Representing ICT4Peace, Sanjana Hattotuwa participated in a panel discussion at Techonomy 2018 held in Half Moon Bay, San Francisco, on 13th November 2018. Titled ‘Can Facebook recover’, the panel’s description was,
No company’s influence in modern society is more fraught and unresolved. Facebook faces credible accusations of serious impacts on democracy globally, of privacy of its users, and on digital addiction. The company is trying to do right, but its business model creates resistance. What should it do now? What should society do?
More details here. Moderated by the Founder of Techonomy, David Kirkpatrick, the panel included,
- Wael Ghonim
- Sanjana Hattotuwa
- Roger McNamee, Elevation Partners
- Brian Wieser, Pivotal
Based on his experience around working with Facebook tools, apps and services for civic media, citizen journalism, advocacy and activism since 2007, Sanjana’s responses to the questions posed by the moderator looked the role, reach and relevance of the company in fragile democracies. He noted that in these contexts with systemic violence and weak institutions, Facebook played a vital role in the communication of dissent as well as, increasingly, spreading content inciting hate and violence. Negotiating this, he said, was critical.
In response to a point by a fellow panellist, Sanjana noted that the company’s problems in the future were those that he and others from South and South East Asia had warned the company about many years ago. Not discounting or dismissing the possibility of regulation in the US for Facebook, or other more stringest oversight mechanisms, Sanjana flagged the significant dangers around regulations in authoritarian states or countries with majoritarian democracies.
Placing on record his frustration and anger around how, for years, the company did nothing whatsoever around the evidence-based research sent to it and placed in the public domain around the generation of violence on the platform, Sanjana also flagged on-going, significant efforts to support the company, in every way possible, address the challenges it is facing today – from both a country perspective and at scale.
The panel, while critical of Facebook, including from financial and managerial perspectives, didn’t propose that the audience deletes it altogether. As Sanjana noted, echoing so many in Tier 3 and Tier 2 countries (i.e. the Global South), Facebook IS the Internet, and deleting it completely simply isn’t an option for hundreds of millions of users.
The panel also focussed on the role and reach of WhatsApp in countries like India and electoral processes like the recently concluded Brazilian Presidential election.
Watch a video of the session here or below.