New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s call for greater social media oversight to prevent “misinformation” and “radicalisation” is very dangerous, according to a think tank director.
On Friday, Ardern’s Harvard keynote speech identified social media as a threat to democracy, calling on tech giants to work with governments to do more to address misinformation.
Muriel Newman, a former New Zealand MP and director of the New Zealand Centre of Political Research, told The Epoch Times that Ardern’s government has increasingly exerted its influence on social media in the past couple of years.
With censorship becoming a significant issue, Newman noted that social media giants that had been created out of a desire for free speech had come under increasing pressure to “back government narratives.”
“This raises an obvious question: to what extent are governments influencing social media content? And is that influence solely due to the threat of regulation, or have social media companies become overly reliant on revenue generated from government agencies?” she said.
Ardern also highlighted the increasing number of people who are being radicalised online, leading to tragedies such as the Christchurch attack that had been streamed online.
Without naming any social media companies, the prime minister said it was time for online providers to recognise the power they hold as the new “town square” and act on it alongside governments and civil society.
“That means recognising the role they play in constantly curating and shaping the online environments that we’re in,” she said. “That algorithmic processes make choices and decisions for us—what we see and where we are directed—and that at best means the user experience is personalised, and at worst it means it can be radicalised.”
In response to the attack, the NZ government enacted the Christchurch Call to Action, aimed at developing tools to remove and prevent the upload of violent extremist content. It also reviews algorithms that direct users to such content online.
