The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> SHITA AKSMI: Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for coming at the end of IGF. We have coffee that you can also bring home as one of our incentive to come here as well. We would like to invite an amazing discussion on our amazing panel. Social media does have the power to empower social movement. Lately we see the current trend of practicing the maximizing of social media. Four amazing panelists here: First is Dirgayuza Setiawan. He's an ISOC fellow. Hamza Mehrez, I hope I pronounced that right, policy analyst from Internet Governance Middle East North Africa. We also have Mariam Barata, the deputy director of ICT application. Also Tereza Horejsova, project development director of DiploFoundation.
We will start with stories from the ground. So we will ask Dirgayuza and Hamza, because they are part of the social activities in Indonesia and the Middle East. Then we'll go to Mariam, who will be speaking as her capacity as government official on how to ‑‑ how the government look at the social media in the political scene. Then we'll come to Tereza, who will be sharing with us the international response to this in the international or multilateral organisations.
We don't want these discussions to be a monologue, so I hope that every panelist can have, like, seven minutes of discussion and we will open for the floor to have discussion. Yeah? Let's start with you, Dirgayuza.
>> DIRGAYUZA SETIAWAN: Thank you very much, Shita. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. I think Indonesia as a unique position to talk about democracy. Not many people around the world know that Indonesia is the third largest democracy in the world, the second largest by number of voters. More people vote in the Indonesia election than in the recent U.S. election. We have more than 40 political parties. We have a direct presidential election and 550 members of national parliament. In total, in Indonesia we have more than 500 parliaments and more than 3,000 members of parliaments.
During the election in 2014, we have five‑year cycle. We have more than 12,000 members of the public that run for public office. 12,000. So you can imagine the level of democracy that we have to face every five years.
In the 2014 election I advised the third largest political party in Indonesia. It's also the second largest political party on Facebook. So I am quite proud of that. Nowadays, if you are not on Facebook, you're not ‑‑ you don't exist.
I'm going to talk about trends in democracy and civic engagement. I think there are four things that I can talk about. First, decision‑making, how the social media is changing decision‑making; then information dissemination; thirdly, political hacking, and participation.
As you know, politics is a scientific act. That's why there is a field called political science. In the past, politicians used tools like surveys and focus group discussions in order to understand what the population is feeling. However, these tools, especially in the large country like Indonesia, 250 million people, is out of reach for smaller parties and independent candidates. They don't have the money to actually surveyor do a national survey.
So that's why data mining enabled by API, such as Facebook API and Twitter API, really help smaller parties and smaller candidates with not much cash to participate effectively in elections. This is also enable politicians and political parties to make decisions quickly on emerging issues. For example, several times in Indonesia parliament, the parties have to vote on raising fuel prices. I know some parties nowadays, they use data from social media in order to decide whether they will agree or disagree on decisions. They understand the social media is a good indicator for knowing whether public support for the party will increase or decrease following a certain decision.
Another trend that I'm observing is information dissemination. In the past, news and dissemination of information is monopolized by certain TV stations and certain radio stations. Today, it's certainly not the case anymore. More and more people are getting their news primarily from social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. And because of that, positively significances are adapting themselves to social media. So in the past people think about the 24‑hour news cycle. Today people think about how can I post on social media effectively.
For example, people are learning that posting a lot content on Facebook doesn't work. They have to only post one or two content every single day, because if they don't, if they post too many, their reach number goes down. And I think people are starting to understand that. That's why people are limiting nowadays their talking points to one or two issues maximum a day.
Echo chambers is getting real. Especially after a decisive election. In Indonesia, very decisive, just like Clinton and Trump in the U.S. That created an echo chamber. People who voted for candidate A are most likely to follow certain news outlets or certain social media platforms and give Web pages.
I'm also seeing that politicians now acknowledge that this is a fact. They understand that in order to reach the larger masses, they have to appear and subscribe by the other half of their ‑‑ the other side of the fence. It is easier for established media outlets, but I think it's much harder for fake news outlets, because you can't just go there and say your point of view.
I'm also looking at the issue of people getting traumatized by participating online. So this is still a topic on information dissemination. A lot of people, yes, they can voice their concerns. But we now see increasing number of politicians are employing cyber armies, be it like a lot of people are using AI to attack people who does not agree with their opinion. For this, I'm thankful for projects like the political bots project. They are shedding a light. This will be a big problem in the future, because people will stay silent because they are afraid of getting bullied on fine, be it by bots or real people.
In Indonesia we also see some political hacking going on. For example, in 2014, soon after the election, when the votes are being counted, the website of the election commission could not be accessed for several hours because of DBOS attacks. And I think in the future we're going to see more and more of these incidents.
At the moment we don't have any experience yet with getting information on WikiLeaks. Again, I think that's gonna be a trend, because WikiLeaks is getting more and more political.
Lastly, I would like to talk about participation. I said in Indonesia I'm not sure, but other parts of the world, political participation is limited to adults. So people who are under 17 years of age, they cannot legally participate in political rallies, but using social media, they can have a voice. They can participate in political activities. I think that's good.
They're also building platforms that increase transparency in the social processes. However, I do not see yet an effort to share some of the learning platforms on democracy between what we already have in Indonesia with other parts of the world. And I think it's gonna be the next step. This is a good start.
Thanks.
>> SHITA AKSMI: Thank you, Dirgayuza, for being so on time. So you are seven minutes now. Hamza, from Tunisia.
>> HAMZA MEHREZ: Thank you very much. This is a democracy. Not only in Indonesia.
I'll give you an overview of what's happening in the MENA region when it comes to using social media and use it to consider this notion of democracy in the MENA region. You know that if you take the case now, let me first say that if you go to a politician in the MENA region, they still have this perception and idea that people are using social media. There are these irrational actors who don't know how to use that sphere, online sphere, to strategically mandate, advocate for tangible results.
If you go now for the youth population and you talk to them about democracy, they hate the word democracy because they have been fighting for the word democracy for 23 years, in the case of Tunisia, and a regime who censored, even killed and put people in prison. Now the outcome their own revolution is basically they have been deceived. So they have been able to topple regime in Tunisia. People organized very well online and used independent structures, to try to advocate rationally for toppling the regime. That application took only a short time. After we toppled those dictatorships, that's online organising movement vanished, because people now are living in a political vacuum. And they think that democracy can emerge like that. Democracy requires a certain minds and build accountable institutions.
So that perception of being politicians and social media activists, that negative perception, is still felt in the MENA region.
The other thing that I wanted to talk about is that the case of Egypt, for example, the military has the upper hand when it comes to politics. We have been seeing that. Maybe the outcome in Tunisia was positive. We have been able to topple the regime and we are in the process building democracy.
In the case of Egypt, it's a black box. The military has the upper hand on politics. There is no chance now for you as a blogger or as a journalist or activist to use an independent social media to advocate for any economic policy or social policy or political policy.
And you, basically, would be put in prison because of the dangerous climate with the military.
The thing is that if you see the trend that is happening in the MENA region right now. I feel that people have to organize better. People have to use Facebook and use it ‑‑ or social media and use it rationally. They have to do research. They have to educate themselves on how they can bargain and go where they go, go where government are or go where there is a private sector and try to teach themselves on how to strategically advocate for policies.
The thing is that one of the trends that you are seeing right now in the MENA regions of the Internet is polarizing or society based on that in Tunisia some of the religious actors that came up to the scene, and people know they are making their choices when it comes to politics, not based on policies and based on the policies deliver in the short or medium or long term. They are making the choices based on a religious party, he's from a secular party, he's my friend, he's my acquaintance, he's ‑‑ yeah. So there's some kind of political clientism that still exists in the MENA region.
We can see and feel it in Egypt. We feel it in Tunisia. And the thing is that it's really an interesting paradox. Social media activists in Tunisia, they used the online to topple the MENA region e‑mails. They did it by the president of Turkey used the what's up application to stay in power. So those dictatorships who were against people organising themselves online and advocating for regime change are using the same tool to stay in power. And if you see what Erogan did, and the What's app application in the society saying we are democracy ‑‑ maybe I'm controversial, but Erogan was elected demo democratically. So in Turkey it's a democracy compared to other regions. So he used that tooling to climb down to the independent region. There is a correlation, it said if you want to use social media and you are a dictatorship, you have to be better organized to topple that dictatorship. If you want to use social media and you are a democracy, you cannot change the system.
If you want to see a real change, you have to organize better, basically. So for me that's an overview about the region. And I think social media, I will finish by this, social media can be used to be better organized. I think in the case of Tunisia, we are perceived by the west as being a democracy in progress, but we are sending the highest number to ISIS. So we are seeing by the west as being the mother for democracy, but people that can use social media to basically indoctrinate people and send them where they can use it put positively or they could be used it to be indoctrinated to other phenomenon, like we see in the space in the region.
So I think we have to find a way to better organize and to kind of prevent that social space to be used by other actors in the MENA region for other purposes.
>> SHITA AKSMI: Thank you very much. It's very nice insights from the MENA region. So we go to Mariam Barata, coming from the government point of view.
>> MARIAM BARATA: First allow me at the outset to express my expression of Mexico, and also stakeholder for the excellent arrangement in this very important for you know what I mean. Indonesia has opinion participating in the IGF and looking forward to future cooperation with you.
In response to the issue, we understand that social media is a platform in which the contents are generated from user and spread through the Internet, making this a technology that promotes improvement, sharing in collaboration almost all sector of public life would not be separate from the use of Internet, as it has also become the main reference for accessing news and information.
Indonesia is open for many Internet platforms, such as social media website and other online forum. This is expected to be beneficial for Indonesia in utilizing the great flow of information. Data of 2015 showed that our Internet user have reached around 93.4 million. Some of the driving factor of the development of Internet user is our ‑‑ in our country are the rapid development and easy access to Smartphone or mobile device.
Social media and online shop contents are among the most accessed contents by the Internet users. Ever since its independence, Indonesia has been a democracy and social media can aid the government around the world in doing public service in more transparent and accountable manner, as well as an effective media to nurture tolerance and respect for diversity. This is why social media platform become very important aspect in strengthening democracy in Indonesia.
On the other hand, social media can also be a utilized as a medium to distribute information. We believe not only Indonesia, but many countries are also confronted by this paradox, which can be counterproductive to the democracy.
In responding to this development. Government with conventional communication means in order to grab public attention and support in implementing programs, policies, and regulation. The government should take the social media in a productive and effective way to strengthen public services and transparency of information.
For this reason, I believe Internet Governance has to be an impetus with the social media to embrace the laws and embrace the norms of good governance and responsibility and respect. Because only by doing so, we can nurture a safe, responsible, and tolerant social media that can contribute positively for democracy.
To ensure the usage remain positive it currently has some important mission to meet the need of ICT Indonesia that is growing rapidly, especially in the construction of telecommunication infrastructure, such as increasing the development of programs and the telecommunication industry. Also supporting development of informatics. As well as clean energy in the minutes of ICT base content by multi‑stakeholder approach.
It is important to know that the implementation of Internet Governance in Indonesia is not really about the issues of technology, but also regarding advancement of the content in the future work.
Government of Indonesia has policies and regulation to provide strong foundation to aid or effort in confronting issues of social media or negative posts.
For example, just recently the definition of our law on the information and electronic transition has passed several ‑‑ the obligation to remove content that is not important for the electronic transition operators. This right can be exercised by the person and should be ‑‑ and implementing regulation on this matter is underway.
Second, strengthening the role of the government to prevent dissemination of negative content on the Internet, which the government is to prevent the dissemination of electronic information and impacts for the society.
Third, strengthening Internet Governance in Indonesia, we will continue to conduct and work together with the platform of social media and also the stakeholders in the process of ‑‑ the development contents that are being posted in cyberspace. The main role of government is not to control the content, but to strengthen its import to protect the citizen as Internet user from any potential harmful effect of the Internet.
Other important things, in order to formulate policies and regulation that are effective and applicable, we also hold various stakeholder process. By this mean we look forward to have balance, positive use of Internet and social media in our society that can nurture democracy and good governance. The past development of cyberspace or Internet have result to a limited communication, by limiting in person meetings and interaction.
Yet, I believe that it should not hold up our failures and efforts in our real world, because they also apply in cyberspace. In the use of social media as medium of discussion, public should also consider norms that apply in real world while interacting in social world, such as not to post content pertaining hate speech or against some institution or particular groups, pornography, human rights abuse, and not to the person or particular group. In order that, we need to develop this situation. Whether social media can be used for discussion and in direction positively to increase the tolerance and respect to others. We hope to be able to raise the awareness of our citizen to obey roles and ethics while using Internet, such as to check carefully on any information before spreading or posting it.
We also have to make sure information and contents are ‑‑ that are being posted are true, and hopefully can be beneficial as well. We should also refrain from posting any content that can possibly cause defamation. The Internet needs to be a safe community for participation by and for everyone.
In this regard, I would like to conclude the important role of government who does not only act as a regulator, but also as a facilitator to build capacity, the creativity of the local ICT sector. Most importantly, to promote digital literacy among the citizen. We need the participation of all stakeholder and under Internet Governance. Thank you.
>> SHITA AKSMI: Thank you, Mariam. Very interesting to see how government is trying to balance the use of social media in giving democracy. I'll go to Tereza, to give us more insight on the traditional level.
>> TEREZA HOREJSOVA: Good afternoon. My name is Tereza Horejsova. Thank you very much for this invitation. First of all, I would like to apologize for our director, who had to cancel his participation here at the Internet Governance Forum, and who would have been the one speaking at this panel.
Yovan is a big friend of Indonesia and we have really benefit from having such a fruitful cooperation with you.
Coming to the topic of the session, social media, and democracy, just to frame it with what we are seeing in Indonesia, the biggest Muslim democracy, one of the areas where we cooperate with you closely and where we really admire your work is the multi‑stakeholder model being implied in the national IGF of Indonesia, so that is one concrete example where we can see these developments happening.
Now, I will ask to talk a little bit multilateral angle and the role of international organisations.
In a nutshell, most international organisations are built around the three famous pillars, security, development, and human rights, even the United Nations is based on these pillars as well as other region organisations, multilateral organisations.
We are also seeing here at the IGT coming to its close, even the discussions here seem to be framed around these three main pillars or angles issues, if you wish. We are saying that also because, as you may have noticed, we at the DiploFoundation, are following closely at the IGF and reporting the daily summaries. We are really trying to look at it from the thematic point of view. This is one observation that we can already make.
Most of the international organizations, angle is the one that is prevailing in looking at the link between social media and democracy. One concrete example that we can mention from what we have been observing, for instance, in the meetings of the Human Rights Council, the social media ranking is used for assessing the democracy in the peer review in the countries.
In the human rights angle, there is the other angle, which is the security one. Here we are getting to a very delicate balance. One example I'm going to take from the concrete agenda that is being on the multicultural front is violent extremism online, which was discussed in the last few months at various occasions. The last one was just a meeting held in New York last week. And the delicate lines particularly in the fact of how to assure the security and then freedom of expression. Where does this flow into the other?
Obviously, an ideal scenario would be to achieving a win/win solution where neither the human rights nor the security aspects would be ignored, if we can get some win/win solution that would be ideal. At this moment it looks more like a zero/zero. It is a very delicate line. I will stop here because we will have discussion. I would then like to react some points that Mariam has raised, because mainly on the paradox between social media and how it can further lead to radicalization in the online spaces. Thank you.
>> SHITA AKSMI: Thank you. I think we can have a good discussions with our panel. I'm opening the floor. You can also sit in front. You can just ask. Are there any questions? Yeah. Sure. Do you have a microphone?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. I am from Kenya. Just to follow up on the point by Hamza, that in democratic societies that social media cannot bring that radical kind of change. This is a debate that has been made in Kenya, because people say that social media nothing really with would change because all the hashtags and the tweets and all that. There is this feeling that that cannot bring a bit of radical change. The current government, when they are doing the politicking, they are using the thing that social media should no longer ‑‑ as you say, the timing, saying social media is not good for development, people look at it too much. We need to look at regulations to limit what these people are saying. We need to regulation and Code of Ethics on bloggers and the likes.
My question is what should we propose? From the MENA region, since we are a democracy, quote/unquote, what type of avenues would be available to bring around that kind of radical change?
>> SHITA AKSMI: First, is there any question? Yes, sir? And the other one, yes.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. My name is victor. I'm from Venezuela. Platforms are really important to the democracy we have seen in the latest years. There is an issue with social media platforms that are created by the private sector, because it can be used not only for the people, but it can be used to opress people as well. I don't know how to say in English. The thing is I have been in a lot of sessions that they talk about how governments oppress people through social media like attacks from span bots, direct threat, or hacking their accounts and taking out their personal information to use it against them.
So I think there is a need of creating a social media with different values that came from the different sector, Civil Society, regulated by organisations in a transparent way to show that these tools not only benefit, like Facebook or Twitter, because they are made for profit, but social media we have to develop social media for people by the people, controlled by people, in a way that all these attacks, all these things that happened could be avoided. And a social media that really allows us to express things without being threatened, without fear. And social media, we cannot trust all data. That is another issue.
How do you think could be ‑‑ could we do that platform or like is there any idea about that that has been said before me? I don't know.
>> As I understood that submission from the government of Indonesia, you were putting focus on both education for citizens as well as some legislative measures. Can you talk about how we effectively support citizens to do this work? I have a preference, personally, for how we support citizens versus legislation that might reduce freedom of speech. So I'm wondering how in Indonesia we're proposing to do that.
Then the second question, which both to Civil Society and for to the government, is in the context of trolls and troll armies? What have you been able to manage this for the other countries grappling with this.
>> SHITA AKSMI: I have three questions. Hamza, you speak first.
>> HAMZA MEHREZ: Yeah. Thank you very much for your question. Really interesting. The problem that we have in the MENA region is that our state bureaucrats, not all of them, they perceive the Internet as a dark and scary place, where you have to hire a geeky employee and give him, like, an office and he will manage all of the social media of his own bureaucracy or administration.
I think us, as social media advocates or as people working with Civil Society, I think we have to try to change perception. We have to try to go and advocate and go to those government officials and say to them and explain for them what is social media. So social media is not only about tweeting or putting hashtags or putting your photos with your girlfriend, it's more a creative engine of a creative content. When it is used strategically by a government official, he can hold himself accountable to his own constitution, and he can hold himself accountable to his voters.
So you talked about politicians are using the social media to ‑‑ for another set of objectives of when they can come to power and they tend to forget about what they have did with that creative engine. I think we should go and address them and say to them that if you use social media strategically and you get more notice by social media, you can stay in power and you can give incentive for people to vote for you in the future. I think capacity building for government officials is needed.
I think that's one of the form of the ‑‑ of what we can do on the ground with government officials and policymakers.
>> The social media for the people? What do you think the second gentleman?
>> HAMZA MEHREZ: I forget.
>> SHITA AKSMI: Okay. That's good. Okay.
>> DIRGAYUZA SETIAWAN: I'm going to address the question on social media by private sector and by people. I think that's very interesting question. In the Indonesian experience I've been seeing a number of politicians and political parties. They actually establish their own social media platform. So they are present on the major platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but they create their own platform so that they can circumvent the so‑called rules that the big social media platforms have. Also, for them to have a more secure and more open dialogue with their own followers.
However, since maintaining a social media platform is quite expensive, you have to pay for services and also developing the apps themselves. I don't think we will see in any near future any effort for social media by people from the people, because in the end there needs to be someone who take care of the platforms on 24‑hour, seven‑day a week. It needs to be done professionally, I think on the question of the troll and armies, it's a very interesting one, because in Indonesia, in my experience, these tools are like the Mafia. Like there's a Mafia selling services. It comes in two ways: One, in form of a roomful of people. I've seen pictures of people with 20 phones and a hundred people in the same room because they control many, many social media accounts. But I also see the AI technology that is actually being created for this sole purpose.
In Indonesia the response is two ways: First, awareness. People like me and the Civil Society activists, we bring this issue up to the people in the media. We talk about them. We use some examples, because with awareness, what the response to the public is they will ignore most of the racist and the hateful comments on social media. And when people ignore these comments, in the long‑run it will be harder for people who are providing such services to sell their services, because the effectiveness will go down.
The second response will be with the politicians themselves actually mentioning on social media and on interviews that, yes, they value social media, but they use it now a lot to organize gathering, to organize offline gathering, and they'll hear from people who actually go through the gatherings instead of listening on social media because a lot of this can be manipulated and played around.
Thanks.
>> MARIAM BARATA: Okay. In Indonesia we have been working on increasing citizen creativity through training for kids and adults, sometimes for parents and teacher, and for how to use Internet to save and secure.
Indonesia have a program, we call Internet smart creativity and productive to increase the youth to use Internet not only for update status, but for making something with the Internet, maybe blog or website or application. And I think because the government with the multi‑stakeholder to make the training for Indonesian and Indonesian student, I think it is effective because all multi‑stakeholder ‑‑ Indonesia have a lot island ‑‑ have many island. Government didn't came to planning for Indonesian, the government with the multi‑stakeholder to train the student in Indonesia.
There is a handling of negative content by censoring or filtering content that is considered objectionable. That's all.
>> SHITA AKSMI: Thank you. Do you want to respond?
>> TEREZA HOREJSOVA: Super quickly to react to Hamza, but also to Mariam's original contribution and the elements of training and awareness building. Yes, this is definitely essential for also ensuring sustainable Internet Governance community, and even if the stakeholders are better informed, mean better in a quality way and trained, it would lead to more inclusive and efficient policymaking.
>> SHITA AKSMI: Okay. Okay.
>> My name is (?) From Thailand. I have some comment. I think this session is really with the current situation in many parts of the world, especially for Thailand. As we know, the social media is just as a tool to promote democracy and we are also aware that there is a dark side of social media. However, I think from experience in Thailand, as a social media is able to be used as a platform by many sector to ‑‑ right now we do not be like dominant information from just only the big corporate media or state media control. This is very important point for the citizen to engage and be informed.
I would like to send some information in Thailand, letters just a few days ago, there was a people got interrogation and been visit by the police just because they quick "like" to some social media and some threatening and warning for the legal charge. This is already being enforced by the authority. We also need to be warning of these kinds of actions and should not be accepted.
One thing in Thailand we have the law that try to control the Internet and social media is called Commit a Crime Act. That come from the POS data and the current data, they also try to amend and drop the amending of the Commit a Crime Act already finalized and plan to pass by the national registry assembly next day. Wish for the citizen and the public in Thailand, we try to stop that, because there are at least three serious concern point. First, the new draft ‑‑ the amendment draft is like allowed the committee to drop the website, no need to be the legal content, so allow them to request to block the website without any kind of legal violation or illegal violation.
The second point, the committee will ‑‑ they will set the unit that can block website. No need to request direct to the ISP, which I think is going to make the censorship in Thailand is massive.
The last one, also, about the provision that will punish to the citizen if, like, they are caught. Already decide any information supports to be destroy. If they found that information into any citizen computer, they are deemed to be punish. So I think this is ‑‑ the current law is bad, but amend one is worse. And doing develop and job and have some kind of attempt to pass, building a democratic government, I know that we are living under the repress ive regime, but the law is still exist. If, like, put some pressure or send a letter to our government or to our parliament would be helpful and in rush because the next five‑day is plan to pass. Thank you.
>> SHITA AKSMI: Thank you very much.
>> AUDIENCE: Mine is more a comment than question. Sorry, I missed the first part, so you may have already described this. But why Indonesia? Have you spoke about that, number of users, etc.? So I was struck that you have the number one users of Facebook at least in Indonesia and the number three of Twitter users of the world, although Japan is number two and the U.S. number one. You guys have already more population. Also, the user percentage of the Facebook of Indonesia is like 10%, maybe a little bit more, but still your very intensive use of the social media as a whole has been seen. Because I talk to ‑‑ I talk to the ‑‑ there are not too many people using the Internet. And it's just an amazing change, not to mention the connectivity element.
However, that's my first observation. But so what? Is another question that of course with all the political and stuff, almost all camps these days are using social media from Obama, Trump, or you name it. Whichever direction they want. Do they listen to it? Yes. They listen to their support, but not the other camp. So what I feel ‑‑ my biggest concern is, first of all, we may be seeing some new unknown mode of society from kids to adults, from terrorist to democratic, most all of them are using this medium in favor of the direction they want.
But do we have some universal understanding or connections between these? Also very many small silos you're creating, perhaps. It's really unknown. So a lot of young people in Japan feel comfortable with just having some online chat friends or groups of five or ten or doing the work. But from my direct experiences, they all like some form of interaction. China is the same. But to me, as a whole, we might be being divided and divided and divided by diffuse of social media, different cultural regional, whatever backgrounds they have. So are we really seeing what we are heading to? I'm very much concerned that we are making the use of this medium together interest Internet to break our society, global society.
>> SHITA AKSMI: Thank you for reminding us of the good old days as well. Is there any response from the panelists about this?
>> DIRGAYUZA SETIAWAN: I want to respond to what was raised. I think you raised very well a concern that if we just let this go, it will be actually bad for society. And I think that's why civil societies need to play an active part. We need to continuously educate the people. In the past, in the old days, there's media literacy. Today we need to have social media literacy. I think more people need to know that what they are reading on social media is not the whole picture, that they are reading things that are tailored for them. Awareness in that is very important.
In addition to that, I think we also need to push for the social media companies to let people know ‑‑ their users know how they're tailoring information to them. This is, I think, one place I agree. People should have a dashboard of information. For example, in my Facebook account, I think it would be great if I can see how Facebook decides what to show and what not to show, what kind of data they have on me that the profile in order for them to tailor that information.
And I think another way we can approach this is to push for the social media companies to acknowledge that they're actually not only technology companies, but they are also media companies. When they do that, I think they will have to adopt the responsibilities of a media company, which is being ‑‑ I'm not gonna say check every single thing, but I'm supposing they're gonna do more in tackling fake news, in tackling silos, and also getting people together from different points of view. And I think in the U.S. we already are seeing some progress in that, some presidential debates are actually hosted by the social media companies, and I think it would be good if such a model could be adopted in other elections around the world.
>> Just a final thing. There is a problem here, because there is no legal definition to an online journalist. There is no ‑‑ so everybody knows what is an offline journalist, which is basically someone who got a BA, who works in an accredited newspaper. In Tunisia, we apply the press law or the press offline law to regulate the behavior of online journalists on the Internet. The online journalist or online social media activists, they don't have any legal. You can easily be put in jail. So it's like a legal constitution approach to that. You have to find a legal attribution to give to what we mean by social media activists or advocate. You have to quantify what is democracy. Democracy is good strong institutions, about building the rule of law, and building accountable institution. It's not something that social media can quickly ‑‑ I don't know ‑‑ create or build. That's really the philosophy or the wrong philosophy that we are living in right now in the MENA region. Because we use the Internet and we use it extensively, we think that we can do whatever we can do and we can change systems. It's just an elusion. I think in one of the questions, I would finish by this, is how (Hamza) how is people work on the field as, how to translate online grassroot movement to an offline rational policy structures. To go from the online structure where people use the Internet to create policy roundtables where they can try to build a democratic environment with policymakers. That's really strategic.
>> SHITA AKSMI: Thank you, Hamza. I would like to thank our amazing panelists.
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I'm aware that this is not yet finished. I think this is an ongoing discussion. I think we will go through this for more that, but don't forget we have coffee over there. You can get the coffee from the gentleman wearing orange shirt. Yes, sir?
>> AUDIENCE: I can't help but say this. I really appreciate your government, Indonesia government, as well as Civil Society in the industry to continue this IGF engagement, which is rare, actually, after you guys hosted the Bally IGF in 2013. Most of the host countries don't really do that: I was respecting you and I cannot help but tell you my appreciation.
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