Distributed verification

If we wish to preserve basic freedoms, we must not flirt with analysis of content or attempt to define what is true and what is false.

Our strategy is that of “follow the money”: by focusing on profit, we can penalise payments and charges that are made in exchange for publishing and spreading information without the necessary guarantees in terms of truthfulness.

It should be highlighted that "new technologies" place first-degree verification mechanisms such as searching in Google or other search engines within everyone's reach. As never before, distributed verification is now a real possibility, a tool that democratises – at least in part – verification of the "truth", something that until now was in the hands of just a few.

Fake news is most damaging not when contrasted with other, more or less true information, but rather it is most dangerous when its impact is massive. This happens when there is financial investment and when profits are generated.

In light of this analysis, we propose a clear direction to follow:

Firstly, we need to create a regulatory framework that dismantles the disinformation business, in order to bring an end to the impunity of the major manufacturers and viralisers of fake news and disinformation (governments, political parties, mass media and corporations).

Secondly, or rather, in parallel, since the Internet allows distributed access to tools, we must aim to clean up the information ecosystem through transparency and open, distributed verification that is already practised in several online communities.

Any initiative that involves delegating confronting false news to the few, be it through a government body or a company, carries a very real risk of curtailing fundamental rights, especially in the current European context of democratic regression.

In order to reach these recommendations, the report devotes several chapters to analysing various fields from a holistic perspective and checking out the veracity of some absurd commonplace assumptions.

We look at how the notions of fake news and disinformation are being defined and we discover the great effort from governments, parties and mass media to save their skin. We see how instead of fighting the monopolistic business of the corporations in this sector, networks and "technologies" are criminalised and people are persecuted for exercising their rights and liberties, in an attempt to perpetuate the asymmetry of the pre-digital era between citizenship and big media.

Then in "A brief history of fake news, information manipulation and disinformation", we take a journey from the Neolithic to the present day to show that the very idea this is a "new phenomenon" is in itself an example of fake news.

The heart of the beast and self-reliance

In this way we enter fully into the heart of the beast. In the section, “The big producers and viralisers of fake news and disinformation and the disinformation business: political parties | governments | mass media | corporations | communication businesses” – we have compiled examples of the huge investment political parties and governments make in the mass disinformation industry. We are talking about “producers”who don’t even feign the courtesy of half measures; as we shall see, this is an industrial-scale set-up.We will also see how national bot factories work and how we needn't fantasise about far-off Russia to understand how it is used every day by the political class both here and abroad.

After that we look at the invaluable tools and experiences that exist to help us verify information. We do so fully aware that at this stage of democracy, verification of information is not a majority practice among the population. Thousands of years of information dependence can only be countered by a protracted implementation period of this type of mechanism and by fostering within our societies a sense of self-reliant responsibility and holding ourselves to account .

Verification of the veracity of information is no longer a monopoly of journalists: from peer reviews in the scientific field to the moderation of online communities such as Reddit, we can already see a proliferation of such initiatives. Given how traditional mainstream media are increasingly abandoning their responsibilities in this field, we advocate broadening the mix between professional models and distributed structures of moderation and verification.

Finally, we have analysed the existing legal framework to shape our normative recommendations, so that the issue of fake news and disinformation can be tackled without prejudice to fundamental rights such as the right to freedom of expression and access to information.

Countering censorship

In almost all of the draft legislation in this field, we see paternalistic models that open the door to complex forms of censorship. We aim to oppose them with proposals and recommendations that are democratic and actually effective. As of today, we will defend them in all fora and all parliaments, until we achieve a change in narrative.

The fight against disinformation will be won by ending the monopoly of lies and achieving the distributed empowerment of citizens based on their right of access to information and the exercise of freedom of expression.

Our recommendations are as follows (yes, we will dare to touch the untouchables and it will be unprecedented, but at Xnet, we look to the future)!

As we have already said, it is clear that disinformation and fake news must be tackled:

1) by holding to account "big producers" (governments, political parties, mass media, corporations and companies whose activities have an impact on more than 10% of the population) and making the business of viralising disinformation unfeasible;

2) by expanding the surveillance and verification capacities of the public, through protocols of transparent access to information and knowledge about how such information is constructed.

Firstly, the duty to verify information must be adapted and specified as applying to all these agents, to all influential players that disseminate information offline or online, and those who offer communications services, including authorities and political parties.

We believe that the obligation of verification should be an imperative for all "influential information providers", and a failure to do so should be strongly penalised. We understand "influential information providers" to be any natural or legal person who has great power to disseminate certain information (including governments, political parties, mass media, corporations and major brands); and we understand this obligation must be an imperative when the dissemination of that information occurs as a result of a payment (such as advertising, for instance).

In this case, the following information should be published together with each piece of content:

Traceability, reliability and detail of all sources and data used, in contrast to at least one alternative source. In the case of sources, they should indicate the ranking of truthfulness according to whether the source is perceptive (what the journalist sees with his or her own eyes or through someone who has transferred this information to them); is a social construct (data that, while true, is based on conventions, such as GDP and related calculations or the promises of a politician, which cannot be verified); is an inference (the transition from concrete data to conceptual data); or is modalised (data that has been "cooked" or adapted to be consumed, e.g., a survey or information dossier) and their sources ("influential information providers") can never be considered sources of information and copied as if they were, and all these parameters must be included in a transparent way

Motivation for the exclusion of other notorious parameters to avoid the "cherry picking" effect

Motivated linguistic analysis of associations of ideas not supported by any empirical data

In quoting statements, review of whether they match the actual data

Verification of hypotheses with a multiplicity of cases, thus avoiding making the anecdotal the norm

Obligation of internal peer reviews. This should be detailed and include at least one author, one editor and several reviewers

Self-assessment of the reliability of the information obtained

Also, in terms of sponsored information:

• Identification of sponsors and promoters of those divulging electoral, political or general interest content • Amount spent • Criteria for selecting the addressees of the communication in question • Geographical source of the advertiser • In the case of justified exceptional circumstances where there is a risk for the party in question, the application of these measures may be waived, in whole or in part • When contracting the advertising, the advertiser must provide this information to the provider of the communication services so that it may comply with its transparency obligations

Astroturfing (sending of information falsely claiming not to be related to the creators or beneficiaries of the message being sent) shall be penalised.

Other duties of general transparency that are obligatory and subject to sanctions:

Indicate in detail the sources of funding and affiliations

Indicate in detail the method of work and verification used, and the processes followed to establish the degree of veracity

Agile rectification policy

Transparency of algorithms: obligation to publish the exact protocols of automated operations and how our data is used

Finally and most importantly, all entities registered in the Registry of Political Parties (political parties, foundations and entities linked to them or dependent on them) will be obliged to publish detailed electronic and non-electronic communications expenses. This obligation should lead to greater precision regarding the communication services contracted by these bodies (including the content and cost of services contracted or created by their own team).

Some of our recommendations may seem aggressive, unprecedented, or both. We are sorry, but it should be known that they are in alignment with the Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and “Fake News”, Disinformation and Propagandaby the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Representative, the OAS Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and the ACHPR Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information.

The report ”#FakeYou: Fake News and Disinformation – monopolising the manipulation of information vs freedom of expression” was published with the support of the Andrew Wainwright Reform Trust. Coordinator Simona Levi

The report is at the moment in Spanish, open to peer review.