ARTICLE 19 commends the Special Rapporteur for her report which rightly shows how democratic elections are simply impossible without the right to freedom of expression and media freedom. However, as the Special Rapporteur notes, elections are ‘information crisis points’ and highly vulnerable to censorship and information distortion.
As outlined in our submission for the report, government officials see elections as the prime time to crackdown on dissent and ramp up online censorship worldwide – from Mexico, to India, to Turkey. The key tactic is placing pressure on media outlets or on online platforms to restrict content or block accounts, often with threats of severe sanctions, including fines, advertising bans, bandwidth reductions, or even blocking of the entire platform. Often, the targeted content comes from journalists, political opposition, and other civil society actors.
The largest online platforms play a pivotal role in both mitigating and exacerbating these challenges to free speech during elections. While these platforms have significantly enhanced voters’ ability to access information during elections, they have too often demonstrated their lack of readiness and how they are often more inclined to yield to government pressure rather than conduct a thorough human rights impact assessments of their demands. At the same time, many information integrity issues stem from the systems and processes of online platforms, including content moderation flaws and even more by their recommender systems. As the Special Rapporteur states, the backsliding of social media platforms on commitments to human rights and electoral integrity should “ring an alarm bell that we ignore at our peril”.
We urge all States, political parties, and companies to fully implement the recommendations of the report, which puts us on a path to ensuring healthy information ecosystems during elections.