On behalf of IT for Change, Merrin Muhammed Ashraf submitted comments on the recently released OECD Draft Recommendations on Information Integrity. The draft Recommendation aims to provide guidance for policy makers to promote information integrity in line with the universal human rights of freedom of opinion and expression.
IT for Change submitted comments on the OECD Draft Recommendations on Information Integrity which aims to provide guidance for policy makers to promote information integrity in line with the universal human rights of freedom of opinion and expression. This draft Recommendation is designed around three mutually reinforcing objectives: (i) Strengthening societal resilience; (ii) Enhancing transparency, accountability, and plurality of information sources; and upgrading institutional architecture and open government practices.
ITfC welcomes the Draft Recommendations as a timely and holistic intervention to safeguard the information space and hold technology platforms and governments to account. We believe the focus of the Recommendations on enhancing transparency, accountability, and plurality of information sources is in the right direction, and recognize its potential to serve as an important international standard to guide multistakeholder actions to strengthen information integrity. That being said, the Recommendations fall short of addressing the core threats in the algorithmified public sphere to communicative rationality, moving beyond symptomatic remedies to preserving information integrity. The algorithmic virality of social media business models has skewed the values of pluralism and diversity in media into a post-truth regime that threatens the democratic principle of verity - pursuit of truth as public reason.
In light of this, IT for Change put forward some important suggestions to ensure that the Draft Recommendation sets the highest standards for information integrity in accordance with the democratic values of equality, liberty, solidarity, and, verity/public reason.
Read the full submission here.