America has snubbed "Christchurch Call" agreement

_{Christchurch Call to Action: Govts, tech companies agree to tackle violent online content on social media}

NZ Herald, 

16 May, 2019

The United States has snubbed a widespread agreement struck at the Christchurch Call to Action in Paris today to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.

Seventeen countries, the European Commission, and eight major tech companies have signed up to the accord.

But in a blow to the strength of the mandate, the United States has chosen not to sign despite extensive diplomatic efforts and the fact that a representative was in Paris at a parallel meeting of G7 Digital Ministers.

The call is still an unprecedented agreement between governments and all the major tech companies for ongoing collaboration to make the internet safer.

However the White House will not sign the agreement amid US concerns that it clashes with constitutional protections for free speech.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern noted the United States' support for the call's principles.

The US reluctance to sign up was in part mitigated by the commitments of the tech companies that are mainly based there, she said.

Dialogue with the US was ongoing, she added.

The call is the culmination of weeks of intensive work across many government departments, involving thousands of officials to draw up the document and garner global support just two months after the terror attack.

While it is a voluntary framework, it has been given additional heft after an endorsement from 55 investor funds that will use its $5 trillion in assets to push the tech companies to follow through on their pledges.

And five major tech companies have released a series of commitments, including regular publishing of transparency reports about detecting and removing terrorist or violent extremist content on their online platforms, to strengthen the Call to Action.

They also agree to establish incident management teams to urgently respond to objectionable content.

Facebook has also announced new rules that it says would have prevented the gunman from livestreaming his March 15 act of terrorism.

Governments and tech companies have agreed to develop technology preventing the upload of such content, counter the roots of violent extremism, increase transparency around the detection and removal of such content, and review the business models that can lead social media users down a dark path to radicalisation.

Significantly, tech companies have pledged to review their business models and take action to stop users being funnelled into extremist online rabbit holes that could lead to radicalisation.

That includes sharing the effects of their commercially-sensitive algorithms to develop effective ways to redirect users away from dark, single narratives.

"This may include using algorithms and other processes to redirect users from such content or the promotion of credible, positive alternatives or counter-narratives," the Christchurch Call to Action document says.

Tech companies and governments also agreed to work together to counter violent extremism by developing interventions to redirect users away from extremist content.

All parties also pledged to invest in developing AI technology to prevent the upload of such content and, if it does get published, to detect and immediately remove it from online platforms.

Facebook has already announced a US$7.5 million investment to improve technology just hours before the summit.

Countries and tech companies to adopt the call to action:

• New Zealand, France, Canada, Indonesia, Ireland, Jordan, Norway, Senegal, the UK, and the European Commission. 
• Countries not present at the summit to sign on are Australia, Germany, Japan, India, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Italy.
• Amazon, Facebook, Dailymotion, Google, Microsoft, Qwant, Twitter, YouTube.

In what is believed to be a world-first, major tech companies Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon released a joint statement saying they would set out concrete steps to address the abuse of technology to spread terrorist content.

The steps include:

• making terrorist and violent extremist content expressly forbidden 
• establishing ways for users to flag such content in a way that will prioritise it for prompt action
• investing in technology that improves capability to detect and remove terrorist and violent extremist content online
• identifying "appropriate checks" on livestreaming, aimed at reducing the risk of terrorist and violent extremist content being shared online.

While the Call to Action is not enforceable and has no specific penalties for non-compliance, an investor group worth a combined $5 trillion has given it some financial muscle.

The group includes 55 funds, including 27 from New Zealand and 28 global funds, and includes Crown-owned investors the New Zealand Super Fund, Accident Compensation Corporation, the Government Superannuation Fund, the National Provident Fund and Kiwi Wealth.

These are the same five funds that joined together after the March 15 terror attack to collectively pressure social media companies to "fulfil their duty of care to prevent harm to their users and to society".

NZ Super Fund chief executive Matt Whineray said they expected to see stronger controls from tech companies to prevent objectionable content being posted online.

"Part of our engagement with social media companies will involve monitoring and ensuring accountability for the Christchurch Call commitments made," Whineray said.

A key aspect of the Call to Action is preserving freedom of expression, abiding by international human rights law, and respecting a free, open and secure internet.

There will also be an expectation for governments to adopt a legal framework in their respective countries to make tech companies more responsible for the online content they host.

"Ultimately this is a first step but a substantial one," Ardern said.

"Countries and companies have come together, and it happened because they saw what happened in Christchurch and committed to making a difference."

Here are some comments from Ben Vidgen

The Second Great Debate of Antinoch:(Name of the Technological Rose Vs The Game of Drones)

Via Facebook

God I hate Trump as an individual ( boorish, obnoxious, clearly a narcissist) but unlike the Democrats the orange haired racoon has said no to the TTPA, No to Five Eyes, No to war with Russia and Syria, No to NATO, No to China's expanded industrial stimulation the Road Belt project, he has supported the release of Julian Assange and he has secured some sort of peace with North Korea (curtailing nuclear proliferation) and now he says no to social media being turned into a social engineering marketing tool solely for corporation and profit driven globalism.

Both sides of American politics are driven by self agenda and can in no way be called white hats but Trumps, as much as it sits uncomfortably on my shoulders to admit, policies have ultimately done more for preserving the New Zealand way of life and our sovereignty than neoliberal dominated policies of either of our NZ based political parties.

Both have both said yes to the TPPA, China industrial expansion Road Belt project, Water privatisation, food monopolisation, Increased involvement in NATO & Five Eyes, mass surveillance, increased defence expenditure, exploitation of our natural resources, and support on a UN driven environmental policy, controlled by its investors and the World Bank, which is in reality another tool for corporate monopoly control. Both bow down to Rome in the sense they support centralisation of power and greater controls by the global elite.

Further both sides ultimately support Saudi Arabia (too big to say no too?) and much of Trumps rhetoric against China is just that. The number dictate USA can not win a trade war simple as that. While Trumps hawkish position against Venezuela and Iran serves ultimately the Saudi and the oil barons of an old world technology now passing us by.

So ultimately Trump is a short term win to New Zealand but the long term both sides entrench the 1% top dogs Saudi & China (who donation wise are to the Democrats what Russia is alleged to be to Trump) with a long term prognosis which is alarming for both the planet environment and humanity. Trump by default does however win the humanity debate because he ultimately provides a platform which does not exclude the 99% or working class who are simply deemed part of the problem by the Democrat, (neo) liberal globalism who view the 99% working class as part of the problem not the solution.

No doubt for Trump this is done out of self service not altrustic reasons. Perhaps the neoliberal are right there are simply too many on this planet and the working class are selfish and ignorant as Trump and thus part of the problem. And yet Middle Class angst and a desire for the same good life as their parents ( a measure of weather you're a success), combined with 1% sense of self entitlement, means continued rate of western consumption meaning nothing really changes unless we in the West make a radical reassessment of economic ideological policy and focus not on population based on the antique Malthusian concept of growth/numbers but view actual wealth distribution on Walter Nash's future proof Game Theory (you win by making sure your neighbour prosper too) so the west values become about needs not wants.

Ironically were simply rehashing the debate the Catholic church and feudal elite faced in the 12 century were the Church, bastion of intellectual property and knowledge, was unable to solve the social and economic problems caused by the growth of commerce and manufacturing technology and was ill-prepared to operate effectively in the urban environment of the towns and to communicate meaningfully with the members of the new, better-educated and more critical, middle classes.

Except the growing pains are now faced are between middle class as torch bearers of knowledge as its hammered out on anvils of state based forums such as corporate funded universities or corporate owned media VS the working class access to knowledge base provided by online technology (evolution dictates without censorship or control each generation of the populace will inequitably get better at discerning and social peer reviewing online public sourced data). For centuries the Church had encouraged an ideal of spirituality that resulted in its best and brightest entering monasteries and convents and so isolate themselves from wider society as income gap now isolate the middle class educated classes from the working class.

In the 12 century as members of the middle class looked at ecclesiastical practises, they perceived a great difference between what the Church preached and what it in fact practised. A lesson also reach today by the double sword of technology empowered working class e.g big pharma does not always mean better medicine, war on terror does not mean safer more democratic society (while it does mean more power and profit for the military industrial complex or military feudal arm), science driven by corporate agenda gave us plastic bags in our ocean Fukashima and nuclear weapons .

Better access to knowledge and technology saw the middle class thinkers challange the staus quo, backed by the Popes enemies in this case the boorish Trump like Emperor Henry VI.

Just as the 99% have align with boorish Henry VI like Trump and now question the 1% in the face of growing wealth gaps and ever reduced freedoms and quality of life.

The church tried to meet the challenge by debate, and so win back those who no longer supported the status quo - much in the same way western elite is using control of social media and corporate media platform to win the online battle for our hearts and minds.

The strategy of the Vatican failed when the dissidents, preaching the novel idea Jesus did not want a flock who wanted to be rich and argued against the church obtaining material power and wealth, confounded Innocent's missionaries in debate and further increased the numbers supporting their ideas as word got out through the printing press, book makers, and bards. The same reason explain why the 1% are bound to loose through share numbers regardless of what constraints they seek to control the new media of online technology. They are using acorns to plug a crumbling dam.

History dictates Innocent lost his willingness to negotiate when one of his papal emissary to the South of France was conveniently murdered (the basis for the highly recommended Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose). Faced with defeat Innocent responded with tyranny (always the last card of the loosing player) dealt out excommunications and branded all those who disagreed with even minor points of ideology as heretics what Adern and Macron calls "extremist" as he called for the military arm of feudalism, Northern lords seeking more lands, to mount a crusade against the heretics and dissenters of Southern France (influenced by the culture of their Middle Eastern and African brothers).

History shows us the pope ultimately lost that battle of hearts and minds as a hundred years later we saw the creation of the legal contract the Magna Carta means the domination of gods law was not longer interpreted by the papal emissary (Rome) alone. The pyramid of laws thus stacked as god laws through the pope, natural laws, feudal or estate contractual law, common law at the bottom, was sewn into the interpretation of what would become modern law, entrenched during the Renaissance, then the reformation and finally post industrial revolution (thanks to the creation of automated printing) into a new concept of who, what and how gods lords would be viewed.

Law, specifically international law or maritime law, was turned on it head with gods law interpreted though a body of peers. It made common law as a collective society the dominant body. This was then followed by estate or contractual law (laywers law) and finally gods law and then natural law as interpreted by Rome as being deemed by the lay person, in terms of significance to their own lives and quality of life, as insignifigant as the Easter Bunny. Popes direct line to god was no more.

The Christchurch Agreement followed by a collective attack on relegion, as convenient as the murder of the papal emissaries 800 years ago.

It is nothing short of an attempt to rehash the debate the Pope lost 800 years ago, between a Christian judea world which recognises a need to change its interpretation of wealth and success and masters and those, who still think god's flock (albeit a smaller and more exclusive club) should seeks material gains to maintain their control and privilege.

Its a doomed old and failed idea but what will happen if the emissary of Adern, Macron are successful and cast out those who challenge the current status quo as unequal and not a fair deal for all (all very much means in this context the health of the planet and the environment) as heretics the ignorant mass who should just shut their dirty peasants mouths and get on with task of building smart churches and being slaves for the new feudal elite in this age of drones and artificial intelligence.

Demographically population mathematic dictates an unequivacal undebatable FACT!! If we go down this road.

Islam led by Saudi Arabia (meaning the dominant religion will be a Wahabi (fascist patriarchal) will the dominant dogma by the end of the 21st century.

This is not good for the environment, global stability (Saudi oil exit strategy Vision 2030 is simple if we cant have oil well build smart weapons instead) human rights, feminist values ( in next 20 years that means in crass terms less titty bars but the glass ceiling will ultimately remain), or civil liberties.

Trump's, while the heretics best champion, economic model is short term and ultimately creates debt later on. However as the Democrats have not nailed him on this its a fair bet they plan to continue America's dead end wealth now some else can pay later policy.

Meaning the western pursuit of 'please sir can I have more' will continue on lemur style and America as an empire at its end soon to be followed by the eradication of western values political systems soon after. Especially as America in its death throws will likely be increasingly reliant on weapons and conflict (if you don't have the gold steal someone else's) to starve of the inevitable and create chaos in its death throws.

America will not win the race - the west has had its day.
Capitalism killed it and Trump enemies gave the idea of wealth for every one lips service only as they really sought paradise for their people alone and screw the working class and their dumb breeding ways.

It now will boil down to a Saudi dominated Europe Middle East (The New Ottoman Empire) religious based for of neo feudalism vs China's Theocracy [if your a good doggy you get state rewarded likes and with it more freedoms quality of life and if not you becomes outcast and out lawed).

The Good news under this scenario China probably a bit more environmental savvy (just), feminism is left with a chance, civil liberties are not a total wash out (if your good slave of Chinese descent and don't rock the boat), and China will probably expand then collapse as Beijing refuses to power share and ultimately it collapse from internal power struggles - just like Rome did eight hundred years earlier.

Out of those ash something might survive or develop, which will acts as a long term cataylst for a human evolution of mind sit - such as the fall of Rome the rise of New Troy (London) gave us the Magna Carta, based on the mathematical rule the greater the complexity the more their is a chance for spontaneity regowth and something new.

This is VS A Wahhabi based Saudi version of Islam which short term will feed a never before seen burst of quality of life and unseen privilige and gluttony for the 1%. A final gluttony feeding frenzy at the trough with however a brutal and nasty outcome for planet and man if that senario of wealth based on arms and your class alone is allowed to play out.

Long term man will rise up and either overthrow the tyranny or be butchered, as was the case in the anti Rome heresy of Pope Innocent. The outcome will result in environment were we (other species very much included) all loose and our collective knowledge basket is burned as surely the Library of Alexander burned when sacked by Barbarians.

Bottom line China as a species is our best hope but its a very small and remote hope withstanding the development of interstellar travel which will short term benefit the 1% but after that serve as a new game changer, as was the case with the bow gun and printing press, which will expand our frontiers, freedoms, knowledge and decentralise the power monopoly as our personal universes and concept of wealth success and spiritual multidimensionalism becomes larger.