[ad_1]
Maria Ressa, Executive Director and executive editor of Rappler, an investigative news website in the Philippines, says we badmouth misinformation. The typical framework suggests that the people behind the misinformation want us to believe something that is not true. That’s not entirely correct, she says. Its main goal is to shake up our entire sense of what is true and what is not. That takes away the power to use good information to defend yourself. Many of us, and more importantly Facebook, home to a lot of misinformation, have failed to grasp that distinction, he says.
In that way, the sowers of chaos have succeeded, says Ressa. Today, those who want to sow discord do not need bots to publish and spread their falsehoods and distortions. They have a lot of unconscious people to do that, their beliefs and actions warped by a “behavior modification system,” as she calls social media. That mistrust has destabilized democracy around the world. “You cannot have facts. You cannot have the truth. You can’t be confident, ”she says. “How can you have a democracy if you don’t have the integrity of the facts?”
Ressa, who is the subject of the PBS Frontline documentary film A thousand cuts, on the threat to press freedom in the Philippines under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte, spoke with WIRED contributing editor Steven Levy as part of the WIRED25 event. He joined from Manila, where he is free on bail while appealing a conviction under the country’s “cyber libel” law. Their heated discussion took place after 1 a.m. their time.
Ressa has been the target of Facebook disinformation networks for years because of her journalism. Rappler has been a powerful force in holding the Duterte administration to account, investigating its incitement to vigilante campaigns against suspected drug traffickers and countless other violations of democratic freedoms. Ressa repeatedly warned Facebook about the threat to press freedom and democratic institutions just as Russian campaigns were working to destabilize the 2016 US presidential campaign.
SUBSCRIBE
Those warnings, she says, were ignored. And for her, the online harassment has continued. This week, Facebook took down two state-sponsored pro-Duterte networks that were sowing disinformation in the Philippines, one of them domestic, with connections to the police and military, and the other based in China, in which Ressa was among the targets. .
After years of little action, Ressa says, Facebook’s recent work to crack down on disinformation networks, rather than playing “hit a mole” with individual bogus items, is encouraging. But the company must do more to police its platform and must abandon its reluctance to be a “referee of the facts.” “Every time I hear that, I think, ‘Oh my God, get over it. You already are, ‘”he says. “And the decisions he has made have already destroyed democracy and put people like me in extreme danger.”
For Ressa, that danger extends offline, such as physical threats and legal harassment. In June, Ressa was convicted on charges of “cyber libel,” a new crime that was created long after the story in question was published in 2012. (She was arrested after the newspaper corrected a typographical error, enough to constitute a new publication that put it under the scope of the new law). Ressa says he faces eight additional arrest warrants related to defamation, tax evasion and securities violations, which together carry a possible prison sentence of nearly 100 years. Many weeks, she spends most of her time tied up in legal matters. “I feel like Joseph K in The proof“He laughs. “It is Kafkaesque.”
How do you stay hopeful in the midst of all that, beyond the black humor? “I accept my fear. If I really squeeze it, I can rob it of its power over time. This is also how I run Rappler. We accept our fear and then we get over it. ”Ressa and her team of journalists are still deep in this fight.
Portrait of Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images
More from WIRED25
