that breached the code.
This new regulation would be supported by a significant toughening up of electoral law including a requirement for online political material to include imprints indicating who has paid for them, real time databases of all political advertising on online platforms and an increase in the fines that the Electoral Commission can impose on campaigners to £500,000 or four percent of the total campaign spend, whichever is greater.

Introduce a digital ombudsman

The Committee calls on the Government to establish an independent ombudsman for content moderation who will provide a point of appeal for people who have been let down by digital platforms. This would ensure the public would have a representative who could both force the tech giants to take down inappropriate content and protect individuals from their content being unfairly taken down by platforms.
The Committee also makes recommendations for increasing digital media literacy and developing active digital citizens through changes to school curriculum and adult digital literacy initiatives.

Source: The Irish Examiner

The cancellation of this summer’s Leaving Cert exams presents the perfect opportunity to reform the university admission process. 

With Irish students sitting some form of written exams each summer for the last 95 years, we may never have a better opportunity to improve the current system.

That’s according to educator, Oscar-winner and digital advocate David Puttnam, who believes that now is the time to examine how students here get to third-level. Mr Puttnam was one of a number of people who called for this year’s Leaving Cert exams to be scrapped, due to the upheaval caused by the pandemic.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner back in April, he criticised the initial decision to postpone this year’s exams until late July, lamenting the lost opportunity to find a better method of assessment. Believing it was cruel to have delayed the exam until the end of summer, he called for an alternative to be managed through a system of predicted grades, and a swift appeals process.

This is, essentially, what was later decided on by the Department of Education. Cancelling the exams was the right call, Mr Puttnam still believes: “I do understand that from the Government’s point of view, it was the least worst option.

“There was no good option here, but having said that, what I think they’ve done is open up a fantastic opportunity for themselves.

“This is really a moment of opportunity for them. They have the chance now to do a total review of both the Leaving Cert exams and the university admissions process.

“If I was in government, I’d appoint an expert to carry out a full review of the system because they will never have a better opportunity to make a fresh start.” 

Mr Puttnam is best known for his role in producing Hollywood blockbusters, including The Mission, The Killing Fields, and Chariots of Fire. Together, these films have collected 10 Oscars, 10 Golden Globes, 25 Baftas, and the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival.

He is also a member of Britain's House of Lords, a former president of Unicef UK, and he was Ireland’s first national digital champion. Since retiring from film production in 1998, he has focused on his work in education, the environment, and communications.

He is the chairman of Atticus Education, an online education company that he runs from his home in Skibbereen, West Cork.

While he understands the pressure teachers feel in regard to using predicted grades, the system is used in other jurisdictions to great success, he added.

“It comes with the job of being in education that you have to make judgements,” he said. “I genuinely don’t understand, and I am conscious that I am saying this with an English accent, why there is a slight neurosis here around the idea of conflicts of interest. Ireland is a small country, but so is Denmark, so is Finland, so is Estonia. Somehow they don’t seem to have to ask themselves those questions. 

“I never really understood why. I absolutely trust the principals of schools, I absolutely trust teachers. I wouldn’t expect them to be assaulted in Supervalu. Teachers will make the best judgement that they can make.” 

The vast majority of educators do not agree with the Leaving Cert, he believes, adding that he hopes a new way to get students to college can be found that sees less pressure hinged on just one set of exams. 

“I think that one of the things that should also come out of this is much more engagement from universities, as part of an interview process,” he said. “One of the problems with the Leaving Cert is, theoretically, if you get the points you’re in. Yet, you might arrive at university and you are totally unsuited to both the course you got and the way you are going to be taught. It just doesn’t work for you. 

“But that didn’t emerge the day you got your points. I think an interview process is really, really important. It should help to bring in people who have real potential because of the nature of their personalities, and not just people who have just done a few months of hard slog in a grinds school and got the points. That is not education. I can’t say it often enough, and educationalists know it.” 

Today, Mr Puttnam is the president of Britain’s National Film and Television School (NFTS), having also sat on the admissions panel for many years.

“We used to have students who, on paper, looked great. They’d come in, and you’d go through all their stuff but then you’d ask ‘Oh, by the way what are your three favourite movies, and why?’ and they’d freeze. What you’d realise then is that there was no reason for them being there really, other than they thought it was a nice idea to be in the movie business.

 “They’d done some research on the internet, but when you actually met them, you realised they were never going to make it in the field, it was never going to work for them because there was no passion there.” 

He feels very strongly about “inappropriate life-defining exams”, likening the Leaving Cert to a set of British exams called the ‘eleven-plus'. "Those exams basically determined the whole rest of your life. If you passed, you went to a grammar school, you got to wear a blazer and you were taught French. That was a defining moment for kids. Sensibly they binned it because it was so patently unfair and unjust.  The only reason I had passed is because my mother took herself up to London to a bookshop that sold old exam papers."

Lord Puttnam joined Siobhán Cronin recently to discuss the decision to use a grading system for this year’s Leaving Cert, how he finds working from Skibbereen and virtual House of Lords sittings, and he his top Netflix viewing recommendations. 

You can listen to the podcasrt here: LISTEN NOW

In special webinar hosted by super fast broadband provider Fibrus with MW Advocate, film director and producer David Puttnam talks about the work undertaken in Skibbereen to introduce superfast broadband to help bridge the digital divide. Also joining the webinar is the Rural Community Network, Business in the Community, Kainos and NI Screen.

You can watch the Webinare here: WATCH NOW