Messages 2023

Opening Plenary

Digital cooperation between African and European parliamentarians

Rapporteur: Andrijana Gavrilović, Geneva Internet Platform

1. We need a better EU-African dialogue, especially on regulatory issues, to ensure that there is no imposing of ready-made ideas and that parliamentarians are empowered to participate in such discussions.
2. Cooperation at the policy level and the technical level is needed. We also need capacity building, knowledge transfer and training to unlock further investments and engage big tech. Infrastructure development is needed through investments to secure and build resilience, connected networks are the foundation. We also need projects addressing the connected needs of the most underserved and hardest-to-reach rural populations to bring affordable, reliable, secure, and accessible connectivity. Developing the necessary digital skills for meaningful connectivity is required to develop Internet governance leaders.
3. African parliamentarians need capacity building and opportunities for their voices to be heard in tech discussions. Recognition of parliamentarians in global processes is paramount, and their physical presence is also important for their learning process and for sharing their experiences. Parliamentarians are important stakeholders in realising implementation efforts and pushing for these different legislations within national parliaments.
4. Europeans can offer an alternative to the Africans based on principles of openness, transparency, and democratic Internet governance.
5. On the Global Digital Compact, an issue the European and African countries and parliamentarians can work together on is tackling the digital divide, which means ramping up both public and private investments in digital infrastructure and connectivity. After adopting the GDC, Europe and Africa can work together to coordinate its implementation regarding the standards and capacities.

Main Topic 1: Impact of the war

#Risks

Subtopic 1: Shattered Neutrality: Internet at Crossroads of War and Geopolitics

Rapporteur: Andrijana Gavrilović, Geneva Internet Platform

1. The Internet has changed how war is fought, and how it is covered by media. At the same time, the war has put ‘One world, one Internet’ to a stress test. The foundations of global and interoperable Internet should not be affected by the deepening geopolitical divide, even though it has fragmented the content layer.
2. Measures interfering with the Internet’s ability to operate as a global communications infrastructure, such as revoking the delegation of a TLD, IP address prefix or ASN, are problematic. The Internet should be kept as a global space for communication, free from disruptions caused by geopolitical tensions.
3. More needs to be done about constraining online propaganda content. Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act will be helpful in this regard. Media literacy of users should also be strengthened to equip users to discern propaganda effectively.

#Resilience

Subtopic 2: Navigating Challenges and Strengthening Ukraine's and European Internet Infrastructure

Rapporteur: Boris Begović, Geneva Internet Platform

1. Ukrainian operatives are seeking to share their unique experiences in responding to Internet disruptions, threats, and other challenges with the wider community. A call for action was made at the Best Current Operational Practices Task Force, urging the community to help document Ukrainian operators’ experiences and turn them into practical guidelines.
2. These guidelines would cover areas such as rebuilding networks, increasing resilience and creating future-proof infrastructure.

#Hope

Subtopic 3: Protecting citizens in times of crisis

Rapporteur: Katarina Bojović, Geneva Internet Platform

1. Promoting and upholding human rights, democracy, and the rule of law is and has always been the best defence against aggression and authoritarianism. To protect people in times of crisis, there must be proper procedures and approaches before the crisis breaks out. In addition, state institutions and other key stakeholders must be adequately prepared to combat hate speech and build resilience against disinformation.
2. Journalism is vital in the situation of conflict or aggression. Therefore, it is crucial to acknowledge the role of journalists and provide them with protection, access to information, and adequate work conditions. Journalists must adhere to ethical standards of professionalism, a rule-based approach and respect for basic principles when reporting, especially in times of crisis. One should always get to the bottom of the information and adhere to basic values and principles when evaluating it.

Main Topic 2: Internet Fragmentation

#Risks

Subtopic 1: Understanding the risks of Internet fragmentation

Rapporteur: Bojana Kovač, Geneva Internet Platform

1. Different governments, actors, and stakeholders have different perspectives on what Internet fragmentation is. Thus, it is crucial to address the risks that come with it. Policy proposals that fragment the Internet, whether intentionally or not, prevent it from being a global space, though they may sometimes be necessary to protect other rights and the public interest. The private sector may also fragment the Internet by closing down services into walled gardens and breaking the principle of interoperability through open standards.
2. Geopolitics is another concern, as politicising the fundamentals of the Internet can endanger its technical nature. Content regulations that had unintentional effects on the technical level are now becoming intentional. The call for action is to enhance cross-government education and communication on Internet governance while also ensuring that companies, civil society, and the technical community are included in such discussions.

#Resilience

Subtopic 2: Internet fragmentation: what’s next?

Rapporteur: Bojana Kovač, Geneva Internet Platform

1. The Global Digital Compact (GDC) has encouraged states to address fragmentation. Taking into account the views of stakeholders, developing Internet protocols, promoting global discussions, and fostering open and competitive digital markets are vital to addressing Internet fragmentation and the digital divide. Content policies must align with international human rights principles to maintain a unified and rights-focused approach.
2. There is a need for harmonisation and cooperation among stakeholders to understand the causes of Internet fragmentation. We should rethink the Internet fragmentation discussion to not conflate it with business interests and ensure that the technical aspect is addressed carefully. There is a need to raise awareness of the risks of Internet fragmentation and also an opportunity to build on the capacities of the technical community and other stakeholders who are interested in addressing these challenges. Proven solutions, like the Internet Impact Assessment toolkit, can be a way forward.

#Hope

Subtopic 3: How can the Global Digital Compact prevent Internet fragmentation?

Rapporteur: Mark Carvell, independent Internet governance policy adviser and member of the EuroDIG Support Association

1. The Global Digital Compact should include detailed and transparent commitments by stakeholders – including governments, regulators and the technical community – to prevent fragmentation of the Internet’s core technical resources and of their governance.
2. The GDC process should continue to engage stakeholders, including the national and regional IGFs, in the finalisation and implementation of the Compact.

Main Topic 3: Digital Platforms

#Risks

Subtopic 1: Virtual worlds, but real risks: navigating metaverses as a next generation of digital platforms

Rapporteur: Boris Begović, Geneva Internet Platform

1. Establishing robust governance for virtual worlds is crucial and should ensure inclusive and secure spaces accessible to all. Neglecting global governance could lead to exclusive communities controlled by a select few. By collaborating with global stakeholders and utilising existing structures like EuroDIG, ICANN, and the IGF, we should aim to build upon our shared interests and make progress together.
2. The community must persist in engaging in the discussion about the metaverse, even as it loses its current trendiness and gives way to the prominence of AI. To foster a constructive trajectory, we must proactively contemplate the governance framework before widespread metaverse utilisation.
3. Prioritising a collective agreement on guiding principles is crucial for effectively implementing and enforcing human rights in the metaverse. However, before addressing these matters, the key is to unite globally and acknowledge that state-centric, corporate-led governance of the metaverse is inadequate.
4. It is vital to recognise that digital tools are meant to serve and support human beings. Our goal should be to ensure that the virtual world remains in service to the analogue world, harmonising both spheres for the benefit of humanity.

#Resilience

Subtopic 2: The European Union’s Digital Transformation – Regulatory Challenges, Technical Impacts and Emerging Opportunities

Rapporteur: Bojana Kovač, Geneva Internet Platform

1. Defining security is difficult, if not impossible, due to the evolving nature of technology. Current EU regulatory frameworks aim to cover most of the risks posed by existing technologies, including the Cyber Resilience Act, which is in the making to protect the security of digital products.
2. Security is not absolute; it is always about risk management and reducing vulnerabilities. While larger companies are already equipped to comply with cybersecurity regulations and certifications, the challenge lies in ensuring security in the open source ecosystem, which relies on numerous projects run by individuals, nonprofits, and universities. Rather than solely relying on legal requirements, providing financial support to smaller open-source projects for making security audits and bug fixes would be more effective. Legal requirements should not disrupt the global and collaborative open source software development model.
3. Ensuring comprehensive technological literacy is crucial, as it empowers individuals with a deeper understanding of technology. Due to its continuous evolution, industry professionals and users must remain informed and educated about emerging risks and challenges.

#Hope

Subtopic 3: Platforms as critical infrastructure for democratic discourse

Rapporteur: Katarina Bojović, Geneva Internet Platform

1. Decentralised platforms have the potential to provide an alternative and overcome some of the concerning features of dominant social platforms, such as surveillance capitalism, the attention economy, and digital colonialism. Yet, many questions and challenges still need to be addressed, such as sustainable financing and the lack of scalable business models.
2. The surge in large language models such as ChatGPT and other possibilities to create synthetic text creates greater pressure on content filtering and a much bigger need for transparency. Big tech companies must adopt clear and transparent content moderation policies that prioritise accuracy and accountability, with clear procedures for removing harmful content. Companies must also ensure their content moderation systems and rules are fair, transparent, and easily accessible in user languages.

Workshops

Workshop 1: Models to support investment in the network infrastructure in Europe: what is the way forward?

Rapporteur: Francesco Vecchi, United Nations University – CRIS

1. Interconnection:
   The EU aims at achieving universal connection to 5G by 2030 to support the consistent growth of content while ensuring competitive access through a structured regulatory system. Universal coverage and high-quality connectivity must be achieved to fight against discrimination and secure the digital transition, a process led by communication operators and publicly listed tech companies that are, respectively, investing in rural and remote areas and in data centers. However, laws of physics are not a social construct: 5G connectivity performances are bound by the speed of light and, at some point, the distance between devices will need to shrink. Finally, IoT traffic, connecting devices, e-Government services are paramount challenges and need new solutions, such as different investment models, more mergings, more competition in platform players, and a sustainable financial capacity.
2. Neutrality:
   Neutrality is crucial in the EU regulatory framework. The Internet is based on permissionless innovation: as long as one speaks the Internet protocol, innovations can be proposed without any legal or public permission. Moreover, the Internet is not entirely public: peering transit, Internet exchanges and private Internet are all run by non-public players, and they all have their own data storage and other infrastructures. This is one of the causes of the Internet’s fragmentation, but redirecting traffic could lead to Internet quality problems.
3. Price increase:
   In the latest period, revenues for Internet companies were raised because of a decrease in the cost of infrastructures. Even though an increase in individual customers’ prices might not be ideal in such a highly regulated market as the Internet, their overall impact may be positive since other services prices would be balanced.

Workshop 2: Digital information literacy as a modern civic skill – a Finnish perspective

Rapporteur: Francesco Vecchi, United Nations University – CRIS

1. Finnish CRITICAL Project
   In Finland, the CRITICAL project includes media literacy (i.e. digital literacy in education) for students and teachers in curricula from early childhood, as stated in the 2013-2016 Finnish Media Literacy National Policy Guidelines. However, though some organisations dealing with fact-checking and networking are playing a crucial role in fighting back the threats of disinformation and trolling (e.g. Faktabaari), the lack of critical literacy skills is still to be tackled since information literacy is essential for fair opportunities.
2. Safeguard of Individual Autonomy in the Internet:
   Democracy is undermined by media and digital power monopolies, the threats of disinformation and polarisation, as well as the lack of transparency and accountability in data collection for economic purposes. This context requires safeguarding the concept of individual autonomy by enhancing citizens’ digital literacy and education, and by integrating digital competencies with ethical, social and cultural dimensions.
3. Culture in Digital Information Literacy:
   To face the current multi-crisis world, it is paramount to provide universal epistemic rights and to secure trust at three levels: in basic societal functions and structures, in knowledge organisations, and between individuals. This aim can be achieved by improving culture’s role in Digital Information Literacy, to foster critical dialogue, empathy, and tolerance, while looking for a balance between innovation and regulation. Individual, social and political levels must be taken into account when shaping protection policies, as well as avoiding epistemic violence to pursue a pluralistic society.

Workshop 3: Trustworthy AI: Large Language Models for Children and Education

Rapporteur: Francesco Vecchi, United Nations University – CRIS

1. Large Language Models (LLMs):
   Large Language Models like ChatGPT4 have a revolutionary potential for customer services, translation, and human-machine communication, but they do not produce knowledge. Actually, they simply map statistical relationships between linguistic tokens by identifying patterns and finding correlations. AI-generated texts are always fictional, and the result of an easily biased statistical equation. Regulation to protect the most fragile users is certainly needed, but it must be gradual and focused on core principles rather than on quickly out-of-date technologies.
2. Italian Data Protection Authority:
   The Italian Data Protection Authority stopped the use of ChatGPT in Italy since they believe that the technology is not mature enough, that the current AI market is dangerously monopolistic, and that it is rising faster than the regulation (e.g. EU regulation on AI is going in the right direction, but it will not be implemented before 2025). Finally, children need special protection, and should be considered as legally unable to enter in any kind of personal-data and digital-service contract.
3. LLMs in education:
   LLMs can remarkably improve reading, writing, analytical skills and the production of educational content while providing more personalised learning options. Nevertheless, children are less able to distinguish reality from AI-generated content; LLMs can cause overexposure to biases and disinformation; relational drawbacks such as depression, addiction, and anxiety can take place; and plagiarism, truth, and information quality remain serious issues. Therefore, regulation must be focused on putting children’s rights at the center, by spreading digital literacy among children, parents, and teachers, and entailing legal responsibility for the design, the outcome, and the oversight of the system.

Workshop 4: Building cross-stakeholder awareness and understanding of the direct and indirect environmental impacts of digital/Internet technologies and how to mitigate them

Rapporteur: Francesco Vecchi, United Nations University – CRIS

1. Nexus between digital transition and environmental impact:
   The Council of Europe has recognised the nexus between digital transition and environmental impact, and its connections with human rights, child abuse, and exploitation. The most effective critical paradigm to unpack this nexus is composed of direct (e.g. energy consumption, mining of rare minerals and raw materials, etc.) and indirect environmental effects (e.g. results of the implementation of digital innovation in industries, etc.). However, a standard measure to analyse these outcomes still needs universal acceptance.
2. Environmental impact of hardware infrastructures:
   Though many think AI is software and ephemeral, it is actually rooted in concrete infrastructures, as well as cloud services that are operated through huge factories and data centres filled with computers and storage devices. Moreover, quantum Internet is far from being sustainable. So, to decrease the environmental impact of the Internet, it is first crucial to determine the green metrics for measuring it.
3. Decision-making process:
   The current decision-making process lacks knowledge regarding the environmental cost of each decision and of new digital technologies, and struggles to concretely implement sustainable technology by design. Therefore, regulation should take a consultative and iterative approach, starting from improving measurement, standards and collaboration on data collection, then looking at the complete life cycle impact.

Workshop 5: Proposal for a regulation laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse

Rapporteur: Org Team

1. In regard of the EU Commission Proposal for a Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse, the panel, composed of different stakeholders, agreed that something needs to be done to better protect children online due to data showing that 59% of the CSAM removed from the Internet is hosted in the EU, with the severity and proliferation of these images and videos growing year on year.
2. Risk assessment and mitigation are crucial! Digital service providers have a responsibility to create and provide safe and reliable services for all users. To protect children, regulation should make detection and removal of communications and depictions on the Internet compulsory. Diverse views were shared on how Safety by Design can be harnessed, including encryption as a way to offer children safe online services. Concerns were also raised on how companies could be doing more to detect CSAM within End-to-End Encrypted Environments were raised. In addition, media literacy education for children and parents is recommended.
3. Privacy concerns should be taken seriously. More research and development of reliable technologies to avoid large numbers of false positives are required. And care must also be taken to avoid technologies being repurposed for means other than their intended use – to detect child sexual abuse – by less democratic regimes. For these purposes a strong and independent EU Centre is also recommended.

Workshop 6: When Universal acceptance meets Digital inclusion

Rapporteur: Francesco Vecchi, United Nations University – CRIS

1. Multilingualism in cyberspace:
   Multilingualism is a key issue for universal acceptance and digital inclusion. According to statistics, English is the Internet default language as it is embedded in the foundational blocks of databases and programming and it represents the absolute majority of content, while between 15 and 35% of the world population are left out of the digital dialogue. Preservation, promotion, and revitalisation of indigenous languages worldwide must then be fostered to let marginalised communities preserve their cultural heritage while fully participating in the digital age.
2. Inclusion of indigenous languages
   Finland has made huge efforts to provide digital content in Sami indigenous languages, covering information, media communication, digital learning, welfare bureaucracy, and soft public services. Moreover, internationalised domain names or IDNs have proliferated in recent times, but South Asia and the Sub Saharan region remain the least connected to the Internet. All in all, content is key to achieve Internet multilingualism and universal acceptance: having content in specific languages builds a market and represents a convincing reason for users to want to go in that specific domain.
3. Solutions
   First, to achieve universal acceptance it is necessary to adapt devices, keyboards, screens, tools and programming languages, as well as applications and contents to a real multilingual context. Second, huge investments are needed in intertranslatability and in promoting consumer choice and inclusivity by ensuring that domain names and email addresses work in all software applications. This process must be performed for and by the indigenous communities and its feasibility is linked to the current heterogeneity in connectivity, though a general overview is what is really missing.