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In Offering ‘Hate-Free’ Social Media, Old Worries Haunt New Apps

Posted on April 13, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

For years, London-based writer and artist Mary Morgan has used social media to raise awareness and engage in debate, particularly Twitter and Instagram. Until the hate speech became too much.

“Anyone who spends time on Twitter knows it can be an absolutely horrible place,” said Morgan, whose work focuses on body politics, or the practices and policies through which powers of society regulate the human body.

So she began exploring alternative apps, settling on Clubhouse, an audio-based social network where users can join rooms and listen to, participate or moderate discussions on any topic that might interest them.

“The power of Clubhouse is that you can choose who you speak to. You can’t just randomly start messaging people with hate. I think that’s a real power to the platform,” Morgan told BIRN.

“Especially when it comes to activism, like-minded individuals and people who want to participate and learn will be drawn to houses and clubs, meaning we can all speak to and learn from each other in an environment that is encouraging of that.”

Launched in April 2020, Clubhouse currently boasts more than eight million users worldwide.

And it’s not alone in winning new users turned off by the inability of social media giants to find a way to filter out offensive content on their platforms – Mastodon, MeWe and CloutHub are just a few of the emerging names benefitting from a backlash against the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Experts, however, warn that while these alternative apps might be motivated by high ideals, they face the same issues that have dogged the giants – how to provide transparency, avoid hate speech and protect privacy, while also making money.

“I understand the desire that people have to move to new platforms,” said Ayden Ferdeline, a Berlin-based public interest technologist.

“We desperately need more spaces for lawful speech, but we need these new platforms to be more transparent than Facebook or Twitter are, about how they operationalise their policies and procedures, and to be designed from day one to uphold and respect fundamental human rights.”

Turned off Twitter

A mobile phone displays the suspended status of the Twitter account of Donald J. Trump, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/MICHAEL REYNOLDS

Skopje-born Katarina P. spent 11 years on Twitter as an active member of the Twitter community in North Macedonia. Under an alias, Katarina, who declined to give her surname, used her profile to follow and comment on the events of any day in her home country and the wider Balkan region, engaging in sometimes heated debates.

Then, in February this year, Twitter suspended Katarina’s profile, without any specific explanation.

“I believe I got suspended because I came into a conflict with another Twitter account that was promoting misogyny through quasi-Christian Orthodox theology,” Katarina recalled. “After my impulsive reaction to these tweets, my account got suspended.”

She appealed to Twitter’s Support Team, but, after a generic response to say they would look into it her case, Katarina never heard back. She assumed she was shut down based on the complaints of “religious fanatics”, and was frustrated at the lack of communication from Twitter.

Stung by criticism over how social media was used in the storming of the US Capitol by Donald Trump supporters on January 6, Twitter and Facebook appear to have adopted more restrictive approaches to what can and cannot be posted on their platforms.

Experts, however, say that the use of Artificial Intelligence has resulted in a litany of errors, with AI lacking the required contextual and nuanced analysis to distinguish strong criticism from defamation and radical political opinions from expressions of hatred and racism or indictment to violence, particularly in languages spoken by far fewer people than, say, English, French, German or Russian.

Katarina believes she is a victim of this, and is already looking for an alternative platform where she can engage in debate.

“I liked Twitter since it was unique for the microblogging opportunities it offered,” she said. “I hope that a new network with similar content might appear soon. And I won’t lie when I say that I am looking forward to it.”

Friendlier Facebooks

A Facebook logo. Photo: EPA-EFE/Julien de Rosa

Clubhouse might still be in its beta stage, but it has attracted huge attention.

“It is a completely new and different app, and I see it as great replacement for all of the podcasts, with the addition that you can not only listen to them, but also actively engage in the discussion,” said Marija Andrejska, a digital marketing specialist in Skopje who began using Clubhouse this year. “I believe this is one fantastic feature that has never been seen before.”

The app has an air of exclusivity to it that not everyone likes, however. As an invite-only app, a new user has to be invited by an existing member to join, and it’s only available for those using iPhones.

“On the downside, I think it’s a pretty ‘elitist’ app, and I don’t like that,” Andrejska told BIRN. “Since it functions only by invites and it’s only for iPhone users, it can create closed, in a way segregated groups, which can be dangerous in the long run. Therefore, I think that you cannot really use Clubhouse with the same intensity as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or even TikTok.”

Turkish journalist Dilek Kutuk said Clubhouse was a great place to exchange ideas, “especially in Turkey”, where society is deeply polarised along political lines.

“I see many voice chat rooms in Clubhouse where people talk and share their opinions, as opposed to Twitter, where all you can see is fights between those that have different political opinions,” Kutuk told BIRN.

MeWe has also seen a recent spike in user numbers, particularly in January.

Launched in 2012, the network says it is built on “trust, control and love”, and represents a secure and private alternative to Facebook with more than 16 million worldwide logging in to it use its newsfeed, private text and video chats and groups.

Then there’s CloutHub, considered an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. With some 255,000 users, CloutHub describes itself as a “non-biased social network for people engaged in meaningful civic, social and political issues.” It has also seen a growth in its user base since the beginning of the year.

Mastodon, a decentralised open-source platform, is another under-the-radar alternative to Twitter. Users say it offers much better tools to protect privacy and fight online harassment than Twitter. Launched in 2016, the platform has more than two million users worldwide, and has been billed as a model for a “friendlier social network” dedicated to keeping out hateful content.

New apps under scrutiny

Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Freestocks

But while such apps might bill themselves as ‘friendlier’, hate-free alternatives to Twitter and Facebook, experts say they face the same questions regarding privacy, transparency and how they moderate what’s being said, written or posted on their platforms.

“It is understandable why tech companies want to cleanse their platforms of mis- and dis- information, but neither their human moderators nor their technical measures are able to do so in a an accurate and human rights-respecting manner,” said Ferdeline.

Marcin de Kaminski, security and innovation director of Civil Rights Defenders, a Sweden-based international human rights organisation, said there is already concern.

“From our perspective, Clubhouse does allow users to speak freely, yes. But they also compromise on their users’ privacy, and there are no safeguards when it comes to protecting users from marginalised or targeted communities when it comes to verbal attacks, threats or slander,” said De Kaminski.

“Users that choose to use Clubhouse need to understand the risks, both technical and socio-legal.”

He warned of being blinded by the novelty of new features.

“It is easy to get mesmerized by new fascinating features and the possibility to have seamless voice chats with friends and colleagues may be tempting during the isolation of the ongoing pandemic,” De Kaminski told BIRN.

“However, Clubhouse has really made it possible to ask oneself very important questions – which data is harvested when you use the service and who has access to that data?”

Nor does being the new kid on the block necessarily protect against cyber attacks.

On Saturday, a report said that the personal data of 1.3 million Clubhouse users had been posted online on a popular hacker forum. Clubhouse denied being hacked and said that the data “is all public profile information from our app, which anyone can access via the app or out API [application programming interface].”

Privacy concerns have already prompted many users to migrate from messaging apps such as WhatsApp to the likes of Signal or Telegram, which claim to offer better privacy features.

Privacy and data protection strategist Lourdes M. Turrecha said any privacy failures could cost social media startups big.

“These privacy concerns are serious enough to create trouble for Clubhouse in a world where data protection enforcements have teeth – note the recent $650 million class action settlement following the $5 billion Federal Trade Commission’s fine against social media predecessor, Facebook,” said Turrecha.

“While these figures may seem like slaps on the wrist for a company like Facebook, a pre-revenue startup like Clubhouse doesn’t have the war chest to chalk these up as a cost of doing business, despite its $110 million in funding.”

Turrecha warned of the risks of users “trading” their privacy for greater freedom of speech.

“While neither speech nor privacy rights are absolute, I caution against pitting the two against each other through false tradeoffs,” she said. “We should demand technologies that protect both speech and privacy rights.”

Cyber-Attacks a Growing Threat to Unprepared Balkan States

Posted on March 10, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

It wasn’t voting irregularities or the counting of postal ballots that delayed the results of last year’s parliamentary election in North Macedonia, but an audacious denial-of-service, DDoS, attack on the website of the country’s election commission.

Eight months on, however, the perpetrator or perpetrators behind the most serious cyber attack in the history of North Macedonia have still to be identified, let alone brought to justice.

While it’s not unusual for hackers to evade justice, last year’s Election Day attack is far from the only case in North Macedonia still waiting to be solved.

“Although some steps have been taken in the meantime to improve the situation, it’s still not enough,” Eurothink, a Skopje-based think-tank that focuses on foreign and security policy, told BIRN in a statement.

“The low rate of solved cyber-crime cases is another indicator of the low level of readiness to solve cyber-attacks, even in cases of relatively ‘less sophisticated’ and ‘domestic’ cyber threats.”

Across the Balkans, states like North Macedonia have put down on paper plans to tackle the threat from cyber terrorism, but the rate of attacks in recent years – coupled with the fact many remain unresolved – point to serious deficiencies in practice, experts say. Alarmingly, Bosnia and Hercegovina does not even have a comprehensive, state-level cyber security strategy.

“I am convinced that all countries [in the region] are vulnerable,” said Ergest Nako, an Albanian technology and ecosystems expert. “If an attack is sophisticated, they will hardly be able to protect themselves.”

In the case of Albania, Nako told BIRN, “the majority of targets lack the proper means to discover and react to cyber-attacks.”

“With the growing number of companies and state bodies developing digital services, we will witness an increasing number of attacks in the future.”

Ransomware a ‘growing threat’ to Balkan states

Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Dimitri Karastelev

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the threat from cyber-attacks and the impact on lives.

According to the 2021 Threat Report from security software supplier Blackberry, hospitals and healthcare providers were of “primary interest” to cyber criminals waging ransomware attacks while there were attacks too on organisations developing vaccines against the novel coronavirus and those involved in their transportation.

Skopje-based cyber security engineer Milan Popov said ransomware – a type of malware that encrypts the user’s files and demands a ransom in order access – is a growing danger to Balkan states too.

“Bearing in mind the state of cyber security in the Western Balkans, I would say that this is also a growing threat for these countries as well,” Popov told BIRN. “While there haven’t been any massive ransomware attacks in the region, there have been individual cases where people have downloaded this type of malware on their computers, and ransoms were demanded by the various attackers.”

A year ago, hackers targeted the public administration of the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad, blocking a data system and demanding some 400,000 euros to stop.

“We’re not paying the ransom,” Novi Sad Milos Vucevic said at the time. “I don’t even know how to pay it, how to justify the cost in the budget. It is not realistic to pay that. Nobody can blackmail Novi Sad,” he told Serbia’s public broadcaster.

A local company announced the following that it had “eliminated the consequences” of the attack.

In Serbia, cyber security is regulated by the Law on Information Security and the 2017 Strategy for the Development of Information Security, but Danilo Krivokapic of digital rights organisation Share Foundation said that implementation of the legal framework remained a problem.

“The question is – to what extent our state bodies, which are covered by this legal norm, are ready to implement such measures?” Krivokapic told BIRN. “They must adopt [their own] security act; they need to undertake measures to protect the information system.”

Political battles waged in cyber space

Illustration. Photo: Unsplash/Stephen Phillips

North Macedonia was the target of a string of cyber attacks last year, some attributed to a spillover of political disputes into cyber space.

In May 2020, a Greek hacker group called ‘Powerful Greek Army’ hacked dozens of e-mail addresses and passwords of employees in North Macedonia’s finance and economy ministry and the municipality of the eastern town of Strumica.

The two countries have been at odds for decades over issues of history and identity, and while a political agreement was reached in 2018 tensions remain. Similar issues dog relations between North Macedonia and its eastern neighbour Bulgaria, too.

“Cyber-attacks can happen when a country has a political conflict, such as the current one with Bulgaria or previous one with Greece, but they are very rare,” said Suad Seferi, a cyber security analyst and head of the Informational Technologies Sector at the International Balkan University in Skopje.

“However, whenever an international conflict happens, cyber-attacks on the country’s institutions follow.”

Bosnia without state-level strategy

Illustration. Photo: Naipo de CEE

In Bosnia, the state-level Security Ministry was tasked in 2017 with adopting a cyber security strategy but, four years on, has yet to do so.

“Although some strategies at various levels in Bosnia are partially dealing with the cyber security issue, Bosnia remains the only South Eastern European country without a comprehensive cyber security strategy at the state level,” the Sarajevo office of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, told BIRN.

It also lacks an operational network Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) with sufficient coverage across the country, the mission said.

The Security Ministry says it has been unable to adopt a comprehensive strategy because of the non-conformity of bylaws, but that the issue will be included in the country’s 2021-2025 Strategy for Preventing and Countering Terrorism.

So far, only the guidelines of a cyber security strategy have been adopted, with the help of the OSCE.

Predrag Puharic, Chief Information Security Officer at the Faculty for Criminalistics, Criminology and Security Studies in Sarajevo, said the delay meant Bosnia was wide open to cyber attacks, the danger of which he said would only grow.

“I think that Bosnia and Herzegovina has not set up the adequate mechanisms for prevention and reaction to even remotely serious attacks against state institutions or the citizens themselves,” Puharic told BIRN.

The country’s defence ministry has its own cyber security strategy, but told BIRN it would easier “if there were a cyber-security strategy at the state level and certain security measures, such as CERT”.

‘Entire systems jeopardised’

A laptop screen displays a message after it was infected with ransomware during a worldwide cyberattack. Photo: EPA/ROB ENGELAAR

Strengthening cybersecurity capacities was a requirement of Montenegro when it was in the process of joining NATO in 2019, prompting the creation of the Security Operations Centre, SOC.

According to the country’s defence ministry, protection systems have detected and prevented over 7,600 ‘non-targeted’ malware threats – not targeted at any particular organisation – and more than 50 attempted ‘phishing’ attacks over the past two years.

“In the previous five years several highly sophisticated cyber threats were registered,” the ministry told BIRN. “Those threats came from well-organised and sponsored hacker groups.”

Previous reports have identified a scarcity of cyber experts in the country as an obstacle to an effective defence. Adis Balota, a professor at the Faculty of Information Technologies in Podgorica, commended the strategies developed by the state, but said cyber terrorism remained a real threat regardless.

“Cyber-attacks of various profiles have demonstrated that they can jeopardise the functioning of entire systems,” Balota said. “The question is whether terrorists can do the same because they are using cyberspace to recruit, spread propaganda and organise their activities.”

This publication was produced with the financial support of the European Union. Its content is the sole responsibility of BIRN and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union nor of Hedayah.

Online Media Needs More Self-Regulation – not Interference: BIRN Panel

Posted on February 24, 2021January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

State regulation of the media should be limited, with self-regulation strengthened and prioritized, journalists and media experts from the region told the third and final online public debate on online media regulation held by BIRN on Wednesday.

Panelists representing different prominent media in the region as well as legal experts focused on potential solutions for self-regulation and regulation of online media, considering the growing pressures that media in the region face, such as speed, clicks and disinformation.

The panelists agreed that the government should not have mechanisms to interfere in the media content but should provide regulations to ensure a better environment for journalists to work in.

Authorities should also strengthen the rule of law in terms of copyright and censorship of hate speech, pornography, and ethical violations, they said.

Flutura Kusari, legal advisor at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, said Kosovo has a good self-regulatory non-governmental body, the Press Council, which consists of around 30 local media representatives, all holding one another accountable.

However, self-regulation is limited due to the lack of rule of law all over the region, Kusari explained.

Geri Emiri, editor at the Albanian media outlet Amfora, explained that most of the media in Albania have self-regulatory mechanisms whereby anyone can complain of abuses.

“It is not enough if the will to self-regulate, after a complaint by a citizen, does not exist,” Emiri said, explaining the difficulties media in Albania face from the government trying to create legal methods that he said lead to “censorship”.

Emiri was referring to legislation proposed by Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama as an “anti-defamation package”, which aimed to create an administrative body with powers to order media to take down news reports that “infringe the dignity of individuals”, under the threat of heavy fines. Critics said the law could have a chilling effect on media freedom due to its broad terms.

Goran Mihajlovski, editor-in-chief at the Macedonian media outlet Sakam da kazam, agreed that government bodies would not be right for media regulation “due to changes in government and [because] the body would politically be appointed and would open doors to more political influence and pressure on the media”.

Jelena Vasic, project manager at KRIK, Serbia, said professional media can assist in regulating the media enviroment in the region and in curbing fake news by “debunking” and fact-checking news that is already published.

Vasic said he was aware that debunked fake news often does not reach all of the audience that the fake news has already reached, but added that, “even if half of the people who read the fake news are now faced with the facts, a good change has been made”.

Alen Altoka, head of digital media at Oslobodjenje, Bosnia, said one of the main problems behind the increase in fake news in the region is profit-based media organisdations, suggesting that Google should not allow ads for fake news portals as one solution.

BIRN engages in fact checking and debunking fake news, as well as other digital rights violations in the region via its Investigation Resource Desk platform, BIRD, monitoring tool.

BIRN held its first online public debate within the Media for All project, funded by the UK government, in September 2020, followed by another debate on the topic in late December.

Facebook Extends Political Ads Rules to Balkans Before Elections

Posted on March 7, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Facebook has added Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Moldova and Turkey to its updated list of countries that must adhere to its strict political advertising transparency regulations.

The enforcement of the new regulations is expected in mid-March, about a month before parliamentary elections in Serbia and North Macedonia, due on April 26 and April 12 respectively. Montenegro is also due to hold the elections this year, by October at the latest.

Facebook launched the regulations in June last year. They mean that any adverts paid for by a political group or candidate must be labelled as such.

With the new 32 countries, the total count of states required to stick to the regulations, which relate to any adverts about social issues, elections or politics, rose to 89.

Apart from the five Balkan countries, the regulations will also expand to Chile, Japan, Mexico and Indonesia, to name a few. Facebook said it was working to expand enforcement to more countries later this year, including Myanmar and Brazil.

“Anyone who wants to run ads about elections or politics in these countries will need to confirm their identity with an ID issued from the country they want to run ads in and disclose who is responsible for the ad.

“We require that the advertiser provide additional information, like a local business address, local phone number, email and website, if they choose to use their organization or Page name in the disclaimer. These requirements hold advertisers accountable for the ads they run on Facebook and Instagram,” the social media giant wrote on its Facebook for Business website.

While political ads will be more transparent, the requirements are also designed to ensure that Facebook can list political advertisers in its Ad Library. Political ads from all of these new regions will now be added to the Ad Library API.

“We will introduce the Ad Library Report for each of these countries by the end of April. The report provides aggregated insights for ads about elections and politics, such as total number of ads and spends in the Ad Library. The report is also available as a downloadable file,” Facebook explained.

Political parties in the Balkans have often used social media in ways that are far from transparent during elections.

At the beginning of 2020, SHARE Foundation, a Serbia-based digital rights NGO, asked Facebook to put Serbia and North Macedonia on the list, citing the upcoming elections as the main reason. In its letter, SHARE said that if these two countries were on the list “the campaign will be more transparent.”

“This is especially important, since it is expected that Facebook pages which are not openly political might engage in supporting a certain political party or candidate with ads,” the letter adds.