after another oil spill at the same refinery. this is al jazeera. these are the top stories -- the united states and nato have delivered written responses to moscow's security demands for ukraine. they rejected a call to permanently ban ukraine from joining the security alliance. >> a and pragmatic evaluation of the concerns that russia has raised and our own proposals for areas where we may be able to find common ground. we make clear that there are

core principles we are committed to uphold and defend, including ukraine's sovereignty and the right of state to choose their own security arrangements and alliances. we have addressed the possibility of reciprocal transparency measures regarding ukraine as well as measures to increase confidence regarding military exercises and maneuvers in europe. >> the united nations secretary general says life in afghanistan has become rosen help. -- frozen help, warning the country hangs by a thread with many in the country on the print of collapse. around 200 inmates and 200 kurdish fighters -- around 200 inmates and kurdish fighters were killed in isil's attempt to take over a prison. the military coup in burkina faso will be discussed at a

meeting friday. the regional organization has already condemned munday's military takeover. the united nations and u.s. are demanding the immediate release of the deposed president. the u.s. federal reserve says it will raise interest rates for the first time in three years. they were cut to near three -- to near zero at the beginning of the pandemic. federal reserve chair jerome powell says getting high inflation under control is vital to a strong job market. u.s. media reports say supreme court justice stephen breyer is set to retire at the end of the current term. his retirement will give u.s. president joe biden his first chance to nominate a new liberal judge to the country's highest judicial body. that's our top headlines. more coming up after "inside story." ♪

>> who should police social media? twitter reports it has received a record number of government requests to remove content. is this a way to remain a safe environment for all or is it censorship? ♪ hello, welcome to the program. most social media firms have made the same promise -- to provide a free and open platform for users to express themselves, but they are coming under increasing pressure to remove content deemed offensive or illegal. twitter says it has received a record number of government requests to remove tweets in the

first six months of last year. just five countries made 95 percent of the demands -- japan, russia, turkey, india, and south korea. in 54% of cases, twitter withheld content or asked users to remove posts, but the service says the requests reveal a disturbing trend. twitter imposed restrictions and warning labels ahead of the u.s. election in 2020. users received a prompt, prompting them to credible information before they could retweet content labeled as misleading. following the capitol hill riots last year, twitter permanently banned former u.s. president donald trump after he expressed support for the rioters. in february 2021, india demanded removal of content saying it was promoting violence. twitter also deleted hundreds of tweets but refused to deactivate

the accounts of media outlets. last june, nigeria suspended the social media firm after it deleted a tweet by the president in which he promised to punish local groups he blamed for violence. twitter said that violated its policy of abusive behavior. two weeks ago, twitter agreed to register in nigeria and pay local taxes to end the seven-month ban. let's bring in our guests. the executive director of a human rights organization defending freedom of expression and information. an assistant professor of european law and fellow at yale law school. also in london, the advocacy director to access now, a nonprofit organization defending the rights of digital users around the world.

let's begin in london. twitter says this is a deeply worrying trend against freedom of expression, but governments say they are just clamping down on illegal activity. who is right? >> thank you very much for having me today. i think the truth lies more on the side of twitter on this one. we have seen around the world a number of governments who are passing incredibly vague laws designed solely with the purpose of allowing them to restrict online content well and about the way they can restrict content in an off-line space or on regular media. we are seeing an alarming trend of legislation being passed that allows countries to go back to twitter and say that they are in violation of this law, so they have to take the content down, which is completely illegal and inappropriate. >> this alarming trend that governments are doing, the indian government threatened

twitter employees with seven years in jail. we have seen twitter reinforced to pay taxes in nigeria and register locally there. is that an attack on the media -- the medium generally or just the medium. you talk about nigeria. twitter was banned for nine months in the country. when we talk about physical threats against twitter employees in india, they faced similar threats as employees in russia. we definitely see governments attempt to take control over the information that has been circulating on the internet and taking lots of different measures, if they are legislation or other attempts at taking control at all costs. >> the legal side of this seems to be down to either social media giants policing themselves

and allowing them to be the arbiters of what is and is not individual freedom or allowing governments to decide. >> while i agree with the previous speakers that we are seeing vague laws whose aim is more to constrain speech than potentially legal interests, lawfulness or content against minors, other important interests, or the fact that if you look at the data, specific individuals, journalists have sometimes targeted are there counter requested to be shut down, at the same time, the reason why this is such a challenging issue, content moderation, and the reason why it is overall a question of how we regulate these platforms, we are seeing someone with expertise in european law. the challenge we continuously see is disagreement around what

is the primary value we want to save hard? 'tis it -- is it really speech? often times, a lot of governments cannot come to agreement within themselves. if we are taking privacy as a matter, there's so many discrepancies between what happens in california with what happens in other states, even at the global level. as we often say when we talk about the legal side of the things, we cannot really speak of one internet. we speak of many internet platforms because it is such a patchwork. what is also increasingly hard is some of the traditional challenges we are seeing, if it is from the side of being in terms of the regulation that should be in place, if that comes down from lack of consistency in administrations and priorities and understanding the kind of technology that is

at stake, so we have seen the european union tried to take some bolder steps, if that was in terms of content moderation for privacy protection, but coming to an overall global model, i would say that is extremely unlikely, taking into account that so many of the big countries have more of an interest to leave things vague and under their discretion more so than to come to more global agreement in terms of what kind of rules we can agree on across-the-board. what would constitute regulation project -- protecting legitimate interests? >> in order to protect individuals' rights, in order to protect freedoms of speech, one of the things that has been discussed for a long time is almost a united nations charter of digital human rights, something that actually codifies and suggests what is defendable

and what is protectable, but our guest said that would be incredibly difficult to do. do you think it will be difficult to do, and is it a good idea, frankly? >> the very strong reasons that were just illustrated would be incredibly difficult to do. one of the things we should not lose sight of his under the universal declaration of human rights and the international covenant of political rights as well as some of these more soft law declarations that have come from the human rights council of the internet, there is a nearly robust structure out there that protects these rights, and these structures do not necessarily discriminate between off-line rights and online rights. one of the things we have consistently called for is cash as an organization is that the rights available to people in an off-line setting be respected in

the online context. that means there's some translation that needs to happen in terms of moving away from one place to another, but we also do not want to create a new rights framework when the rights frameworks that already exist would provide robust protection. >> would you agree that there are already systems in place, and it does not need to be codified centrally? >> i would say there are lots of protections and lots of safeguards established in international law that do guarantee those rights. where the challenge comes is in the interpretation of these fundamental rights that exist but also in holding companies accountable. as much as governments have an obligation to support and enforce fundamental rights, companies have somehow escaped scrutiny and accountability when

it comes to implementing some of the regulations or even just enforcing some of our human rights in a digital world, and it has been really difficult to find a comprehensive regulation worldwide, specifically applying to social media companies, for example, but no a lot more mechanisms are possible for them to be transparent, for them to really be accountable, to be more responsive, so there are mechanisms that can be put in place besides what would be, like, a global regulatory framework. while some of these frameworks are necessary, we have seen success in europe, for example, and we can think of other similar initiatives that have been an advance for human rights or for the protection of human rights online.

>> often we have looked at social media companies as conglomerates, as businesses, as corporations, which means they have escaped the kind of scrutiny that, say, public broadcasters come under. you have regulatory laws in the u.s. and u.k. that govern what can go on air and what can be printed, etc., because we view them as being corporations. is there a need to change the definition of what a social media company is? >> yeah, that is a fantastic question and blends very well with what i was going to reply, so i would like to take a moment to go back to that. while, for example, that particular law was welcome in the sense of its ambition to regulate and put the interest and consent of individuals and privacy at the forefront, it still fundamentally does not challenge the business model under which these corporations work, and actually, as many

scholars and myself have argued, that is at the heart of the problem, and it blends with what you are asking, which is -- is it just a question of design or are tools outdated to deal with the kind of problems that the current technologies and current corporations are presenting? that is precisely what we are seeing also in the u.s. and to some extent in europe as well when we had discussions around using antitrust laws, competition rules to try to break down if we think of data as the new oil, so to speak, or can we apply those older mechanisms, those traditional legal frameworks we have in order to manage it differently? this is where regulators fail because they are consistently falling back to potentially either not innovative or not bold enough performs in order to truly create a different playing field. i fully agree with what was said in the sense it is not about a question of specific rights, do we have enough international

instruments at stake. rather, the main problem is the lack of understanding that we have right now globally, such a mixture between public and private power in the sense that we are lacking the kind of innovativeness of new accountability instruments and new accountability thinking in order to match the new realities we are facing. then falling back down to questions of first amendment and speech regulation or issues around constitutional rights, etc., those are traditional frameworks which are useful and to be respected, but i think a lot of colleagues i'm seeing across-the-board are gathering data. there is a different kind of momentum which is much more promising that we are seeing in the sense of understanding the nature of the beast better in order to see actually how do we deal with regulation? lack of regulation is not good. dad regulation is equally not

ok, even if there is lack of compliance, so that has been the challenge, finding that nuance, finding that right tone with which to regulate this, considering that we are truly talking about, as you said, global corporations which are based in one country, operate in another, have their data stored in another place. for a lot of people, facebook is the equivalent to the internet in full, so there's a lot of discrepancies across the globe in the kind of laying field, as i mentioned, that we are seeing between regulators, private actors, and what that means for citizens and the legitimate interests and values. >> is there a collusion between the government and social media companies that actually stops any kind of real regulation from coming into place?

after all, they are corporations. they get tax benefits. they get them to do whatever they want to do to make a profit and they don't have to have the same laws that, say, public broadcasters or other media companies do. is there an advantage for this vagueness for social media companies and governments? >> one of the things we all need to remember is that at the end of the day, these are profit-making entities who are private corporations, private or publicly traded corporations who are driven by the bottom line, and as much as they attempt to protect freedom of expression or talk about freedom of expression, at the end of the day, they need to do what they need to do from their own corporate perspective to protect their company, their staff, and the profits that they make. it was just mentioned the distinction between the internet and facebook does not exist in

some areas. that raises questions of, as you pointed out, do they need to be treated the same way that other corporations do? because corporations have their own interests. some of the things we have seen in particular, you mentioned at the beginning of this segment, how india has threatened some of twitter's staff with arrest for noncompliance. we are increasingly seeing that governments have absolutely no compunction to basically hold staff hostage, to require companies to hold offices, to hold staff in certain locations. we have seen that with pressure, with their landing law that came into effect this year. we have seen it with turkey with some of the legislation they have passed to require companies to have offices, and those are ways of trying to exert pressure on companies, so it is a little bit hard to say that they are in collusion with governments.

they are in states where they are trying to preserve their own best interests, and we should never lose sight of that, that is much as we rely on them sometimes to help us protect rights, they also have their own interest and threats, and that will not necessarily always be in line with the protection of human rights. >> let's just leave alone the corporation an idea of social media giants for a second. this also comes down to individuals as well. whenever i have flown into the u.s., certainly the last couple of years -- well, actually before the pandemic, i'm losing track of time -- i have often been asked to give my social media passwords. there has been no compunction to actually give those over, but the tone is if you don't, it will be very difficult for you to enter, so governments are using this on an individual level. how alarming is that you?

>> it is very concerning. if you put this in the context of increased surveillance online and also the illegal targeting of journalists, human rights defenders, human rights lawyers across the world, in the past few months, there have been a number of revelations about such surveillance practice. we are seeing that governments themselves have their own agendas and their own agenda is sometimes not legitimate. as much as this is an issue that has to be tackled because it is a threat to democracies, likewise incitement to violence online, sex abuse, racist abuse and so on are issues that need to be addressed -- actually, they need to be addressed off-line as well as online, we are also seeing a trend towards control, towards surveillance, towards an erosion of our civic

space and port an erosion of our rights and democratic al use, and some of the -- some of that that has come directly from some governments, and sometimes even from some governments that are not so called authoritarian. this is something we cannot deny . as much as we are facing different challenges, and we need to address it, and i think in this community, experts are still discussing to find appropriate solutions to these issues, but also must recognize that attacks against the media, attacks against the press, targeting of human rights defenders and attempts to censor the internet has become a bigger issue in the past few years. >> this is not just about the social media challenge and not just about governance because

often, google, facebook, instagram -- all of their ceo's will turn around and say, "actually, we are trying to protect people's freedom of speech. leave it to us. we are best placed to be able to do this," but is that not like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse? >> i have actually argued exactly what you are saying, in particular for facebook because the law for a long time was self-regulation is the best regulation, and even with the so-called oversight order, which tries to be diverse and tries to have esteemed individuals who are members of that board, the thing is that i just want to correct something in the sense that there are some conflicting interests that they have themselves. these corporations in the end depend on the trust of their users. they depend on users liking

their products and being able to -- in that sense, if people continuously feel attacked and unsafe or if it is something they do not want to use, there is a disincentive on their size, so there is an interest on that side to say we would rather have this blamed on the regulators, the fact that we have to shut down your account rather than say you have to hate us for doing that or this is something we have decided. in a way, it also provides a cover for them, so to speak, that you can sort of say it is a question of compliance rather than saying it is a question of them deciding something because in the end, it gives them the buffer. the challenge overall here in terms of the regulation, who regulates what and how and how that should be done is that there is a question generally here, as i said also before --

there is the case it just the kind of power that they have, and at the end of the day, a corporation can no longer simply hide behind its corporate veil and say we are only accountable to our shareholders when they are actually holding so much public power and so much public influence globally, if it is elections, speech, protests, and so in that sense, it is not sufficient to sort of say that we are able to initially govern our own powers, but i have to say there has been a shift in that direction from a lot of companies -- >> i'm really sorry, we are running out of time, but there is a question i want to ask all three of you, very quickly. i have had a social media account for over -- i think 12, 13 years now. why has legislation taken so long for even the thought and the talk of legislation?

>> it is an interesting question. i think initially early on, the global approach to these companies was led by sort of the way they were treated in the united states, which is basically hands-off this new technology. we want this new way of communicating to flourish. we want to treat these companies as intermediaries for the free flow of information, and therefore, we want to protect them as neutral intermediaries from adverse actions because of the content on them which is inherently speech-restricting or rights-violating to punish the intermediary for the content at is posted. >> we are runnini out of timeme and i want to comee to the other guests as well. very quickly, what are your thoughts? >> my quick tweet, if i may say so, to your question would be that it is actually not true that we are just talking about it now, but i think we are just talking with the level of alarm

and urgency more so because i think many of us have expressed concerns, but we have also expressed excitement, but i think it is a fantastic, opportune moment to have more public awareness and hopefully have better tools going forward both legislators and public essure t tend up having better rules than what we have now. >> do you have 140 characters you w want to share with us? x ofofourse. you mentioned earlier, the covid pandemic h h pushehe even more people online at a time when we were seeing some people deprived from internet connections because of internet shutdowns or other issues, so it is true that it is not a new issue, but there is definitely a lot more attention to the issue, and i think a lot of legislators are also under pressure because we deserve more, to be honest. we deserve more from our legislators and we also deserve more from the companies and platforms that we use to

exercise our rights. >> i want to thank all our guests, and i want to thank you, too, for watching. you can see the program again any time by visiting our website . for further discussion, go to our facebook page. you can also join the conversation on twitter. for me and the whole team here, goodbye for now. oóoóoóoóoóoóoóoóoóoóoóoóoóoóoóoó

man: for me, "sweet land" is a dream. [singers vocalizing] in dreams, you don't actually move. you're in one ple, and the worlbends and shifts around you and comes at you. [orchestra playing] there's ideas that creatmore questions than answers. woman: ♪ what is this place? ♪ second woman: ♪ the lord bless you ♪ third woman: ♪ and to keep you ♪ fourth woman: most people wouldn't think that you can have these kinds of conversations in an opera. chorus: ♪ we'll always make a place for yo