The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. 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, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: We will get started. We are a very small group, being the first session of the day, I believe. Thanks to everyone for joining today. The session is Safeguarding a Trustworthy Global Information Ecosystem. In this session, we will focus on the work of the Task Force on trustworthy information online and a launch of a set of principles from the Task Force. It will be an interactive session. It is such a small group and a number of us are deeply involved in this work, I think it could be a strategy session for the Task Force. For the work going ahead and for the principles.
Maybe I can give context to the Task Force, and we'll move to opening remarks and dig into discussion. The Task Force for trough information online. It is launched in the Freedom Online Coalition. The Task Force is continuing the work of the Action Coalition on trustworthy information online that was established by the Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs. This was launched by the Danish Government. While in the FOC, the Task Force is chaired by the Government of Denmark and Wikimedia Foundation. And the action coalition's intention was to identify solutions to support trustworthy information online. And the objective of this Task Force will be to carry forward the work and propose recommendations for Governmental institutions and lawmakers with the goal safeguarding healthy online ecosystem.
So that is broadly the Task Force. Later in the session, we will get into the principles that have been proposed and work of the Task Force. To start with we will have opening remarks from Allison Peters the acting assistant Secretary of State and in the labor department. Allison.
>> Allison Peters: Thank you to the colleagues and friends for establishing the Freedom Online newest Task Force for trustworthy information online and the fellow FOC members, the Wikimedia Foundation for taking on the role of co‑Chair alongside the Danish Government. As the Chair of the FOC, we in the United States are proud of our partnership with both the Government of Denmark and all FOC members and advisor network to advance human rights online in an open Internet that is interoperable, secure for all. Digital media and literacy empowers people to freely express themselves and arms individuals with knowledge and skills to critically evaluate information. The United States is promoting trustworthy information online by addressing disinformation Globally from fact checking initiatives to media literacy while we see to bolster an independent media Globally. We're promoting and protecting open and resilient information ecosystems by addressing critical needs for at‑risk journalists, fostering the long‑term sustainability of independent media outlets. Impacting the journalism and bolstering legal challenging including through journalism protection platform. I will note here, we're proud members as is the Government of Netherlands as our Chair. And the Government of Denmark of the Freedom Online Coalition. And we are going to continue to work through that Global Platform with our partners and allies to advance the efforts.
I will note for this conversation and I think for the broader community here at IGF, we have to continue to be mindful that our approaches to promoting trustworthy information online know including countering disinformation. Don't undermine the bedrock of democracy. Fundamental freedoms of expression online and offline. We have seen how Governments around the globe continue to claim for themselves very broad powers to ban certain forms of expression all too often misusing that power to repress peaceful dissent and silence the voices of independent media, Civil Society activists, human rights defenders, dissidents, members of religious, racial, ethnic and other minority groups around the globe.
That's why platforms like IGF are critical to bring stakeholders together to address the threats, challenges and strengthen our resolve to tackle them. I want to thank you all for being here bright and early for the critical conversation. This is the start of the conversation, not the end. In our work for the Freedom Online Coalition. We look forward to an exciting year and years ahead for this Task Force. Thank you so much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Allison. It is great to hear the number approaches the U.S. Government is taking to foster trustworthy information ecosystems. And I think that really underscores the importance of taking a multipronged approach to this. So maybe to just start the session, first I wanted to introduce our other panelists. We have Jan Gerlach from Wikimedia. And Ivan Sigal from Global Voices and Klara Therese, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Office of Denmark's Tech Ambassador. They all fill different seats, company, Private Sector, Civil Society and Government, which I think is great because it is important that we bring different perspectives to this conversation. And maybe to start with, it would be wonderful to hear from each of our panelists about what do you see about the key challenges to fostering you know, a trustworthy information space and how can the work of the Task Force help address the challenges? Maybe we can just go down the line. Starting with Jan.
>> Jan Gerlach: Hi, everybody, I guess. Key challenges is what you asked for? Yeah, my name is Jan Gerlach I'm at Wikimedia Foundation. We're the nonprofit that hosts and operates Wikipedia and supports a Global set of communities that built Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. From our perspective, key challenges right now are trends over consolidation of power over speech online. It is actually driven by lots of Governments that seek to promote freedom of expression. And we're seeing regulation that unfortunately pushes the powers to make decisions about what content should be online and what is and isn't trustworthy on to platforms, whereas this knowledge is really held by communities around the world. If we prevent people from participating we're really not doing ourselves a favor. I wrote down a few notes this morning. I was really thinking about, you know, when you prevent half the world from participating in knowledge spaces, this is actually just a matter of peace and security to make it really a drastic statement here. When half the world is prevented from joining conversations and deciding what is and isn't trustworthy, that void will be filled with misinformation. I think that is a humongous challenge for all of us. Especially in the age of generative AI that is powered by knowledge that is out there on the Internet and when half of that knowledge is not true, it is not verifiable or trustworthy. We all have a big problem.
That is the challenge we're looking at right now.
>> MODERATOR: Thanks for that. That echoes what Allison was saying as well in terms of Governments asserting power and control over access to the information, access to different types of information. I think you also see this from a commercial perspective as well, in terms of how companies are curating the information that we have access to.
Ivan, it would be wonderful to hear from you. You do citizen related journalism. From your perspective, what do you see as challenges?
>> Ivan Sigal: Good morning, Ivan Sigal ‑‑ is this on. I'm Ivan Sigal, the Executive Director of Global Voices. Global Voices is a large community of writers, translators and digital activists, mainly focused on Global majorities around the world. We are coming up on our 20th anniversary this year. So we have been practicing the art of identifying and finding accurate and trustworthy information in online spaces but with particular attention to equity and diversity of voices and languages, asking whose knowledge, whose perspectives matter, how do we hear? How are individuals represented and how do they represent themselves online for a long time now? Interestingly the information hasn't changed that much. The core question is spill for trustworthy online space, you have to have an open interoperable network that has something like a common carrier system and user Agency. That is first. The second is the healthy across society a healthy promotion of a wide range of participation. A dominant and mode ‑‑ a dominant way of thinking about the Internet is that it is frictionless, it is easy and openness equates to the availability for everybody to do anything in online spaces. When you think about the Internet in context of history, you realize that historical facts and friction and participation and access has always been inequitable. And finding spacing where people can be takes a lot of work. It takes effort and time to create spaces where people can come and talk in an equitable way. That is what we did do. The promotion of voice and expression requires thinking about carefully and critically about how institutions of knowledge are built, about how ‑‑ not just freedom of expression, freedom of media, but about whose media. Thinking carefully about the diversity of the sources, how they're funded issue how they're sustained, so on, so forth. A lot of the comments said this far, I agree with everything from Jan and Allison. I'll stop there for the moment and continue.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Thanks, Ivan. That is an important point. The Internet creates a number of opportunities to create equal spaces. But we have to have the intention when we actually build the spaces and use them to have them be equal.
Klara, maybe from your perspective as a Government, what are the challenges to a trustworthy and safe information environment?
>> Klara Christensen: I'm part of the Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs. I'm excited to be here and be part of this discussion. I just started in August. First and foremost, I want to thank our friends and colleagues on the Freedom Online Coalition and the Chairship of the U.S. and how you carried this Task Force forward. This is exciting to see from the Danish perspective. And I am really excited to be here today, because I think online information is shaping our world and realities. That is why we need to build healthy online information systems.
And while as we heard, you know, this is sort of an opportunity to give voice to marginalized groups, to people who normally wouldn't have a chance to participate and definitely the sort of online Forum also can distort information and sort of make it harder to navigate what kind of information is trustworthy. What is not? This is why we need to build reliable information structures in partnership with Civil Society, with Private Sector. I think this is sort of one of the Danish key values that we need to build these things in partnership.
Yeah, so I'm really happy to be part of this Task Force, together with Global Voices and Wikimedia and Freedom Online Coalition. I think it will be a great discussion. I'm happy to see the sort of growth out of the tech for democracy initiative that we launched two years back.
Happy to see it grow. This is exciting. And I think sort of as a Government, we do have a responsibility to try to build human rights based ecosystems of information. That also means regulation. I think definitely there is a tension between sort of as we talked about, you know, some Governments maybe wanting to take a lot of control over the online spaces in a way that might not be conducive to sort of free debate into spaces. And on the other hand the Government trying to provide sound location regulation and we have to do that Civil Society and the community and make regulations that work and matter and can provide sort of trustworthy information. I think this is going to talk about how do we do that and engage with the communities to make sure we do it in the right way?
I'm happy to see this launched today. It is a good foundation. I'm happy to talk about how we put it in action and build on the principles to try to have more trustworthy information online. I think that's it for me.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Thanks, Klara. As you said, the first work of the Task Force is the launch of the principles. A core set of principles to guide the work it will be doing. I think everyone has the paper in front of them. Meaningful mulitstakeholder engagement, protect and promote international human rights standards. Diverse, trustworthy and equitable Internet.
Since we have a very small group, many who are already familiar with the work, maybe we can spend time just really digging into the principles. But first, I don't know, Jan or Ivan, the background what went into thinking and developing the principles. Since you were connected to the Coalition as well?
>> Ivan Sigal: I will do that. Something that attracted me to this particular group, on the nonprofit side we have Wikipedia, Global Voices and Witness. Three organizations with an unusual perspective on what it takes to actually build trustworthy spaces and information. Because they have started from an open knowledge perspective. And from working with communities that are not necessarily for whom being online is not necessarily an easy thing. Especially in the contact of say witnesses work and some of the Global Voices work. But that kind of idea of a citizen generated participatory Internet is the core of somewhat now almost naive and older idea that has since been commercialized and sits broadly across all societies, as opposed to building with intention. These groups are communities built with intention.
Working with them is to me, is a really great place to assert or reassert a set of values as to what it actually takes to try to build. To build trustworthy information spaces and open knowledge. I'm super happy we're doing it in this way.
>> Jan Gerlach: To add to that, Ivan alluded to it. It is not a given that people can tell the story from the world around them, their communities. I want to emphasize adding knowledge to Wikipedia is not a trivial task in the world. Not because connectivity is a problem. But it might be dangerous to occupy the places you inhibit and freedom of expression is not held or Governments are actively trying to suppress certain information about how their country is run. That is why, again, it is very important that the groups come together. Organizations like ours to share Best Practices and strategic thinking and why these spaces are important to come together in. And why I think also the engagement of Governments is just so welcome, right? Who needs to understand how their actions in say North America and Europe and the Global North how their regulation effects people elsewhere, too. And enables or empowers them to participate. Or in the worst case, prevents them from doing so. That is why I think we've happily joined this Task Force. This is a great Forum to raise these issues.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Thank you for that. So there are three principles, meaningful multistakeholder engagement, which is focusing on a lot of what you were saying, Ivan about the importance of having different stakeholders come to the table. To inform the design development, deployment evaluation technologies. I think it is interesting it has standards and protocol relevant to the ecosystem which gives important nod to the technical community.
And working together to protect human rights and democracy in front lines. Then protect and promote international human rights standards. So ensuring the regulation is in line with international human rights standards. Strengthening privacy and data protection regimes across the world. In a diverse, trustworthy and equitable Internet prioritizing free, transparent, interoperable, safe, reliable security Internet.
The first question is are there any reactions to the principles as they sit right now? My understanding is the Task Force will be fleshing them out a bit more.
So first question to everybody in the room is are the reactions to the principles? They seem on target? Um ... (chuckling)
>> Ivan Sigal: I will say quickly. It is an interesting moment, you said and several speakers said already. Many Governments are thinking about how to regulate the Internet much more actively. Not just regulation from a repression standpoint, although that is happening. There is lots of attempts from Global North countries trying to think about how to regulate, especially the platforms in the big tech companies in ways that are potentially really complicated and difficult for small medium size citizen driven or nonprofit initiatives or potentially rebound in ways to make it impossible or extremely expensive to create new platforms that are civic in intent rather than commercial in intent. At the same time, we have seen a break in trust around large social media platforms. That has been true for years. The last two or three years have been intense in that regard. It is a big challenge and huge opportunity for us to reset and rethink ways of instantiating and recording the basic communities with a core set of civic values in their approach to online participation and the creation of community and knowledge and creation of information.
When we think about the statements I think that is where we have been coming from as a group. So if you see not many of the previous Celt of principles launched over the years has launched this participatory side. That is important for us to reestablish that side of it as well as the other part. Thanks.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Yeah. I agree, I think we are seeing a rise in platform regulation that can have either intentional or unintentional impacts on platforms if it's ‑‑ it doesn't really speak to the business model or the way that the platform functions or the services that are offered and have unintentional consequences for the rights of users.
And so I guess there's two approaches. We were thinking we would have a larger group.
(Chuckling)
We thought maybe each person would take a principle and talk about it. Talk about why it is important, what it might mean in practice and how it could guide the work of fostering information ecosystems online. We can do that. Or we can talk more tangibly about how the Task Force can apply the principles to the work it is doing. What might being be the priorities of the task force going forward? Nice to see what others think the priorities should be in the FOC. I don't know if there is a preference between the two approaches. This is fully interactive, please questions, comments.
>> ATTENDEE: It is great to see working toward the Global ecosystem. I see the panel seem to verify this approach to Global ecosystem. In terms of the diversity and inclusion. Many of us are presenting a lot of the disinformation and its harms are happening in the other areas. Outside of the western centric approach. And I was wondering how you guys are going to sort of scaffold the way, not many of them are shifting from the culture to digital cultures. And there are ‑‑ the impact of disinformation is not so much that it is limited in cyberspace, but there are coming to the lives of people in different languages and that is why it is very important in places like Global Voices and Wikimedia that has all of the people that are contributing their time and efforts and other parts of the world.
I better get the microphone back.
>> Jan Gerlach: It is yours to keep. Should we collect a few questions?
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Are there other questions, or perhaps challenges you see in the ecosystem that the Task Force can concentrate on? Go ahead.
>> ATTENDEE: I'm from the national center of democracy. The principles are fine, if anything they're a little innocuous, no one will disagree with these. We work on media development as a kind of approach to information integrity. Have argued over the years we need systems level, really, you know, pretty major interventions if we are going to fix the problems that we have. The ecosystem. So things that affect how eyeballs and money are being moved through the digital, you know, through the digital ecosystem. So this includes things like Pluralis in Europe, trying to bring massive amounts of private capital to bear. Trust initiatives that are trying to change the economic incentives for quality information online. And many, many others. Of course, you know, policy interventions like bargaining codes that can really transform. It is imperfect I know, but we're looking to all of the options.
In that context, start of the participatory, citizen driven approach seems a little quaint. I mean, just to be provocative. I mean, Wikimedia and Wikipedia and Global Voices have done incredible work faced with the systemic level challenges how does your vision for a participatory approach still matter?
>> Jan Gerlach: I think it matters more than ever. I think I need to say that. I do believe it as well. You are talking about changing incentives, economic incentives around eyeballs. You are probably alluding to supporting journalism and I think Wikimedia can be sort of an honest broker in there. As if stories go away. Local journalism isn't sustainable or regional journalism, those cannot be on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a place for original research, but every edit and Article refers to sources out there that are verified by the people who work on Wikipedia. That is why we have very strong interest in the media landscape being healthy and diverse for the stories to not just be sort of driven by engagement as you mentioned. But really documenting the world and being trustworthy. And now, every story that goes away, however, also goes behind the pay wall is not accessible by many people. Journal needs to be funded. Media work needs to be sustainable.
But we really have concerns about laws that basically just put a larger price tag on these ‑‑ this knowledge, right? Per say. So I think there is a role for Governments to play there. There is a role for independent initiatives. But I think the answer cannot be let's move money away from all platforms and make it harder for nonprofit platforms even to share and carry this knowledge and move it to big media conglomerates. We are seeing how it is happening. It is not independent journalism that benefits. It is not the person in the conflict zone that benefits. It is usually the big media houses that we see pushing this regulation as well. We're worried about that. We see ourselves as an honest broker in the middle. We know it must be accessible and must be sustainable to work in media. This is why it is a super‑important space to engage in. We welcome the question.
>> Ivan Sigal: This is not just about Global Voices and Wikipedia. It is about a universe of people that see it as their ‑‑ as a civic act to create and share information that is trustworthy. And that is not only about media creation. That is also about knowledge building outside of the news. That is what CEMA does. You focus on the news and professionalization of it. It is important to say one of the reasons projects like ours got started is because of pervasive and complicated bias in news framing that is a history of the news media for the last 50 years. It is not the case that news organizations are adequate or sufficient for all the kinds of information we need in the world. We need a diversity of voices and perspectives. Many countries around the world, if you work in media development field, it is hard to get that diversity even if there is financial sustainability. Creating alternatives that allow people to have easy entry into an information space to build their own systems and own communications platforms and communities, whatever initiative they might create to helps add a diversity of voices coming from more place says good thing.
It is not a zero sum system. And yes, Global Voices is small, but we had about 8,000 people participate with us and hundreds of media partners over the year. We work on the typical basis about 50. Any given time. It is not by itself maybe as significant as you would like, but it is a larger way of thinking about how information works. I think that kind of story is really important to maintain and sustain and grow. No reason why it can't keep growing if there is a fundamental framework to allow it to be true. That is why sometimes saying these as you acknowledge basic ideas and principles, they need to be restated. Because the alternative, which is that we build a regulatory process that is all about being technology versus large media outlets, which are basically competing for access to advertising dollars takes the civics out of the equation. And so we're here to try to make sure that the civics stays part of the equation.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: I don't know if there was additional thoughts on the comment that you made, which I understood kind of about the voices and multistakeholder voices and power of voices as well.
>> Ivan Sigal: I can address that briefly. You are right Kiko. Disinformation impacts many communities and languages. It is clear to make a distinction between misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is generally ignorance in another language. And disinformation is lying, intentional misleading of Peoples and groups.
We certainly see a lot of that. Thinking about how to buttress or support better information in other languages, and whole range of languages is a big part of what we do. Wikipedia also does that. We have an initiative called rising voices that works with Indigenous and marginalized groups to help identify and languages and help build their own information sources and trustworthy information sources. Lots of others have that activity as well. I think it is super important to keep putting an emphasis on that type of project to stand in opposition to free floating disinformation.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Klara, maybe?
>> KLARA CHRISTENSEN: Yeah, um ... like commenting on some of the thoughts of regulation and what is the role of regulation? We need to distinguish between the large online platforms and how we regulate them versus the more like nonprofit or smaller platforms that have to give access to multiple voices. And also recognizing large online platforms have responsibility for what kind of content comes online and how do you access it? And I think that has to be coupled with like, for example, funding from Government to support Global South. Global majority voices to make sure we try to create a more open space. I think that is some of the things that the Government is trying to do through partners like access now and international media supports and some of the organizations that we're partnering up with to try to sort of make this like a more open space, where more voices can be heard. Because I definitely agree, this is something that we see as like epic challenge. And it is sometimes sitting in like a Government position somewhere in Europe. It will be hard and challenging to see where we have the blind spots and restricting the information and debate. That is super important to partner up with organizations like yours to engage in that conversation and get better.
And of course the whole EU regulation, like a lot of regulation coming out of the EU right now. For me, it is super exciting and interesting to see how the EU because Denmark, as a small country, we don't do a lot of regulation ourselves on sort of very large online platforms, for example. And seeing how the EU is trying to build regulation, but without having a lot of big tech companies and big online platforms and how I think the EU is sort of trying to build up, and make some regulation that could be used worldwide but still grappling with how to do that in a way that we're still taking into consideration the different local context and Global majority and outside of the EU. That could be interesting to hear perspectives on how you see that, how we're doing that. If it could be better. How we ‑‑ country like Denmark can engage in the discussion in the EU and what we can bring to the table. I think that would be really interesting to hear from everyone here and also on the panel. Yeah. That would be great.
>> ATTENDEE: Hi. My name is Michael. I'm the Executive Director of UCLA institute for policy. These are good. It strikes me all three principles pose a challenge to traditional concentrations of power. Interoperability and human rights restrict what Governments might want to do. And multistakeholder engagement I'm academic/Civil Society. Multistakeholder engagement is great for Civil Society because it gives them a seat at the table. Where it is meaningful it restricts authority among Governments to take the actions they want to take and companies to take the actions they want to take.
My question is, is there ‑‑ what's ‑‑ have there been early responses from Governments and industry? Is there a strategy for developing buy‑in among the players whose power would be eroded by the doing of the standards? Is that what we're doing now is developing that strategy? What's ‑‑ how do you make these actionable by generating will to move towards these by the people that it is not necessarily in their immediate interests to do so.
>> ATTENDEE: Hi, I'm from the Dutch Government. Thank you for a great presentation. I mean, this is an issue that we're very happy as a country that this topic is being taken up. We think it is very important topic, that is the reason why last summer we presented together with Canada the Global Declaration on Global integrity. It is mimicking and maybe are more detailed. I'm wondering, I mean, my question is the following ... being part of the ‑‑ doing this with the Freedom Online Coalition. This is a topic also high on the U.N. Agenda with the U.N. Code of Conduct and UNESCO has the Treaty for Trust Initiative. How will we operationalize these principles in those Fora? That will be one of the key challenges that we see, which would also be ‑‑ which would also provide a certain rationale or pretext for countries to start regulating more the Fora that we're discussing. Not the international Fora, but the social media companies, et cetera, et cetera.
The question would be how we operationalize the principles? How do we organize ourselves in order to also address those international Fora since that is by definition a diplomatic Coalition.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Yep, thanks. Maybe to summarize because I think there is a couple of different threads that have emerged. One is a question of kind of what's next with the principles, is there going to be buy‑in, how are they used? My response to that is the principles are meant to lay the Foundation for the work of the Task Force, which was just launched within the Freedom Online Coalition. So the strategy around how the principles will be used is being built and developed, and this is the starting point, to share that this is the foundations that the Task Force is going to be working off of. Another question close to what you are pointing to, how are we going to coordinate with other initiatives that are around information integrity, trustworthy online ecosystem systems, et cetera. How do we promote the work of the Task Force and principles in key international Forums, debates processes happening at international level?
Also I heard a number of I guess suggestions of what is needed to create a safe and trustworthy information ecosystem from taking a systems level approach to ensuring it is participatory and citizen driven, to ensuring the regulation is human rights and tailored to the platform. And a number of challenges that individuals are facing at the local level with respect to the impact of disinformation.
So maybe those are the different threads. I don't know if there is any responses from the panel to those? Or thoughts from other members in the audience that would like to build on some of the threads?
>> Jan Gerlach: I think this as an invitation to figure it out. We have to be honest, there is no clear strategic path forward. I think ‑‑ I guess this speaks to the challenge of having all of the processes that are somewhat loosely related, but where the coordination and connection isn't always so clear. And having such a Task Force that brings together Governments and Civil Society and hopefully also really proactive private actors can help as the coordination group that maps the processes and coordinates how we all speak with one another and maybe with others that we need to bring along. I think from a Wikipedia perspective, our team's main task is often to educate people about how Wikipedia actually works. Everybody uses it but nobody really knows what is under the hood. Once we start educating policymakers and educators about it, they're like oh, wow! I didn't know this. This is something we should be protecting.
We're ‑‑ I mean, we're seeing this as an opportunity to actually do this. In FOC context, to bring along Governments with very lofty diplomatic goals and love to get them engaged on this and through diplomatic briefings help them understand what is at stake. It is one thing to say yes EU is regulating online spaces but also just learning how to do this and showing the real effects that some of the regulations have in places where Wikipedia sits in the Global South and are affected by this. Are affected by maybe a mechanism that forces platforms to remove content or are affected by laws to retain data. And just sort of, I think, having this as a focal point where the conversations happen. I think that is the strongest sort of proposition that this Task Force actually has.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Reactions or thoughts?
We have four minutes left. So ... (chuckling)
>> Ivan Sigal: Make a final comment. I thought your point was clear and helpful.
All of the three points are a challenge to traditional stakeholder positions embedding that challenge within the framework of an Intergovernmental group is itself a strategy, right? It is itself to say here's a way of talking about those and bringing these communities that traditionally don't have a lot of power or traditionally dispersed or because they're dispersed it is hard to organize around some kind of considered position. And then to present that in a framework in which it does actually have a dialogue with entities that have the potential at least to think about regulation. Think about supporting positions.
Look, this conversation is going on for a very long time. Attempts to build principles and build Coalitions, you know, the web we want project was the web Foundation was 12 years ago, 14 years ago. Now, there is older projects with the same language. They tend to disintegrate because there isn't a formal structure for maintaining them with engagement with any regulating process. I was doodling on the different Forums of knowledge where these take place. Speech, privacy, antitrust, content moderation. Four different domains of expertise that often have conflicting goals, conflicting ends towards what they would like to see as an ideal regulatory environment and ideal solution for some of the problems we see. Even statement fundamentally different understandings of what the problem is. And I think our basic goal here is to make sure that the voices of the communities that we work with are included in the conversations and not ignored. Not skipped over because we have less power, potentially or fewer resources or because we don't have a profit motive in the underlying of our activities.
So I will stone ‑‑ stop there and let you continue.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: We have one question.
>> ATTENDEE: A comment. Not that I need an answer from you. A represent Sri Lanka. There is a proposal for Internet safety in Sri Lanka. It is in the first reading in the Parliament. Which is mostly discusses about the Internet safety, but it creates regulations to fragmentation of Internet. And also it is harmful for the platforms, media and users as well. So where are these kind of issues come, where you stand? How we reach you? How can we do an action for us as a people we're in the developing world? Thank you.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Yeah. Thank you so much for that. One, for highlighting the upcoming bill in Sri Lanka and flagging the concluding question of the panel, which is next steps how can people stay connected to the work and get in touch?
So maybe ‑‑ I will hand to Klara and Jan if you can speak to the next steps and how people stay connected to the work of the Task Force. Before that any concluding remarks or reactions to anything that has been said?
>> KLARA CHRISTENSEN: Yeah, thanks. Sorry. I also just wanted to comment sort of on this issue between sort of giving serenity or authority when you work the multistakeholder approach. I think that is of course a challenge. But I also think that this is the only way to build like good reliable regulation that actually gets implemented if we don't have buy in from the Private Sector for example, it is super hard to make sort of sound regulation that actually will have an impact. I think that is why it is so important and something that we work for from the Danish side to sort of try to include more Private Sector and Civil Society engagement to make sure when we make regulation, it is well informed. And we have some buy‑in to make it work in the real world. This is like a very good example of like why this is difficult, why it takes time, but also why it is sort of the only way we can do. Because States and Governments, they can do so much. But if we don't have sort of the buy‑in from the rest of the ecosystem, it will be difficult to create more trustworthy information online. Because the Internet is not only regulated by Government. It is like ... it is all sort of big and also alive beyond the serenity of the state. I think that is something that ... provides some challenges, but also some really great opportunities and forces us to go into deeper dialogue with some of our counterparts. I think that is sort of the important work that we should sort of continue working on in this Task Force.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Yeah, thanks so much. And on to the last question of what is next for the Task Force and how people can stay connected?
>> Jan Gerlach: We're excited to launch this today officially. As a Task Force, I think we hope to grow and find many more people that want to contribute. That is one way to stay connected. And then be part of this hopefully growing momentum. We just connected on this, actually and I think as co‑Chairs, Wikipedia, we're interested in people following us. Spaces for discussions, public policy mailing list. One way to also be part of this is to actually become a Wikipedian. I can do a share shameless plug and understand this better. That is the whole point. We need people around the world to understand what is going on and how these systems work. How the citizen journalism space works, how Wikipedia works and the civic spaces actually function. By joining them, you are making a huge contribution obviously we don't want to make it all like individuals' responsibilities. Right? That is why there are organizations like ours as well.
Station connected through these very communities that we support is one really meaningful way to actually help because at the end of the day, we are just here to serve them, right? By directly joining them you are doing very helpful work. So yeah. Be part of this. Try to stay connected in that way.
>> ELONNAI HICKOK: Yeah. Thank you. So with that, I think we are out of time. Thank you so much for everybody's participation and your inputs. And if you are interested in learning more about the Task Force or participating, please do talk to one of us up here. Thank you.