Social Good Summit 2016: Panel discussion on technology and public debate

Let's move on to our next

panel

discussion

with another group of experts who will speak to us today about an important topic that we take very seriously. One of the

panel

s I'm most looking forward to is about

technology

and

public

debate

, and think about journalists like Adam and I, especially since we are so exposed and on the front lines when we cover. You know, we get messages from Twitter and Facebook that aren't always very nice. Obviously, you know, especially now that there's been a

debate

. some feelings of negativity online too, this panel is especially interesting and I'm sure many of us can relate to this one, that's right, actually everyone can relate because in DINO Manager on the list, when you express your views online sometimes and well.

It can often get quite unpleasant, so we want to navigate this new field and see what we can do as Internet users and as all

social

media consumers, and that is to welcome our panelists and introduce them one by one. The first is the president of the board of directors of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, let's leave it for mr. Verrill Santos the second is a colleague is Ranade a multimedia reporter a traveler who has covered President Rodrigo Duterte since the campaign and so far in his presidency our next panelist the founder of Thinking Machines a round of applause for Stefanie C and finally we have Vince lesbian who is the CEO of the Transparency and Accountability Network and of course once again moderating our panel is Marie Iressa, the CEO and Executive Editor of Rattler Ru.

Thank you all, we will also ask you questions, so I will give you time to make sure. you ask questions I just want to introduce each of them and ask them to tell you how

technology

has impacted

public

debate how it has impacted what people believe Stephanie Stephanie is very young but she has worked with Google you have worked with I mean , you've worked with technology and from what you see, Thinking Machines is a group that analyzes data, crawls it for meaning for us and you know one of the things I remember is beef food and the IDI diet to finish . terre tech's campaign during that time period, so tell us first and then discuss what the impact of technology is on public discourse.

Hello, thank you for inviting me to this panel. My experience is really in startups and technology, thank you all. From a technological perspective, when the Internet was first built where I was, the vision of the Internet is to connect people and build communities around the world, but I think when it comes to public debate there are two specific trends in technology that I've noticed in the last three years that it has serious

social

impacts first is the targeting and bundling has really improved in the last three years, really creating this phenomenon where you see more than you want to see and technology companies, people like me, they've been getting better and better at developing algorithms to isolate you into behavioral groups and just show you an echo chamber, so if you're in a certain demographic, if you're interested in certain things, I don't know if most of them all.

You know this, but the Facebook newsfeed itself is algorithmic in nature, they don't see everything, they see what things on Facebook they are most likely to interact with, and if they interact with something, they will see more and more. that and that naturally pushes people into social bubbles that don't talk or interact with each other. The second thing I see in technology that has social impacts in public debate is the ease of building bots and botnets, so that's a huge thing if the technology to build BOTS has been around for about five years, but only In the last year or two I have seen them become a very vocal minority of the comments in the public. sector My knowledge of this in the Philippines comes from a post my team made, so we studied Twitter data during the elections and wanted to see the nature of the conversations people were having about our presidential candidates.

We did a fun little post about what emojis people associated with the candidates we looked at and whether or not bots were used in the conversation. Funnily enough, Kath Neil did it, so there was an ABS ABS, but yeah, a PBS contest and one of the rules was who wins. the most retweets with this hashtag or whoever gets the most mentions wins this contest and the bunch and I'm in that most of the volume was coming from a bot and somehow this bot had latched onto a tweet that mentioned that there was a candidate at that time and kaznia, so in the super they inflate during those couple of days the mentions of the theater that has a large number of followers online, but it is very small, in this case it was not him and this points to a major problem.

If you choose the wrong metrics, if you are the metric chosen to determine who is the most popular and who has the most mentions, then you are going to incentivize people to create a lot of bots and botnets to drive that, so I'm really hoping to see more real and engaged conversations between citizens around the world, what is the original vision and goal of the Internet instead of the artificial inflation that is now possible with technology, how can you tell when it is a bot? Oh, it's a really interesting field, how can you? Knowing when it's a bot now is actually like a real war between two different types of technologists, so every time someone builds a bot it detects a better bought detection, someone else builds a better bot, so so far what it looks like To function is to study the patterns. of when bots post, so this is very basic if someone has no followers, if someone is not talking in a human record about things that are outside of if someone only talks about one topic, has no friends, has no followers, just talking about one topic and talking about posts about it every two milliseconds, that's definitely bad, but now that companies are aware of this, Facebook, Twitter, Google, like everyone, are very aware that it's a type of bot , bot makers are becoming more sophisticated at mimicking the human pattern of human interactions, but I think.

The part that they will never be able to imitate is that bots are not connected to real human beings, while real human beings are connected to other real human beings and that's what I think the most effective filter is really fantastic. Stephanie is back in the Philippines now. right, you're home, I'm engaged, great, so Stefan, you talked about the echo chambers of the man who has seen history in this country, from where he will see the impact of these echo chambers, I mean, from what you've Governments seen around the world were actually seeing this move towards more charismatic strongman type leaders in Modi in India Duterte in the Philippines, many more than also, blah, blah, blah, all of these, please tell us what is the impact of technology from their point of view.

Well, it seems to me that I am the only pre-digital specimen apart from my wife around here. I have been in the business for more than 50 years. Well, because I was a child prodigy, I started at 8. In any case, I am not one who denies technology. In fact, I like technology. I surrender to technology but I also understand that technology is as much a tool as a toy and a weapon and it seems to me that today it is used more as a brutal, vulgar and indiscriminate weapon than any other. Another similar weapon has been used before the communication weapon.

So what do we have today? It seems to me that, according to the surveys I have conducted, I have given him my permission. My residual energy seems to me that people are more confused than enlightened these days and I'm sorry. to say that I can only blame technology because technology is open to everyone technology does not choose anyone and one thing about technology is that technology has no morals technology has no morals technology has no values ​​technology is too neutral for Let's just trust it, today you see strong men in the world and I remember a visiting professor from the London School of Economics saying about all the people and an academic saying well, the virus is in the air, the virus is in the water, how can we accept it? that kind of explanation and I think the explanation is not clear or absent at all because people today are still trying to find ways to somehow assign morality to technology, now I don't know how we will be able to do it. but I just want to see some sense in it, that's fascinating, that's a great idea because something like Facebook, for example, right, Mark Zuckerberg refuses to choose between fact and fiction, right, both are treated equally on a platform like Transparency of Facebook Vin I love what Burrell said.

Your take on this and for a man who has spent his career fighting for transparency, do we have greater transparency with technology? I think technology is at least a double-edged sword that he has provided. A lot of transparency provides a place and a channel for greater transparency in many different areas, especially in the public realm in terms of public governance, but with that comes the flip side and that is a lot of information that is coming to light, as you spoke before. in your talk about artificial intelligence and what artificial intelligence is like, it's a here and now, but what we're seeing on the Internet is a different type of AI that is artificial ignorance, artificial ignorant if we listen to what Stephanie talked about about robots and algorithms. and paid trolls are purveyors of artificial ignorance and I think this is what we are seeing a lot on the Internet, especially on social media, and because of that it has influenced public opinion towards different things and what I have noticed when talking about the Public debate on the Internet is no longer so much public debate but shouting matches, whoever shouts the loudest receives the most attention and influences thoughts and minds, and I think this is the sad thing about the Internet and social networks today, for always. and maybe you, maybe Stephanie and P or two too young people who were there before the advent of the Internet in 1994-1995.

The Internet or at least the precursor to the Internet was chat rooms for people sharing information, which was actually sharing information. among scientists among academics it was the precursor of interest and there was a very collegial and pleasant atmosphere, as I remember in the past and that had been the case until recent times and, as you pointed out, relief was specifically highlighted during this past election where the amount of hate and vitriol on the internet is simply intolerable, I think, and people are silenced into submission. Trolls have found a way to weaponize the Internet and that is what has happened, in fact, one of the most visible.

Today's public figures are probably the biggest troll in the world and I know who you might want to guess who it is. I'll give you a clue. His name starts with you. Donald Cho, in case you're thinking, but people like Donald Trump. I think they are the biggest trolls in the world because they tell half-truths, sometimes outright lies and people eat them and then like you said this spreads across the galaxies of the Internet at an exponential rate and what started as a lie or a half-truth becomes a truth when it reaches the general public and I think this is the danger that we see about technology and public debate and I think the level of public debate because the Internet has become a weapon really It has sunk and I remember that you begin. to watch this, thank you, I mean there are so many things to pick apart and please feel free to join in, including Adam and Natasha, but before I do, I want to go to Pia and you might be wondering if she looks too young. but this woman is not only literally climbing mountains, she was also at ground zero if you remember the time when President Duterte held his last press conference before moving to Monaghan young and Pia Ranade was a reporter who asked him about the whistle and I'm starting with that because that question, which is a normal question that a journalist would ask, unleashed an avalanche on Facebook on the Internet.

I guess through can you tell us what happened, how you reacted, so I'm not sure if people see the incident, but basically the Presidential Authority wolf whistled at our reporter Marissa Maggie, a Jimmy reporter, and wanted asking him if he knew that wolf whistling according to the women's code of Davao City, of which he is the mayor and who used to be the mayor of that code, whistling is actually illegal and there are even penalties if you whistle at the woman, like this I just wanted to ask him I'm sorry, do you know that the women's code that you say actually says that what you just did is illegal and that's why his reaction was hissing at me, so you know, obviously, it was a very awkward situation. , but I move on, they still tried to get an answer from him until he said: I don't like that question, let's move on, so I said, okay, so I asked my second question, but after that he still mentioned the fact that, anyway, like I was saying, it's not malicious or sexual in nature and people, women shouldn't be offended if aman whistles at them, at which point I told him. him that his definition of what offends women is not up to him, because what offense each of us subjectively is sometimes, how is a man supposed to know what offends a woman?

And I'm a woman, so he would know, I think he would know. to be in a better position to know what offends the woman, so I told him and there he just I don't know, I don't remember how he reacted, but I think at that moment I decided to ask my second question. and that's why they're the end of the story after that, although people really harassed me online for what they did, they saw how respectful I was to the president-elect, they saw how biased he was and how they know he should be more respectful when he tells him I asked the incoming president and boss Nikka but maybe it was a compliment to see Mario Molina the president-elect whistled at her and then he found her attractive so and so etcetera and it was also disconcerting because uh, you know, they would go into my Facebook account and send me many direct messages. of threats like I would get pent up death threats even on Facebook rappers every time I post a story or they post a story for me mamie r.i.p pierre you're welcome and so at some point it became very exhausting and very emotionally distressing because of how?

How do you keep writing on the theory that when everything you write people send you hate messages? How can you be objective in a world where being objective means you get hated for your job? So I think that's the biggest challenge right now for journalists. I'm sure if you know this online you'll see a lot of people, maybe even your friends or someone you don't know, a third layer upon layer telling you to stop following abs-cbn. Inquirer, one sentence because they're supposedly biased, so it's terrifying, I mean journalism as we know it, it's threatened by people who think objectivity no longer has value, so it's a challenge for everyone, it's a challenge not only for journalists but also for Internet users to be able to discern who to believe because if you know for example, thinking about Pin, I'm not sure if you know the blog, thinking that Pino is a theater blog quickly blue and they say they tell people leave the new sites and just rely on blogs like them for news, so it's like the world has turned upside down, you're supposed to believe that the credible, true, accurate, credible sources are the professional ones, they are blogs, no matter the fact that they are more biased, there is probably the most biased source of information and you.

You're supposed to believe journalists who put their names on the line, who actually publish your names. You know their identities. You can investigate our Facebook accounts. You know who we are. We are the ones in the back, who cannot be believed. or who are not responsible for what they write, so it is a very scary time for a journalist to be honest, for example, in Milan, young. Now I'm a young boardwalk reporter and we have these press conferences every Tuesday and they go live on Facebook and If you read the comments, people look every time we ask a pretty girl a question, you know she's nice, she's something critical, negative, we keep commenting well on Quentin Reporter and by antinomian mama, it's like that, so you know, it's really difficult.

I think the challenge now is for journalists to show that even though what we say may not please them, it is something that they need to hear or that there is still value in the truth and there is value and objectivity, yes . Hell, I want to ask you this week and nu JP and ifj at the International Federation of Journalists issued a statement talking about two female journalists from Al Jazeera's Jam Island organ and Gretchen Malala, who was working with Time magazine, who made similar complaints. that they were being threatened with murder and rape, well, all these other things, what do you do in a world like today?

It is true that we have been forced to live lives upside down because the universal norms of behavior and decorum and civility and things like that have been inverted. the other way around and our problem is that we have a strong man in the presidency who has decided to redefine the rules, so how do we deal with this? If you ask me, I don't care about them. I know what my job is and, by God, I'm going to do it the way I knew that job should be done. Now I can understand that in the face of attacks from trolls one could be intimidated, well, one is intimidated to a point where I can't quite understand why a certain magazine is being published. charmed and disarmed even instead of intimidating this alone shows the workings of ethics and morals in the profession I if you ask me about those drawers I don't care but I may be defining the rules for myself that way I still think journalists who consider themselves worthy of their profession should unite and see this as a professional problem, even as a moral problem or something that does not help the profession or society at all.

I mean, this becomes something that goes beyond the natural. sense of competition that journalists have among journalists who exercise each other this is something else and this is what I mean by trying to somehow make some sense of it just feeling some reason some norms of appropriate behavior in the use of technology is really hard to do that and that's part of it for Stephanie to go ahead and like it before we reply Helles, sometimes when we look at a Facebook post that is perceived as anti deterrence and the president, mindful of his credit, actually does Just two days he asked his followers to stop attacking. journalists for his work, but what we have seen in these Facebook posts is that if he is perceived as negative in a matter of seconds, he is automatically attacked, making him a robot.

Is there something that can be done? What about influencing immune public opinion if it involves responses in milliseconds? He's probably bisexual, he said he can't read that fast, but I think it also speaks to the point that technology has no morals. I would like to add a little to that because technology, its systems, Facebook is a system, Twitter is a system and Systems incentivize express moral and ethical behavior through what they incentivize and what behavior they disincentivize. It's interesting and because Facebook, from Twitter, specifically says in a very, very vibrant way that it is a platform for everyone to say everything philosophically that they believe in, with the greatest freedom of expression possible, even if people insult each other, The way Twitter is built is optimized to see what you want to whoever you want and have it in your face, whereas there are other social networks that have some simple things built in, for example on Instagram there is a setting where you can say that if you are particular word appears in some comment, it automatically won't be seen in your post, so someone at home has a nickname or says, "Oh, why don't we filter my comments then?

And that's a product decision that Instagram created have real moral ethical outcomes, so I think we in tech also have a responsibility to be part of this

discussion

and build systems that incentivize ethics, but then we have to decide what we would need them to be and what we wouldn't need them to be. something that a very

good

engineer or a very

good

computer could ever solve this, I actually think it's the place where you can see how everything changes, right, it's changing dramatically and Vince, your reaction to what piya said and then the morale of Bella. like the lack of morals and then in terms of Stephanie's flesh.

I don't know if any of you caught the op-ed in Wired magazine online. Yeah, I thought there's a really good article that addresses a lot of these issues, especially the major social media players like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, basically saying it's time for these companies to start taking a little more responsibility for the type. environment that we live in now on the social media of the Internet and it really has been an environment I think most of us have seen it at one time or another and journalists have seen it directly and personally, the kind of hate that They are really promoting social media nowadays and that has on Maria Burrell and I were at a conference.

Not long ago, we were talking about the paralyzing effect that this has especially on journalism and the media in this country and as much as journalists are generally fearless people in the face of all this, sometimes it gets to you when the volume is high and the amount It's me, of course, too, so I think this is something that social media companies really have to think about, it's Helis' idea about a moral rating system. I think that's interesting too because it's time for us, I mean, we. We all believe in freedom of speech, and we all believe in the power of freedom of speech, but being cheesy with great responsibility comes great responsibility and every freedom has a limit, whether it's freedom of speech, whether it's freedom of speech, be it freedom whatever.

The freedoms we have actually have limits, so just because we have freedom of speech doesn't mean we can threaten everyone more than anyone else and the other thing about social media is that a lot of people hide behind anonymity and their colleagues pointed it out. Myself, people like us were out there, we know who we are when we tweet or Facebook accounts and the guys who talk to you are usually cowardly enough to hide behind anonymity and I had this conversation on Twitter, a conversation on Twitter more like with this guy and him. I said well, why don't you challenge me on my blog? and I said and I think to myself, well your blog is anonymous and if I'm on your blog fighting your followers I'm out there but if you're fighting my followers no one knows who you are so I don't associate with nameless people on the internet because it's an unfair game, so these are some fantastic things to consider.

We are receiving questions from social networks. I want to go here first, I guess before we go to the hearing, there is a positive aspect, right, which is the greater empowerment of people and the fact that people who were once marginalized are no longer marginalized and that is very real , right, I think that's the president. you dare to appeal in many cases and then the second problem that we have identified is that in many cases there are vested interests that continue to take advantage of this is that a correct statement is whether we are or not so much yes then it is the one who builds the box, of course, that is a and then who ferments it.

Let me answer a question from the audience if you raise your hand if you have a question for the panel. What we saw in this election for sure is a wide open Pandora. box and unleash the anger some of the anger is justified by the people who were marginalized and some of the anger is manufactured well and above we have please stand up and tell us your name and then we will take thank you continue the people who are still sending questions on Twitter for please go ahead and there behind you Marda right behind you there oh please tell us your name good afternoon I'm Gil Santos I have a few years of journalism behind me now I teach journalism classes and Diplomatic relations are also a little ahead of someone older than Burrell, so I think I can say that my question is because technology, even before chemistry and the Industrial Revolution and the flood and the Wright brothers and everything else and nuclear power came about, it always has come about. has been a morality, technology has been a morality, but it has been a very useful tool for the dissemination of information due to the demand of current times, shouldn't there be an equivalent door? and perseverance to increase the development of human resources so that their quality of journalists do not fall behind the advancement of technology is simply answered with a yes or no, thank you, this is a problem, no, no, you cannot be answered with a yes or a no and Gil knows that it is not something that can be oversimplified in that way when he talks about skills suitability competence of journalists you are talking about the profession this is not just about the profession this is about technology now yes technology always has been a moral is another point that will have to be addressed why the weapon is a technology in its in its own way nuclear weapons are technology, everything is technology now, do we consider such morality as the oldest knowledge?

Simply because they happen to be technologies. This is my point, I mean, I would like to think that we have been given the ability to reason so that we can who are we supposed to deal with this technology ourselves now what do we do I mean this is what we should we should talk about what what we should do with weapons what we should do with nuclear energy what we should do with every piece of technology We should also do it with the Internet. It's interesting how technologists see this. We, as a whole, the technologists, really don't want you, the legislators.

I am referring to the very serious debate that is taking place. I think we've all touched on that within technology companies. andI'm not the best person to talk about it, we probably had someone from Facebook or Google senior management talking about it, but there are conversations about platforms versus media, like what is Facebook is Facebook's platform, in which case it's just providing the infrastructure for people to say whatever they want or are they actually a media entity responsible for what people say and I really don't think it's as easy as telling Facebook to legislate because or a media platform can control what they say. his reporters finish. post, whereas if Facebook started limiting what people could say on Facebook, it would very easily be false and the free speech issues, which are already a problem, are dealt with from the other side, we are here talking about trolls, but It's also The other big problem Facebook faces is censorship accusations that they censor the photo of I forgot a historically irrelevant photo that didn't meet their standards or Vietnam, yes, yes, a photo of yes, so they take hits on both sides, yes, but the other side is two.

Weeks ago there was a lie about Hillary Clinton, the number one trending on Facebook for 24 hours, right, it was number one and what she was constantly sharing and that's a failure, that's a correct algorithmic failure used to have this is why which I think humans and machines have to work together even though the English system yes, I'm a single machine that's optimizing for people clicking on it, so that's the proxy metric to determine how many people interact . with this, but that can easily be fooled by these echo chambers of people who see content that is not true but is viral and has veracity, so it ended up trending and it's really strange to me because Facebook also just fired its tendency. news team that is responsible for human healing of these issues and who didn't and who were accused of being biased.

I think the Democratic Party of America, yes, they lost, they are in a difficult situation, don't get us wrong here. the machine is not to blame yes, this is a battle between the force of reason and the force of Pathology explain if you look at much of the force of reason it has been taken away from you by those who have decided no, I have decided their own no , leave reason alone, no, yes, and simply deal with your fellow human beings in a brutal, brutally pathological, I mean, immoral, immoral or unethical way, but they may not even realize it because of the echo chambers that have been formed.

I think that is part of this new era, no, but the echo chamber serves precisely to promote this pathology. Vince just a quick reaction to the question about how journalists could up their game in terms of the new technologies that are coming out, I think the other side of the coin is that the consumer of news and information also has to increase their ability to filter what is true and what is not true, so many people just go ahead and click on things without thinking if it is not the truth, whether it is accurate or not and knowing the source of that information and because of that lies spread at an exponential rate as we say, so I think this is something we need to consider as well.

Fantastic media literacy was one of the things we kept talking about, I think now more than ever, I ask Paul lover a question on Twitter, what are your specific challenges when it comes to covering President du Tertre? He is always late, like sometimes we wait five hours for him to arrive on time. event, so that's the biggest challenge, you know, managing your deadlines, your scheduled day and also the fact that it's hard to pin down as a journalist, yeah, a politician asks questions and you expect straight answers because you know they're supposed to know. the other way around. politics is all they're supposed to be aware of, but he's a very slippery character, even the way he talks is very slippery.

I'm sure we all know how often he said something only to take it back, right? you know the curse says you know no, sometimes you really have to interpret what he says, that's why sometimes in my articles I say that it seems like he was talking about this because he doesn't finish his sentences, sometimes he even gets the facts wrong, you know , as if he was talking about a different massacre when apparently it was this massacre. His figures are all wrong. You know it's like that, but at the same time, day three, even if it's challenging and frustrating to cover.

Let's also admit that it's very, I think covering, I mean the stories that come out of his speeches, you know that he's threatening to leave, that you and him in something, this will be there and all of that is very exciting, it's very, you know , it's fun. To read it right, I mean, isn't it refreshing to hear about this president insulting another oppressor? I mean, it's unheard of, so we all are, it has very viral potential in its I think there's a lot of media now in the newsroom. in Mela Hanyu, many websites that never use the message send our reporter to young Manahan, they deploy it as three reporters because you know it's such good copy, the results are exaggerated, people read the news all the time because it's exciting I read the news nowadays and even among my schoolmates many Millennials are more involved in politics now that this is an interesting device.

I can call it strong entertainment right now, so yeah, another Twitter question and anyone on the panel can answer this. is from endocrine endocrine that iris is also using social media for medicine correct for technology for medicine what is the best defense against trolls one and then your second question is actually connected to you for help, both ethics how the law lags behind technology what to do, that is defense against trolls and ethics oh, I think trolls feed on attention and therefore the way to deal with the troll is to not pay attention to it , even if they simply wither and die, so to me that is law and ethics, it would necessarily have to catch up. technology and that's always the case, it will always be the case with technology, technology will always outpace everything else, so we're just trying to catch up, how we do it.

I don't know, I don't have the answer, but I certainly believe. that it's important for us to do that, I don't know how to do it, we'll answer a question, the last question from the audience there, so I see you raising your hand. Also my name is Michael and I am a software. developer from the point of view yes, grandmother, do you think that fanaticism is reinforced because of social networks? On social media, it is easier to feel one with a group, a group of people, because it is very easy to be united on one platform, even if you are from Saudi Arabia.

Arabia or you are from the United States or the Philippines if you want too, but they are there, for example, everyone can join on this page, this website, this Facebook group, so yeah, and then they can easily create campaigns like hashtags , like Athenaeum. Phenomenon, they are all driven by hashtags and the hashtags, the number of posts you make, already impose on people outside your cult that this cult is alive and well, so now people are attracted to join it because she's very active, so yes, definitely. I really think that social media reinforces the cult, yes, so the phenomenon of finding a community I find fascinating because one of the best original pieces of the Internet was the ability to find a community if you were a rice researcher in Tanzania and you're the only rice researcher within a 200 kilometer radius of where you are.

Now you can go online and talk to the Philippines' early rice researchers, collaborate and become part of a community. Now I see a lot of campaigns from, say, IndieGoGo. I know how to raise money for a school somewhere I've never heard of and I'm like wow, my Guinean friend and I donated so it's a way to get involved and build a community so social media encourages fundraising groups. behavior. I think it's inherently bigotry and I really don't think technology should be over-legislated because of the speed at which it moves, which we might not agree with. Doctors consider it very natural, in fact, those who cannot be bored alone can be in company.

It's very natural. One's tendency to gain boldness in company when one cannot bowl alone. I think for those of you who remember coming out not many days before the internet, if something went viral it meant you had to go see a doctor, but nowadays social media has so much power. region and has the ability to create this phenomenon with fanaticism, whether good or bad. I mean, I could be a fan of a football team or something, but sometimes you can go in another direction. I'm going to bring our two journalists. our presenters, who are actually very active on social media.

I think Optim has over a million followers on Twitter. Natasha had her own experiences on social media. Any questions for our panel or ideas from yourselves? Well, do you believe? The toxic environment right now is something that will fix itself later as people learn more about proper social media etiquette or is there something that responsible social media users should actively do to maintain a balance between the different groups on social networks. I see Vince Stephanie for many young netizens, the Internet is like a new toy, you don't know what to do with it and you all are crazy, it's like a firecracker in a young voice hand like me, I mean even even in It's fun to play with my hands and firecrackers, but I think it's something that needs to evolve and I hope it evolves to a point where people start to be a little more responsible in using the Internet, a little more responsible about how things work.

They spread and are more demanding about what is true and what is not true, the rules change very quickly: 10 years ago everything was not talking to strangers on the Internet, not getting in the car with strangers and today the Internet is used to call a stranger in a car to come pick you up and take you somewhere else, the only thing is that it doesn't matter, don't block people who say things you don't agree with, please, and you think it's very important, make a distinction between someone saying something that you know, there's something, some things are really terrible, like immoral, okay, or directly insulting you, maybe you could block that person, yeah, but if someone says something that that you disagree, I don't think that's a good enough reason to block someone and I think that just reinforces this echo chamber in the experience, yeah, I'm home, oh my god, that was more in sabi, but I don't block to these people because they are citizens like me and we are all going to have to live. in this country together for the next 50 years I have no father that education is the answer I have no doubt my problem is are these people teachable I mean they are simply people who are so full of their own dark crosses that they have a tendency to resist instruction this is my problem so I just hope that this is not a pathology I really hope that this is not a pathology that this is something that can somehow be corrected to some extent in any case through education um I also think that if there is a called for this information now, people who believe in the truth should also join because now the people who lie and are so passionate about you know that you have to spread this information or support this person or this idea, but those who stand firm and actively fight for the truth on social media they should actively do it, like for example if you see a troll saying something really nasty, it doesn't really make any sense, there's no logic, it's just mean and then you see something.

Respond logically with a reason like that, I mean, sure, I mean, it's so simple sometimes, just if you see someone's comment with 50 likes versus someone with eight likes, people tend to shut up when they see that they don't. They are compatible so we should just keep supporting those who tell the truth like the rapper on social media p.m. They are bombarded by you know, evil comments every day and most of the time, if you fight the lies with the truth, they will shut up, they promise as if we have a very blatant replacement that they say points out the falseness of the comments and then to People like.

Comment and on Indy and they give their opinion or you keep saying who caught me, who abandoned everything, um yeah, they just stop commenting or something, they even delete their comment or even say sorry, so I think there is still hope for reason on the Internet . You just have to fight for it. I think the only comment I'm going to make is only because the examples have been the way with their followers and my experience has also been with these very angry professionals who are the followers who have threatened. I also just want to make it clear that I don't believe and feel the need to say it, it's not so much about being pro, the tears are anti doTERRA because they are also very angry, very rude, very Nasty Fanatics, poor anti Dare Day, so let's make it clear that this is notIt's like that.

I'm very against the word territory because that in itself is an insult and it's being thrown back at you, so I don't think this is professional. that there in the anti that there what I think is okay to disagree with what we are against are personal attacks from any side, regardless of who you support and I just want to make that clear because I think that if we sit here and talk about it with the followers or this and that there are exactly the same followers on the other side and maybe if it just drowns out the voices, you know it's generalizing and I think when we generalize it basically defeats the whole purpose of this conversation. so I think it's just a reminder that this is for everyone, everywhere, and that the problem is more the behavior on social media, not so much who you follow.

Thank you, join me in thanking our panelists and pay it forward. Thank you very much once again, server. Hale through to Stephanie and Vince for joining us this afternoon and thank you Maria for moderating that panel discussion. This is something we'll be talking about for many more sessions, so it's a good start and Thomasina will be Mona Tasha, it's not really about one. In particular, it's about how we should treat each other with respect regardless of whether you're on the opposite side of the fence and that applies in your life and it also applies on social media absolutely so I wish we could remove words like a yellow card they say.

You're tired, I mean this in itself is that you know they're in PAX and they're very common now, but if you think about the real root of this, you actually know Rudin and you hate him, so I think we should start by letting to use it. these words no matter which side my monopoly power was on thank you