“Tech brothers” like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are the “biggest dictators,” said Maria Ressa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her championing media freedom.
The American-Filipino journalist has spent years fighting allegations made under the administration of then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who he said was “a much smaller dictator than Mark Zuckerberg and now Elon Musk.”
Speaking at Hay Literature Festival in Powys, Ms Ressa said Zuckerberg and Musk “prove that we have far more in common than we have differences because, regardless of culture, language or geography, we are all manipulated in the same way”.
She said social media platforms have the power to “change the way we feel”, which in turn “changes how we see the world and changes how we behave”.
Ressa said online debates about identity politics are causing similar polarization around the world, encouraging “the kinds of questions that we think of as free will,” but that it isn’t.
“In the Philippines, it was about rich and poor. In the United States, it’s about race,” she said. “Black Lives Matter was attacked on both sides by Russian propaganda. And the aim was not to make people believe one thing. The aim was to make this a big rupture, to create chaos.”
She said the way tech companies “stoke polarization, stoking fear, anger and hatred” is changing us “on an individual level and a societal level.”
She proposed two ways to weaken the grip tech companies have over us: First, she said, the US should repeal Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, “which gives these companies immunity,” which protects internet companies from lawsuits over content posted by users.
“And the other thing is, if you have kids, [social media] “Stay away from gaming until your kids are old enough,” she says, because gaming can be “mildly addictive.”
She thinks attempts to ban the Chinese-owned TikTok in the US and Italy are “great,” but that it’s “not just TikTok” that we should be worried about: all social media, and the internet as a whole.
“Generative AI is already reducing the quality of information we get,” she said. the study A report released earlier this year found that a “shocking” amount of the web is generated by low-quality AI.
“That was before generative AI really took off, and at some point it will eradicate us,” she said.
She urged Hay’s audience to “step into the real world” and unite with their families and friends, “because information operations are targeting you. And when you become a broadcaster, you become part of the information test team.”
Source: www.theguardian.com
