Democracy & Disinformation

Maria Ressa in Prince Harry interview: ‘Duterte, Zuckerberg on same page’

Camille Elemia

This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

Maria Ressa in Prince Harry interview: ‘Duterte, Zuckerberg on same page’
Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, in a special edition of 'TIME100 Talks,' says tech companies 'have abdicated their responsibility in protecting the public sphere'
Maria Ressa in Prince Harry interview: ‘Duterte, Zuckerberg on same page’

President Rodrigo Duterte and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are “on the same page” when it comes to threats to Philippine democracy, Rappler CEO Maria Ressa said Wednesday, October 21, in an unprecedented interview with Prince Harry.

Ressa, a Filipino journalist thrice honored by Time magazine, sat down for a special edition of TIME100 Talks on Wednesday (Tuesday, October 20, in the US). Ressa was named Time Person of the Year in 2018, was included in the Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people in 2019, and, in March this year, joined Time‘s list of the most influential women of the century.

Ressa, in Wednesday’s interview with Prince Harry, said tech companies “have abdicated their responsibility in protecting the public sphere.”

“The reality now is that the world is at a precipice,” said Ressa, who is facing at least 8 government-backed cases and was arrested twice. “I am paying the price for Silicon Valley’s decisions and there has to be accountability.”

Ressa said Filipinos are fighting impunity – not just in government but also in tech platforms, particularly Facebook. “Facebook is our internet [in the Philippines]. And you could say Rodrigo Duterte and Mark Zuckerberg are on the same page as far as threats to us are concerned,” she said.

The attacks against Rappler escalated after the administration of Duterte, who won a landslide victory in 2016 partly due to social media, weaponized tech platforms against its critics and the media. This later translated into offline actions against his perceived enemies, including Rappler and Ressa.

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The TIME100 event, called “Engineering a Better World,” was hosted by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and featured separate discussions with some of Silicon Valley’s biggest critics.

These included Ressa, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Center for Humane Technology president Tristan Harris, and Stanford Internet Observatory technical research manager Renee DiResta, among others.

Using ‘the worst parts of human nature’

During the same TIME100 event, DiResta said that while social platforms have democratized access to information, not everyone uses them responsibly, as evidenced by troll farms and fake accounts.

“The downside of that is when you connect everybody, not everybody who is endowed with that power uses that responsibly. What you see is fake people began to participate in the conversation, fake media properties began to spring up,” DiResta said.

“This is a tool of power. If you can control the narrative and if you can dominate the share of voice, you can achieve real world objectives,” she added.

Even fact-checking, she said, is considered a partisan issue now, with many in the United States questioning it and labelling it as censorship of opinion ahead of the November polls.

Ressa, who has been targeted by online attacks since Duterte took power, denounced social media platforms for using the “worst parts of human nature” to grow their businesses.

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“When news organizations were the gatekeepers, we have standards and ethics. We are legally liable. We protected the facts. What happened when tech took over? They took the platforms, they did not realize it but what they did…. is to use neuroscience to optimize growth and engagement,” Ressa said.

“They figured out the way we think and just gleefully figured out that these are the worst parts of human nature: ‘Let’s not just influence, let’s take their data.’ It knows us more intimately than we know ourselves,” she added.

This business model, with the use of algorithms meant to encourage engagement, has promoted polarization on platforms, making it difficult to share a universal set of facts.

Prince Harry, who has been critical of the tabloid press for targeting his wife, agreed and added that this has pressured news media to resort to sensationalism.

“As a journalist, that must be incredibly hard because there’s competition that is now being created where you have to get something online first. And if you don’t then you lose out by however many millions of clicks, and then commercially you lose out as well,” Prince Harry said.

“And then surely the pressure that’s coming from above to get that story online as quickly as possible, all of a sudden the importance of facts is sort of pushed to the side, so invariably there’s this struggle to get the story first, and even if there isn’t a story, 24-hour news cycle, you gotta fill the space. You’ve gotta create the news,” he added.

Despite these challenges, Ressa and DiResta said the people can still take back the public sphere with a strong civil society.

A group of civil rights experts, scholars, and journalists recently formed The Real Facebook Oversight Board, an independent council that wants to hold Facebook accountable and push for meaningful change on the platform. Ressa is among the 25 experts forming the board. – Rappler.com

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Camille Elemia

Camille Elemia is a former multimedia reporter for Rappler. She covered media and disinformation, the Senate, the Office of the President, and politics.