Outside the court, at most twenty people could be counted as being there to support Höcke at some point during the morning. In their conversations, they complained that the procedure against Höcke was politically motivated. This had been Höcke’s message from the very beginning. Meanwhile, around 600 demonstrators had protested against the radical right politician earlier on the morning, before the start of the judicial process. There will be hearings until mid-May, but it is already clear that the most severe punishment for Höcke would be the payment of a fine. 

Höcke, who rivals Donald Trump in his mastery of self-victimization, failed to explain in his initial “X” post why he had to appear before a court in Halle. The AfD politician, who can be openly described as a fascist according to a German court, had to answer for his use, on at least two occasions, of the slogan “Alles für Deutschland” (Everything for Germany). The phrase was employed by the paramilitary National Socialist group SA (“Sturmabteilung”, or Storm Division). Using National Socialist slogans and symbols is a punishable crime in Germany. 

Höcke, a former history teacher, promised he did not know the origins of the slogan. His repeated use of expressions with strong National Socialist connotations, such as “entartet” (degenerate) or “Volkstod” (death of the nation) in public speeches and his 2018 book, belie this claim. Furthermore, the German sociologist Andreas Kemper has long established that there are striking parallels between Höcke’s public statements and different articles that appeared under the pseudonym Landolf Ladig in neo-Nazi publications more than a decade ago. One of these articles argued that Germany had been forced into a “preventive war” in 1939. 

The lack of open support for Höcke in front of the court in Halle was all the more embarrassing because the radical right politician had been given an incredibly powerful loudspeaker by Elon Musk, the billionaire and owner of Twitter/ “X”  since October 2022. Musk reacted to Höcke’s “X” post denouncing what in his eyes was a restriction on freedom of speech and asked him, “What did you say?”. After Höcke explained he had said “Everything for Germany”, Musk asked why the phrase was illegal. “Because every patriot in Germany is defamed as a Nazi, as Germany has legal texts in its criminal code not found in any other democracy,” replied Höcke. He forgot to add that no other democracy is the successor state of a regime that killed 6 million Jewish people and set the European continent on fire, with up to 20 million deaths in six years in Europe alone. 

Al Jazeera English Video: “German far-right politician on trial for alleged use of banned Nazi slogan”

Höcke has made abundantly clear in public statements how he understands Germany’s National Socialist past. He has referred to the monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin as a “monument of shame” and said that history is not black-and-white when asked to comment about Nazism. Elon Musk’s apparent support for Höcke should not come as a surprise given their shared antisemitic and Islamophobic views. The South African businessman has launched antisemitic tropes against Hungarian-American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros. According to Musk, Soros “wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.” The AfD, like so many other far-right movements around the world, has also targeted Soros. Furthermore, Musk recently espoused the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish communities push “hatred against Whites.” Musk’s Islamophobia does certainly not lag behind. The “X” owner agreed with a far-right blogger who said France has been conquered by Islam. Again, Musk’s Islamophobia is a perfect fit for the AfD. The party was accurately described as having “a manifestly anti-Muslim program” by an independent commission established after a right-wing terrorist killed nine people, who had originally come as migrants, in Hanau in February 2020. 

Musk and the AfD have supported each other in the past. In September 2023, the billionaire criticized the German government’s funding of NGOs rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean and called people to vote for the AfD. Three months later, the co-leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, said Musk’s takeover of Twitter was good for “freedom of opinion in Germany.” One of the deputy leaders of the AfD group in the German parliament, Beatrix von Storch, has supported Musk in his ongoing confrontation with the Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes. The judge is demanding that “X” close accounts spreading fake news in Brazil. Since then, Musk has become a hero for the Brazilian far-right backing former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. 

The mutual sympathies between Musk and German-speaking far-right radicals also extend to the Austrian political scene. According to Harald Vilimsky, a member of the European Parliament for the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), Musk’s overtake of Twitter represented an end to censorship. The FPÖ, founded in 1955, has a far longer history than the AfD, established in 2013. Their political programs, however, defend similar far-right positions and both parties are members of the Identity and Democracy Party group in the European Parliament, one of the two far-right groups at the European level.

Meanwhile, in March 2024, Martin Sellner, the leader of the radical right group Identitarian Movement in Austria, was interrupted by the local police while delivering one of his racist speeches in the small Swiss municipality of Tegerfelden, close to Germany. When Sellner posted about the police action against him, Musk replied by asking whether this was legal. Sellner, taking a page from Höcke’s self-victimization, said that “challenging illegal immigration is becoming increasingly riskier than immigrating illegally.” The local police were simply enforcing a legal provision that allows them to force people out of the region if they “behave in a prohibited manner.” Sadly enough, Sellner is used to spreading his racist propaganda with impunity.

Martin Sellner and the Identitarian Movement’s hatred against migrants knows no limits. This transnational group of radicals hired a ship in 2017 to prevent NGOs in the Mediterranean from assisting boats in distress. Once they ran into technical problems, the Identitarians were helped by Sea Eye, a German NGO that normally rescues migrants instead of radical racists. The Identitarians have directly benefited from Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. After Musk bought the company, Sellner’s account on the social platform, and also that of his Identitarian Movement, were reinstated. Twitter had blocked the accounts in 2020 as they violated the rules to prevent the promotion of terrorism and violent extremism that the social platform had in place back then. In his first post after his Twitter account was reinstated, Sellner explicitly thanked Musk for “making the platform more open again.” Sellner was denied entry to the United States in 2019 because he had a $1,700 donation from the right-wing terrorist who killed 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, also in 2019. 

In January 2024, the independent German investigative platform Correctiv reported that Sellner had presented his proposals for the deportation of millions of migrants with foreign citizenship and Germans with a migration background in a secret meeting in November 2023. The encounter in Potsdam, organized by two German businessmen, counted with the participation of Roland Hartwig (who at the time was the personal aide of the AfD co-leader Alice Weidel) and Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD parliamentary leader in Saxony-Anhalt. Some members of the “Werteunion” (Values Union), an ultra-conservative group within the center-right CDU, were also in attendance. The findings by Correctiv finally led the CDU to cut its ties to the “Werteunion”. 

The lack of open displays of support for Höcke in Halle last week was comforting. Even more positive were the mass protests against the far-right politician and the AfD in front of the court. However, recent polls in both Germany and Austria are reason for great concern. The AfD would currently receive around 18% of the votes and finish second in an election to the German parliament. Meanwhile, its Austrian counterpart, the FPÖ, would be close to 30% of the national vote and emerge as the strongest party. Austria will vote this autumn, whereas elections in Germany should take place at the end of 2025. 

In both Germany and Austria, as well as in other countries such as the United States and Brazil, the far-right is benefiting from Musk’s support and open-door policy to radicals on “X.” Needless to say, though, Musk is just offering a new platform to very old ideas. The far-right’s threat would hardly be less serious if the billionaire had a sudden political conversion. What to do, then? One of the banners at the demonstration against Höcke in Halle pointed to the holistic approach that will be needed to counter the far-right. The banner read “AfD Stoppen! Juristisch, Politisch, Gesellschaftlich.” In English: “Stopping AfD! Judicially, Politically, Socially.” 

Imagine you share an Instagram post about an upcoming protest, but none of your hundreds of followers like it. Are none of your friends interested in it? Or have you been shadow banned?

Social media can be useful for political activists hoping to share information, calls to action and messages of solidarity. But throughout Israel’s war on Gaza, social media users have suspected they are being censored through “shadow banning” for sharing content about Palestine.

Shadow banning describes loss of visibility, low engagement and poor account growth on platforms like Instagram, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter). Users who believe they are shadow banned suspect platforms may be demoting or not recommending their content and profiles to the main discovery feeds. People are not notified of shadow banning: all they see is the poor engagement they are getting.

Human Rights Watch, an international human rights advocacy non-governmental organisation, has recently documented what it calls “systemic censorship” of Palestine content on Facebook and Instagram. After several accusations of shadow banning, Meta (Facebook and Instagram’s parent company) argued the issue was due to a “bug” and “had nothing to do with the subject matter of the content”.

I have been observing shadow bans both as a researcher and social media user since 2019. In addition to my work as an academic, I am a pole dancer and pole dance instructor. Instagram directly apologised to me and other pole dancers in 2019, saying they blocked a number of the hashtags we use “in error”. Based on my own experience, I conducted and published one of the very first academic studies on this practice.

Why platforms shadow ban

Content moderation is usually automated – carried out by algorithms and artificial intelligence. These systems may also, inadvertently or by design, pick up “borderline” controversial content when moderating at scale.

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

Most platforms are based in the US and govern even global content according to US law and values. Shadow banning is a case in point, typically targeting sex work, nudity and sexual expression prohibited by platforms’ community guidelines.

Moderation of nudity and sexuality has become more stringent since 2018, after the introduction of two US laws, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (Fosta) and Stop Enabling Sex Trafficking Act (Sesta), that aimed to crack down on online sex trafficking.

The laws followed campaigns by anti-pornography coalitions and made online platforms legally liable for enabling sex trafficking (a crime) and sex work (a job). Fearing legal action, platforms began over-censoring any content featuring nudity and sexuality around the world, including of legal sex work, to avoid breaching Fosta-Sesta.

Although censorship of nudity and sex work is heralded as a means to protect children and victims of non-consensual image sharing, it can have serious consequences for the livelihoods and wellbeing of sex workers and adult content creators, as well as for freedom of expression.

Platforms’ responses to these laws should have been a warning about what was to come for political speech.

Social media users reported conversations and information about Black Lives Matter protests were shadowbanned in 2020. Now journalistic, activist and fact-checking content about Palestine also appears to be affected by this censorship technique.

Platforms are unlikely to admit to a shadow ban or bias in their content moderation. But their stringent moderation of terrorism and violent content may be leading to posts about Palestine that is neither incitement to violence nor terror-related getting caught in censorship’s net.

How I proved I was shadow banned

For most social media users, shadow banning is difficult to prove. But as a researcher and a former social media manager, I was able to show it was happening to me.

As my passion for pole dancing (and posts about it) grew, I kept a record of my reach and follower numbers over several years. While my skills were improving and my follower count was growing, I noticed my posts were receiving fewer views. This decline came shortly after Fosta-Sesta was approved.

It wasn’t just me. Other pole dancers noticed that content from our favourite dancers was no longer appearing in our Instagram discovery feeds. Shadowbanning appeared to also apply to swathes of pole-dancing-related hashtags.

I was also able to show that when content surrounding one hashtag is censored, algorithms restrict similar content and words. This is one reason why some creators use “algospeak” editing content to trick the algorithm into not picking up words it would normally censor, as seen in anti-vaccine content throughout the pandemic.

Check if you are being shadow banned

TikTok and Twitter do not notify users that their account is shadow banned, but, as of 2022, Instagram does. By checking your “account status” in the app’s settings, you can see if your content has been marked as “non-recommendable” due to potential violations of Instagram’s content rules. This is also noticeable if other users have to type your full profile name for you to appear in search. In short, you are harder to find. In August 2023, X owner Elon Musk said that the company was working on a way for users to see if they had been affected by shadow bans, but no such function has been introduced. (The Conversation has contacted X for comment.)

The ability to see and appeal a shadow ban are positive changes, but mainly a cosmetic tweak to a freedom of expression problem that mostly targets marginalised groups. While Instagram may now be disclosing their decisions, the effect is the same: users posting about nudity, LGBTQ+ expression, protests and Palestine are often the ones to claim they are shadow banned.

Social media platforms are not just for fun, they’re a source of work and political organising, and a way to spread important information to a large audience. When these companies censor content, it can affect the mental health and the livelihoods of people who use it.

These latest instances of shadow banning show that platforms can pick a side in active crises, and may affect public opinion by hiding or showing certain content. This power over what is visible and what is not should concern us all.

Carolina Are, Innovation Fellow, Northumbria University, Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Overhaul Flawed Policies; Improve Transparency

Human Rights Watch – (New York) – Meta’s content moderation policies and systems have increasingly silenced voices in support of Palestine on Instagram and Facebook in the wake of the hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 51-page report, “Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook,” documents a pattern of undue removal and suppression of protected speech including peaceful expression in support of Palestine and public debate about Palestinian human rights. Human Rights Watch found that the problem stems from flawed Meta policies and their inconsistent and erroneous implementation, overreliance on automated tools to moderate content, and undue government influence over content removals.

“Meta’s censorship of content in support of Palestine adds insult to injury at a time of unspeakable atrocities and repression already stifling Palestinians’ expression,” said Deborah Brown, acting associate technology and human rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Social media is an essential platform for people to bear witness and speak out against abuses while Meta’s censorship is furthering the erasure of Palestinians’ suffering.”

Human Rights Watch reviewed 1,050 cases of online censorship from over 60 countries. Though they are not necessarily a representative analysis of censorship, the cases are consistent with years of reporting and advocacy by Palestinian, regional, and international human rights organizations detailing Meta’s censorship of content supporting Palestinians.

After the Hamas-led attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials, Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed around 20,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Unlawful Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid have contributed to an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe for Gaza’s 2.2 million population, nearly half of whom are children.

© 2023 Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch identified six key patterns of censorship, each recurring in at least 100 instances: content removals, suspension or deletion of accounts, inability to engage with content, inability to follow or tag accounts, restrictions on the use of features such as Instagram/Facebook Live, and “shadow banning,” a term denoting a significant decrease in the visibility of an individual’s posts, stories, or account without notification. In over 300 cases, users were unable to appeal content or account removal because the appeal mechanism malfunctioned, leaving them with no effective access to a remedy.

In hundreds of the cases documented, Meta invoked its “Dangerous Organizations and Individuals” (DOI) policy, which fully incorporates the United States designated lists of “terrorist organizations.” Meta has cited these lists and applied them sweepingly to restrict legitimate speech around hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed groups.

Meta also misapplied its policies on violent and graphic content, violence and incitement, hate speech, and nudity and sexual activity. It has inconsistently applied its “newsworthy allowance” policy, removing dozens of pieces of content documenting Palestinian injury and death that has news value, Human Rights Watch said.

Meta is aware that its enforcement of these policies is flawed. In a 2021 report, Human Rights Watch documented Facebook’s censorship of the discussion of rights issues pertaining to Israel and Palestine and warned that Meta was “silencing many people arbitrarily and without explanation.”

An independent investigation conducted by Business for Social Responsibility and commissioned by Meta found that the company’s content moderation in 2021 “appear[s] to have had an adverse human rights impact on the rights of Palestinian users,” adversely affecting “the ability of Palestinians to share information and insights about their experiences as they occurred.”

In 2022, in response to the investigation’s recommendations as well as guidance by Meta’s Oversight Board, Meta made a commitment to make a series of changes to its policies and their enforcement in content moderation. Almost two years later, though, Meta has not carried out its commitments, and the company has failed to meet its human rights responsibilities, Human Rights Watch found. Meta’s broken promises have replicated and amplified past patterns of abuse.

Human Rights Watch shared its findings with Meta and solicited Meta’s perspective. In response, Meta cited its human rights responsibility and core human rights principles as guiding its “immediate crisis response measures” since October 7.

To meet its human rights due diligence responsibilities, Meta should align its content moderation policies and practices with international human rights standards, ensuring that decisions to take content down are transparent, consistent, and not overly broad or biased.

Meta should permit protected expression, including about human rights abuses and political movements, on its platforms, Human Rights Watch said. It should begin by overhauling its “dangerous organizations and individuals” policy to make it consistent with international human rights standards. Meta should audit its “newsworthy allowance” policy to ensure that it does not remove content that is in the public interest and should ensure its equitable and non-discriminatory application. It should also conduct due diligence on the human rights impact of temporary changes to its recommendation algorithms it introduced in response to the recent hostilities.

“Instead of tired apologies and empty promises, Meta should demonstrate that it is serious about addressing Palestine-related censorship once and for all by taking concrete steps toward transparency and remediation,” Brown said.

Human Rights Watch

Facebook algorithm change hits MENA independent media audiences hard

( Globalvoices.org ) – Google and Meta, commonly referred to as the duopoly of the internet, dominate online access to information. In a recent showdown with authorities, these tech giants are set to block news on their networks in Canada in response to a new law mandating payment to news publishers.

The decision coincides with broader challenges confronting the media industry worldwide, such as dwindling advertising revenues and heavy reliance on social networks for readership. 

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region for example, Facebook’s evolving relationship with the news industry, algorithm adjustments, and their repercussions on local media outlets add complexity to the landscape of news dissemination, particularly affecting smaller, independent publishers.

Facebook uncertain relationship with the news industry 

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has faced numerous criticisms for disseminating fake news and hate speech. The recent withdrawal from news is part of a broader shift towards prioritizing user-generated content. However, this is not the first time Facebook has vacillated over the role news should play on its platform. After going as far as collaborating closely with the news industry, injecting millions in funding, and providing media training through its Journalism Project, Facebook backpedaled.   

Image by Saoussen Ben Cheikh. Used with permission.

In 2018, under public and regulatory pressure, Mark Zuckerberg first announced they would be “making a major change to how we build Facebook,” resulting in users seeing less public content, such as posts from businesses, brands, and media outlets. Over the years, the platform has been notoriously opaque about when and how it changes its algorithm, the set of rules that defines what posts are seen in what used to be called the newsfeed, its central feature section. It was renamed “Feed” in February 2022. 

Echobox, a social media management company, reported that the most recent significant Facebook algorithm change occurred in February 2023, and accelerated in May 2023. This change resulted in content from publisher pages nearly disappearing from user feeds. This sudden shift significantly reduced traffic to media websites, disproportionately affecting audiences and publishers in the Global South, including the MENA region. These regions heavily rely on social media referrals for news access. 

Facebook’s disproportionate influence in the MENA region

Social media are widely popular in the region. Despite the rise of new platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, Facebook remains a pivotal force in the MENA region. For many, it represents the internet itself. Arabic is the third most used language on the platform. In a MENA survey conducted in 2022, around 72 percent of respondents reported daily Facebook usage.  Notably, Libya (100 percent), the UAE (93 percent) and Qatar (90 percent) have exceptionally high Facebook reach relative to their population. Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria also rank in the top 10 countries for the fastest-growing Facebook user base.

A more vulnerable media landscape 

Unlike their Western peers in more enabling environments, media outlets in the MENA region have long struggled with challenges such as digitalization, limited resources, and political repression. These unique obstacles have rendered their reporting and survival fragile. In an increasingly frail digital news landscape, publishers find themselves at the mercy of third-party platforms, where algorithmic changes beyond their control have led to news shaping and, in some cases, layoffs or even business collapse. 

Kamel, the founder of Raimh Post, an online local news outlet covering a remote marginalized region in Yemen, described to Global Voices the abrupt consequences of these shifts:

Overnight with no pre-warning, insights and preparation our content was not shown any more on Facebook, our main channel of distribution. We have lost nearly 80 percent of our audience who used to come from Facebook to our website. It’s very frustrating. We are in crisis as we have lost our audience and business.

Pay or you will not be seen by your audience

In a classic commercial play, Facebook initially enabled organic reach for news content, making itself indispensable, before imposing a price tag for visibility. News content that once appeared organically in user’s feeds, must now be sponsored for a chance to be seen. Additionally, posts with external links are downgraded as Facebook aims to keep users within its platform. 

This shift has frustrated users like Hassen, a young unemployed Algerian, who reported to Global Voices, “Facebook should ask us what we want to see. I used to follow updates from the news and international organizations who post opportunities for jobs, training, and learnings resources, etc. I noticed that they don’t appear on my feed anymore. I only see posts from friends which are often not very interesting or useful.” 

While larger websites, often funded by states or political entities, have more capacity to adapt and pay to promote their content, the impact is more dramatic for small independent publishers due to their limited resources. 

Wael Sharhah, the founder of Awafi, a non-profit newsroom in Yemen dedicated to public health education, criticized Facebook’s aggressive push to charge for content that was once freely accessible. He told Global Voices:

It is very aggressive and irresponsible of Facebook to push us now to pay for what used to be free. We are creating the social value of the platform by empowering the public with information. While we were already struggling, it is more difficult in our region to generate revenues and report independently.

The TikTok-ization of Facebook  

Since the internet’s inception, written content has been the primary medium for conveying information. According to the Reuters Digital News Report 2023, the majority of online users worldwide still prefer reading the news over watching or listening to it as it offers faster and more convenient access to information. 

However, the habits of younger generations, who grew up with social media and smartphones enabling easy video creation and sharing, have evolved. These social natives now consume a significantly higher number of short videos, often presented by influencers rather than traditional journalists. This shift has propelled the success of more visually-oriented social networks like YouTube, Instagram, and, more recently, TikTok, in contrast to more text-focused networks such as Facebook or Twitter. 

In response, Facebook and Instagram have aggressively promoted short-format video content, modifying their algorithms to prioritize video over text-based content. The downplay of text articles has badly impacted publishers. Many journalists critique the value of short videos, expressing concerns that TikTok-ification of news trivializes important issues. 

Mabrouka Khedir, the head of Cosmos Media, a Tunisian digital media outlet focusing on the environment, emphasized the challenges of providing context and explaining complex stories in short videos. She said to Global Voices “Written news helps convey greater complexity and detail. We are already stretched, and it takes much more resources to create a good video compared to text.”

The deeper issue: Supporting a free press in challenging contexts 

As advertising revenue and audience increasingly shifted toward social media platforms, numerous local media are struggling to survive, some have already disappeared. In the MENA’s highly repressive environment, there is a risk of regions turning into “news desert,” where there is no free, independent information, and human rights violations go unreported.

Most MENA countries are languishing at the lower end of the RSF’s global freedom of expression index. Despite their predominantly youthful population and the eagerness of women to participate, there is a dearth of local platforms that can amplify their voices and contribute to shaping public policies.

The ongoing debate about the responsibility of social media platforms and the media industry highlights a far deeper global issue. Societies all over the world, particularly in contexts of conflict, are grappling with the fundamental importance of safeguarding press freedom. Press freedom is the foundation of democracy, peace, and development.

 

Written bySaoussen Ben Cheikh

Globalvoices.org

Social media celebrities lead frustrated young men to targetrefugees

Written bysencerodabasi

There is a wave of anti-refugee rhetoric running amok on Turkish social media. From openly racist statements made by far-right political party leaders to accounts claiming to be “news agencies” circulating disinformation to incite violence, social media is not making life safer for the over 4 million refugees within Turkish borders. There have been several points of escalation in the rhetoric; Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover provided a safe space for the Turkish far-right just like their international compatriots, and the Turkish elections in May 2023 saw refugees targeted by political campaigns. Yet, regardless of those spikes, this trend of increasing hate speech targeting refugees in Turkish social media has a longer history.

An intuitive explanation would be based on the numbers; as the number of refugees increases, so does anti-refugee sentiment. There is, however, little to support this narrative. There is more empirical support for the exact opposite phenomenon: social contact with immigrants leads to more tolerance and positive sentiments rather than increasing hate. While there is no direct data as such in the specific example of Turkey, Zafer Partisi, a far-right political party that promises to kick all refugees out of Turkey, had a vote percentage higher than its national average in only one of the top five provinces with the highest concentration of refugees, and in two of the top 10, according to data from the ministry of interior’s migration management center.

There is much documentation proving exposure to pro- or anti-immigrant narratives in the media affects attitudes toward immigration. Evidence that negative media exposure creates hostility and discrimination against immigrants is strong. The role of social media platforms in this narrative is still being researched. Existing findings suggest that social media is heavily receptive to narratives produced by traditional media, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume the opposite is also true. This forces us to engage with the anti-refugee radicalism in Turkish social media as an independent and very dangerous phenomenon in itself. Obviously, the country’s political atmosphere affects the media just like it affects pretty much everything in Turkey. Social media itself is an agent (or, more accurately, a large collection of agents) in this shift, though, not just a passive receiver.

Photo by Julie Ricard on Unsplash

Networks of hate

Influencers, streamers, and similar social media celebrities lead hordes of frustrated young men in targeting refugees. Twitch streamer Ahmet Sonuç, known as “Jahrein,” is one such figure. Using his popularity with young men as a gaming streamer, he routinely targets and dehumanizes refugees. Sonuç also targets domestic organizations that do not have a racist outlook toward Turkish refugees, frequently targeting political parties that favor policies for integration and implying that feminist organizations that refuse to frame sexual harassment problems in racist terms deserve harassment. Sonuç’s Twitter account was blocked by the pre-Musk Twitter administration in October 2022 for hateful conduct, but it was restored after the Musk takeover.

Another example as such is the anonymous far-right YouTube content creator known as “Erlik.” Known for pushing militarist alternate histories and conspiracy theories, Erlik uses his Twitter account similarly for claiming the refugees are a demographic danger and praising anti-refugee policies by right-wing governments such as the UK’s, which the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) called out for promoting policies that fueled far-right violence. Erlik is also known for YouTube videos calling feminist women fighting sexual assault fascists, and targeting left-wing and pro-Kurdish social media users, claiming they are tied to terrorist organizations.

Image courtesy Giovana Fleck

The most vile sentiments are coming from anonymous Twitter accounts. Emboldened by their blue check marks, which can now be easily acquired in the absence of any vetting and oversight, these accounts routinely dehumanize refugees and level accusations against the immigrant population in Turkey for any issues, including spreading contagious diseases and, by doing so,  recreate the “dirty immigrants” narrative.

Ajans Muhbir (Informant Agency) is one of the prominent provocateur accounts. It is affiliated with the far-right politician Ümit Özdağ, who is the leader of a newly founded radical right-wing political party Zafer Partisi. Ajans Muhbir’s previous account, with a long history of sharing false and outdated content to target immigrants, was closed by Twitter for violating Twitter rules in the pre-Musk era. But that did not stop the account from fueling the anti-immigrant narrative, which it continues to do under a new name with impunity. There are also non-anonymous accounts routinely engaged in spreading hate. One of these prominent accounts belongs to Ümit Özdağ, who has been using it as a platform to instill fear via videos insinuating that Turkish people will become a minority in Turkey in the future. He has also not shied away from sharing racist conspiracy theories that blame Turkey’s Kurdish minority for the waves of mass immigration. Özdağ’s unchecked hatred-fuelled narrative has attracted scores of Turkish-speaking racists and far-right demagogues of every stripe to his social media platforms.

Özdağ also used his account to praise a human trafficker for taking refugees out of the country’s borders and targeted immigrant doctors by publishing their personal information on Twitter. These narratives should be considered crimes under Turkish law.

The politician consistently has been propogating the idea that Syrian refugees will take over Turkey demographically and make ethnic Turks an oppressed minority, in a way, a translated and localized version of the “Great Replacement” theory —  a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory that originated in France in the early 20th century and gradually spread to the Western world, peaking in popularity in the 1930s. It was relatively forgotten until it resurfaced once more in the 21st century by far-right resurgence.

With the combination of the “blue tick effect” on Musk’s new Twitter that’s aggravating far-right rhetoric around the world and the newfound legitimization in Turkish elections by two parts of the far-right bloc being accepted into both the ruling Justice and Development party and the opposition alliances; it is hard to imagine this social media storm slowing down anytime soon.

Turkey is one of the world’s foremost refugee hubs, with a rather large economy and a significant population that is very active on social media. All these qualities make it almost a laboratory for the interactions between the far right, social media, and refugees. The social media atmosphere in the country should be watched closely by anyone attempting to understand and discern the new relationships that are being formed between the new far right and the new media globally.

This post is part of Advox, a Global Voices project dedicated to protecting freedom of expression online. All Posts

Written bysencerodabasi

Playing the terrorist card

On May 7, as Erdoğan stood on stage at a pre-election rally in Istanbul, a video played on a large screen beside him linking his main rival in this election, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, to the Kurdish nationalist Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), a designated terrorist group. As the video started playing, Erdoğan addressed the crowd of supporters who gathered at the former international passenger Ataturk Airport, “[they] are walking shoulder [to] shoulder with the PKK. You, my national and local citizen, will you vote for them?”

But the video was fake. Fact-checkers debunked the video and proved its content had been manipulated.

The video combines the official campaign video released by the opposition alliance showing Kılıçdaroğlu calling on Turks, “come on, lets go to the ballot box together,” standing next to Kılıçdaroğlu in the video is the current mayor of Ankara and Istanbul. Behind the three men are a group of people. The manipulated video shows a close-up of Kılıçdaroğlu from the same video; only the original video ends with the call, while the edited version on screen, continues to show another man on screen, Murat Karayilan, the founder of the PKK.

Istanbul, opposition rally ahead of the general elections scheduled for May 14. Image by Arzu Geybullayeva. Used with permission.

Last week, Kılıçdaroğlu warned the country’s voters of possible manipulations similar to Cambridge Analytica interference — where a political consulting company used illegally obtained Facebook data to launch smear campaigns on opposition politicians and sway election results in the US.

There are two days left until the final ten days [before the election]. Let me give my final warning. Fahrettin Altun, Serhat and their teammates Çağatay and Evren; The dark web world you are trying to deal with will lead you into the hands of foreign intelligence. Playing Cambridge Analytica is beyond your capacity, boys. THIS IS MY FINAL WARNING!

Kılıçdaroğlu’s warning was based on intelligence received by his Republican People’s (CH) party, reported online media platform Medyascope. According to the intelligence, the ruling party planned “to use ‘deep fake’ style videos and sound recordings, as well as Cambridge Analytica-style techniques in the last 10 days leading up to the election, with the goal of tanking Kılıçdaroğlu’s campaign just before voters go to the polls,” reported Medyascope. According to the same intelligence, the Directorate of Communications and its head, Fahrettin Altun, were the masterminds of the campaign.

In response to the accusations, Altun tweeted, “We trust our leader and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. We are working for the ideal of the Turkish Century. We fight against disinformation, which we see as one of the biggest enemies of democracy, and inform the national and international public in an accurate, fast, and transparent manner.”

But Kılıçdaroğlu also hinted that the Directorate of Communications had hired an international team, paid in bitcoin, and ordered his team to produce a series of deep fakes of the opposition presidential candidate days ahead of the election. Speaking to the host of a show on Fox Haber channel, the main opposition (CHP) Izmir deputy Tuncay Özkan elaborated further on the party head’s suspicions. “There are names, it’s all rather clear. [We know] who is doing it and what they plan to do. [We know the plan is] to manipulate visuals and audio of our esteemed leader,” explained Özkan.

Earlier, CHP was branded a PKK supporter through a sticker campaign that was orchestrated by the ruling party youth branch, according to internal party investigations. The stickers with the CHP logo read, “When we come to power, we are going to release Apo,” referring to Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the PKK.

The terrorism accusations leveled against the opposition are not new. In December 2021, the Ministry of the Interior shared a tweet claiming it had identified over 500 municipality employees and related companies with connections to Kurdish militants, leftists, and other controversial groups. In what critics have described as a boost to systematic censorship and a threat to freedom of speech, with disastrous consequences ahead of Turkey’s 2023 election, in October 2022, Turkish lawmakers approved a law on disinformation. Among a number of concerning new restrictions in the bill, such as mandatory content removal, violations of user privacy, further platform regulation measures, and more. Then there is Article 29, which states that “anyone publicly distributing false information on Turkey’s domestic and external security, public order and welfare could face between one and three years in jail for instigating concern, fear and panic in society, faces imprisonment from one and up to three years.” The new restrictions went into effect on October 18, 2022.

On May 10, watchdogs ARTICLE 19 and Human Rights Watch warned that the May 14 elections were taking place “in an environment of intensified centralized control and erosion of fundamental rights and the rule of law, with the Erdoğan government wielding its formidable powers to muzzle media and detain or sideline perceived critics and political opponents.” With thousands of journalists, political opponents, and others prosecuted “for criticizing the president and the government online or even just sharing or liking critical articles on social media,” in the course of the past nine years. They added, “as election day approaches there is concern the government will exert its considerable control over the digital ecosystem to shape the outcome of the election.”

According to reporting by local news agencies, the ruling government was planning to hang PKK banners with the CHP logo across 81 provinces. The CHP said they were taking all of the recent targeting campaigns to the Supreme Election Board (YSK).

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu recently claimed that the West was attempting to orchestrate a coup in Turkey via the upcoming elections. Speaking at the Istanbul Foundation for Science and Culture on April 27, Soylu said, “May 14 (the election date) is a political coup attempt by the West. It is a coup attempt that can be initiated by bringing together each of the preparations to purge Turkey on May 14.” The minister’s words worried many voters and pundits alike and prompted fears that the ruling government may not accept the election results if they are defeated.

Playing the LGBTQ+ card

If it isn’t terrorism, then it’s anti-LGBTQ+ narratives on full display. At the same rally where Erdoğan showed manipulated video of Kılıçdaroğlu, he accused the opposition coalition of being “pro-LGBT.” Adding, the “AK Party and other parties in our alliance would never be pro-LGBT, because family is sacred to us. We will bury those pro-LGBT in the ballot box.” Last week, he said in a tweet, “the LGBTQ community was the strongest current threatening the future of Western nations.”

Resorting to homophobic narratives in the election is an attempt to stir up and unite the conservative voter base, explained Damla Umut Uzun, a campaigner with the Turkish LGBTQ+ rights organization Kaos GL, in an interview with the Middle East Eye.

And the hateful rhetoric extends past Erdoğan. The country’s minister of the interior said earlier this month that LGBTQ+ “also includes marriage between animals and humans.”

On May 1, Turkey’s Justice Minister, Bekir Bozdağ, claimed there were attempts to “legitimize and normalize LGBT and many perversions. It is the primary duty of states to protect every member of society against negativities, against deviant and perverted understandings.”

The jingoism is fueling an environment of violence in the meantime. On May 8, Istanbul’s mayor campaign bus was pelted with stones at a pre-election rally in Turkey’s Erzurum province. Police stood idly while people were getting injured as a result of the attack. After the incident, Istanbul’s Mayor told journalists that police were ordered not to intervene, calling the act a disgrace for the local provincial mayor and the governor. In an interview with KRT television on May 5, Kılıçdaroğlu warned the supporters of the opposition alliance to stay home on election night because “some people might stir trouble, some people may be provoked, armed elements may take the streets.” In March, the building of one of the political parties within the opposition coalition was targeted in an armed attack.

But despite the violent language and physical attacks, the opposition coalition continues to speak of unity. At an opposition rally in Istanbul, instead of divisive language, there were calls to avoid tension. Similarly, speaking to supporters in Turkey’s province of Konya, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu said, “There will be those who will try to provoke you. … Let them throw stones. We will counter with roses.”

This post is part of Advox, a Global Voices project dedicated to protecting freedom of expression online. All Posts

Written byArzu Geybullayeva

Globalvoices.org

Images of the protests that followed the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini on Sept. 16, 2022, in Iran and reports of the government’s brutal crackdown have circulated widely on social media. This flow of information comes despite efforts by the Iranian regime to throttle internet access and censor information leaving the country.

One effective method the protesters have hit on has been to use TikTok, the video-sharing app better known for young people posting clips of themselves singing and dancing. The way video clips are shared on the social media platform and the protesters’ clever use of labeling have helped activists circumvent the information blockade of Iran’s tech-savvy security services and reach a wide audience.

As a researcher who studies young people and participatory culture – art and information produced by nonspecialists, including fan fiction and citizen journalism – I believe that TikTok is proving to be an effective tool of political activism in the face of severe repression.

Key to its effectiveness is how TikTok works. Each TikTok video recorded by the user is typically 60 seconds or shorter and loops when finished. Other users can edit or “stitch” someone else’s TikTok video into their own. Users can also create a split screen or “duet” TikTok video, with the original video on one side of the screen and their own on the other.

Stitching and duetting

To use TikTok, a protester in Iran typically uses multihop virtual private networks, meaning VPNs that send internet traffic through multiple servers, to route around government internet blackouts just long enough to post a video to TikTok. There, TikTok users who support the protester “like” the video thousands of times, stitch it into other videos, and duet it to then be liked, stitched and duetted again and again.

In the process, identifying information about the original poster is obscured. Within minutes the protester becomes anonymous even as the message spreads. Even if the video is flagged for violating TikTok’s community guidelines, its sharers like and incorporate its duets too quickly for TikTok to remove the original content from the platform completely.

In one video that has received over 620,000 views, Iranian-American attorney Elica Le Bon urges viewers to share all Iranian content to make sure the world keeps paying attention. In another, TikTok user @gal_lynette directs her 35,000 followers to instantly duet videos made by Iranian women as a form of citizen journalism to “keep their reporting – their story … alive.”

Gaming the algorithms

Elsewhere, TikTok user @m0rr1gu tells her 44,000 followers how to share that content without triggering community guidelines violations. This advice includes using “algospeak,” or code, for bypassing community guidelines violations. For TikTokkers boosting Iranian content, this means altering the word “Iran” in captions, among other tactics.

Gaming TikTok’s algorithm helps ensure that the people most likely to share this content can find it. For example, Iranian-American TikTokker Yeganeh Mafaher tapped a recent celebrity scandal’s virality by titling a video “Adam Levine Also DMd Me,” only to announce “Okay, now that I have your attention, the internet is going to be cut off in Ir@n.”

By removing the word “Iran” but leaving Levine’s name searchable, Yeganeh was gaming the algorithm to help her retain her viewers who were seeking Iranian content while also “hashbaiting” additional users who were following the celebrity scandal. Up to that point, Yeganeh’s most-viewed revolution-related video was a history of hijab laws that garnered nearly 341,000 views. The Levine video exceeded 1.6 million.

Yeganeh’s account had previously recorded her experiences as an Iranian-American citizen and attracted followers interested in Iranian culture. After Amini’s death, she credited her followers with boosting her account to the point that she was interviewed by cable news host Chris Cuomo on NewsNation to discuss the uprising.

Song of a movement

A key element of a TikTok video is its audio track or “sound,” often a song that provides a thematic thread across stitched and duetted videos. The sound of many of the videos depicting the events in Iran, with more than 11.7 million views, is the song “Baraye” by Iranian singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour.

The song’s lyrics are derived from a string of Farsi tweets that detail Iranians’ reasons for revolution. Hajipour was detained because of the song but was later released. “Baraye” has since become a global protest ballad.

Shervin – Baraye |

Worried for Hajipour’s safety, TikTokkers supporting the uprising united in an effort to shield him from backlash by posting thousands of videos directing users to nominate “Baraye” for the Grammys’ newest special merits award, best song for social change. In October, the song had received 83% of the 115,000 nominations, which increased international attention on Hajipour and the song. Baraye went on to win the social change Grammy on Feb. 5, 2023.

“Baraye” and related hashtags are shared resources that help make TikTok a platform for participatory politics. As the world watches Iran, TikTokkers game the platform’s algorithms to amplify Iranians’ videos beyond the reach of the Iranian government.

There are active TikTok campaigns for everything from Grammy nominations to scripting emails to local representatives and global leaders. Videos teach laypeople to discreetly host Iranian web traffic and direct users to local protests. They share petitions for G-7 leaders to expel Iran’s diplomats and the U.N. to hold the Iranian government accountable for its crimes against international law. As state executions of protesters have begun in Iran, the #StopExecutionsInIran campaign has clocked over 100 million views on TikTok.

Why is Iran’s TikTok generation demanding ‘Women, Life, Freedom’? – BBC News

These interactive tools and the platform’s algorithm for promoting content are what transformed TikTok from teen dance app to powerful global platform for protest and political action. While much is uncertain as Iranians fight for change and their supporters worldwide flood an unlikely platform to boost their voices, one thing seems likely: The revolution may not be televised, but it will be liked, stitched and duetted.

This story has been updated to include the song Baraye’s Grammy win.

Whitney Shylee May, Ph.D. candidate in American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Globalvoices.org) – Osama Khaled (L) and Ziyad Sufyani (R), two wikipedians who have been sentenced to 32 and 8 years in prison for their peaceful online activism in Saudi Arabia. Photo provided by GCHR. Used with permission

Access Now, ALQST for Human Rights, ARTICLE 19, Global Voices (GV), the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) and IFEX call for the immediate release of two Saudi doctors and internet activists arrested in 2020 for their online activism. One of them, Osama Khalid, has been sentenced to more than 30 years in prison.

Osama Khalid and Ziad Al-Sufyani, two young doctors known for their contribution to Wikipedia posts in Arabic, have been sentenced to prison in Saudi Arabia. Both have contributed to the online encyclopedia, which is maintained and managed by volunteers, over the last decade, and had edited articles about woman human rights defender Loujain Al-Hathloul. They were arrested in the summer of 2020 while Saudi Arabia was under COVID-19 lockdown and initially sentenced to five and eight years’ imprisonment respectively, before Khalid’s sentence was increased to 32 years upon his appeal. Few details are known about either case.

Osama Khaled (L) and Ziyad Sufyani (R), two wikipedians who have been sentenced to 32 and 8 years in prison for their peaceful online activism in Saudi Arabia. Photo provided by GCHR. Used with permission.

The news of Khalid’s imprisonment and prison sentence was first reported by ALQST in September 2022. The news was shared along with news of another case of lengthy sentences being handed down to tribal activists Abdulilah Al-Huwaiti and Abdullah Dukhail Al-Huwaiti, who both received 50-year prison terms for opposing their forced displacement from their land to make way for the building of the fantasy city NEOM.

Osama Khalid is one of Saudi Arabia’s most public-facing and well-known internet freedom advocates. His own Wikipedia page states that his work as part of Wikipedia has had a huge impact on his life, and that defending and promoting internet freedom was one of his priorities.

Unfortunately, online freedom in Saudi Arabia has reached its lowest levels in years, and the scale of repression has drastically increased. Saudi authorities have made significant efforts to not only enhance their control of the internet, but also to silence dissenting voices online.

Whilst Khalid’s and Al-Sufyani’s cases are both extremely concerning, they are not isolated. In fact, they are just two examples of a worrying new trend, in which Saudi authorities have begun issuing extremely long sentences to people as a result of them voicing their support, through a variety of online platforms, for human rights and democratization, as well as for their peaceful criticisms of government policy. Also, there are two additional cases include those of women’s rights defenders Salma Al-Shehab and Nourah Al-Qahtani, who received prison sentences of 34 and 45 years respectively for their peaceful posts about human rights activities on Twitter.

“We are saddened and deeply concerned about these arrests and the harm they have caused to the freedom and safety of Osama Khalid and Ziad Al-Sufyani. The Foundation shares a common belief with Wikimedia volunteer communities around the world that access to knowledge is a human right,” said the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, in a statement to the six human rights organizations.

Access Now, ALQST, ARTICLE 19, Global Voices, GCHR and IFEX call for the immediate release of Osama Khalid and Ziad Al-Sufyani, as well as other internet activists including Salma Al-Shehab and Nourah Al-Qahtani, whose arbitrary arrests and unfair trials are directly linked to their peaceful online activities.

The six human rights NGOs further call on the authorities in Saudi Arabia to respect public freedoms including freedom of expression, both online and offline.

Written byAdvox

Via Globalvoices.org

( EFF ) – It’s been a tumultuous year for free expression globally. From internet shutdowns, crackdowns on expression and closed-door partnerships to attempts to restrict anonymity and end to end encryption, in many places, digital rights are under threat. And while the European Union has made regulatory strides, elsewhere in the world, efforts to regulate—particularly those undertaken by authoritarian countries—threaten to fracture the global internet. 

EFF is deeply engaged in the global fight for free expression online. In 2022, we worked with the DSA Human Rights Alliance to ensure that EU lawmakers consider the global impacts of European legislation. We also joined the Arab Alliance for Digital Rights, a newly-formed coalition that brings together groups across the MENA region and international partners to protect civic space online. We continued our work as long-term members of the IFEX network. And with (cautious) travel back on the table, we participated in a number of international fora, including the Balkans-based POINT conference, FIFAfrica, Bread and Net in Lebanon, and the OSCE.

Working with international partners, we launched Protect the Stack, an initiative supported by more than 55 organizations worldwide aimed at ensuring infrastructure providers don’t become speech police. We also launched Tracking Global Online Censorship to monitor the impact of content moderation on free expression worldwide.

In addition to these joint efforts, there were quite a few places that warranted extra attention. Here are five ongoing threats that we will be watching in the year to come:

1. Ghana’s Repulsive Anti-LGBTQ Bill

Ghana, a constitutional democracy with a strong commitment to free expression, has become a regional tech hub, making this bill introduced by the Ghanaian parliament all the more atrocious. Ghanian law already criminalizes same-sex sexual activity, but this proposal goes further, threatening up to five years in jail to anyone who publicly identifies as LGBTQI+ or “any sexual or gender identity that is contrary to the binary categories of male and female.” The bill also criminalizes identifying as an LGBTQI+ ally.

We called on Twitter and Meta, both of which had previously opened offices in the Ghanian capital of Accra (Twitter’s office has since been shuttered), to speak out against the bill, and encouraged global allies to support the Ghanaian LGBTQI+ and human rights communities in opposing its passing. We will continue to monitor the situation for future developments.

2. Iran’s Crackdown on Protesters and Technologists

In September, the death of Jina (Mahsa) Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police sparked protests that have continued for more than two months, despite a brutal crackdown that has included tens of thousands of arrests and several executions of high-profile anti-government protesters.

Amongst those targeted by government forces early on were several technologists and digital rights defenders. In October, we joined our friends at Access Now, Article19, and Front Line Defenders in issuing a statement calling on Iran to stop the persecution of the digital rights community and to release those detained, including technology specialist Aryan Eqbal and blogger and technologist Amiremad (Jadi) Mirmirani.

Eqbal was released in early November, and Mirmirani in mid-December, but Iranians still face serious threats to online free expression. We will continue working with our international partners to call attention to the situation.

3. Turkey’s Latest Attempt to Hinder Free Expression

Turkey, an early adopter of measures to restrict social media, was at it again in 2022 with a new law aimed at curbing disinformation. Following in the footsteps of its 2020 mutant NetzDG copycat law, the Turkish government is now looking to fight disinformation with censorship in the form of a vaguely-worded law prescribing three years’ imprisonment for anyone who publishes “false information” with the intent to “instigate fear or panic” or “endanger the country’s security, public order and general health of society.”

The law was met with condemnation within Turkey and abroad, and we echoed that sentiment. We will be watching to see how the regulation impacts speech in the coming year.

4. Saudi Arabia’s Threats to Rights Online

Saudi Arabia has never offered a space for free expression, online or off, but as the country seeks to improve its international reputation with developments like smart city NEOM—just a few years after its brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—its striking measures to restrict free expression have us paying close attention to the Gulf state.

In 2022, Saudi Arabia imposed strikingly harsh prison sentences on two Twitter users, one of whom is an American citizen. The other, Salma al-Shehab, was a student at the University of Leeds in the UK and was arrested upon her return to Saudi Arabia and held for more than a year before being sentenced to a whopping 34 years in prison, to be followed by a 34-year travel ban. Her “crime”? Sharing content in support of prisoners of conscience and women human rights defenders. Her sentence is four years longer than the maximum sentence suggested by the country’s anti-terror laws for activities such as supplying explosives or hijacking an aircraft.

In October, we joined more than a dozen international organizations in calling on the UK government to push for her release, and have continued to monitor her case. In light of both cases, and a number of other rights violations by the Saudi government, we also called on Google to abandon plans to open a data center in the country. And now, with Saudi Arabia one of Twitter’s largest investors, we have more reason to keep a close eye on Silicon Valley’s ventures with the human rights-violating country. 

5. Egypt’s Brutal Repression of Alaa Abd El Fattah 

We had hoped 2022 would be the year that we would see technologist, activist, and writer Alaa Abd El Fattah free and reunited with his family. A friend of EFF, Alaa’s case has been a cornerstone of our international advocacy work for many years. This year, as the COP27 Summit—hosted by Egypt despite international objections—neared, Alaa decided to escalate his ongoing hunger strike, putting his life in grave danger but also drawing eyes to his plight. Ultimately, the protests surrounding the COP27 calling for his freedom and that of other political prisoners in Egypt overshadowed the climate negotiations.

Alaa was one of three winners of the 2022 EFF Awards, and while we are proud to honor his accomplishments, the moment was bittersweet: Despite demands from the UK government, a number of members of U.S. Congress, and a broad swath of the international community, Alaa remains in prison.

But, to put it in his own words, we have not yet been defeated: Alaa ended his hunger strike in mid-November and was finally allowed a visit with his family shortly after. There is still hope, and Alaa’s family, friends, and allies around the world continue the fight for his freedom. The campaign’s latest ask (external link) is for UK and U.S. constituents to write to their members of parliament and Congress, respectively. We hope that Alaa finally gets his freedom back in 2023, and we won’t stop fighting until he does.

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2022.

Jillian C. York is EFF’s Director for International Freedom of Expression and is based in Berlin, Germany. Her work examines state and corporate censorship and its impact on culture and human rights, with a focus on historically marginalized communities. At EFF, she leads the platform censorship working group, and also works on European policy, the impact of sanctions on the use of technology, and occasionally, digital security. Jillian is the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism (Verso, 2021) and has written for Vice, Buzzfeed, the Guardian, and the New York Times, among others. She teaches at the College of Europe Natolin in Warsaw. She is also a regular speaker at global events.

Via EFF

Attribution 3.0 United States (CC BY 3.0 US)