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Palestinian Digital Rights: Crackdowns & Corporate Complicity with Amal Nazzal
114 Plays4 years ago
Amal Nazzal joins host Yara Hawari to discuss her extensive research into violations of Palestinian digital rights by Israeli and Palestinian authorities with the complicity of social media giants, while also touching on the rise of "Slacktivism" and explaining the principles of ethical digital research of oppressed peoples.
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Transcript
Users as Products: The Data Dilemma
00:00:00
Speaker
When you are not paying for the product, you are the product. I think this is the case with Facebook and other social media platforms and all these candles of Facebook particularly in violating our own digital rights and selling our data. So because Facebook is a network designed to maximize its profits, political activism within this network definitely will be weak if it's not impossible.
Voices for Palestinian Rights: Podcast's Mission
00:00:32
Speaker
This is Rethinking Palestine, a podcast from Ashabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, a virtual think tank that aims to foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination. We draw upon the vast knowledge and experience of the Palestinian people, whether in Palestine or in exile, to put forward strong and diverse Palestinian policy voices. In this podcast, we will be bringing these voices to you so that you can listen to Palestinians sharing their analysis wherever you are in the world.
Social Media: A Tool for Activism and Oppression
00:01:06
Speaker
Over the last decade, social media has become increasingly a site for political activity and mobilization. Indeed, the revolutions that began over 10 years ago across the Middle East relied heavily on various social media platforms to get the masses out onto the streets.
00:01:22
Speaker
Yet whilst it's been a useful tool in mobilisation and activism, it's also been used by state authorities as a tool of oppression. And in recent years, an increasing number of Palestinians have been reporting that their rights of expression are being suppressed by dominant social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and YouTube. And this has included the removal of content, the blocking of accounts and restrictions on access.
Digital Censorship: Insights from Dr. Nizal
00:01:46
Speaker
Now, to discuss all of this and more, I'm joined by a Shabakah policy member, Dr Amman Nizal, who is an assistant professor at the Business and Economics Faculty at Bezier University, and also an advisory board member for Hamlet, the Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media.
00:02:02
Speaker
Amen, thank you so much for joining us on Rethinking Palestine. Thank you so much, Sherry, for having me. Can you start off by giving us an overview of what this increased suppression of Palestinian expression by dominant media platforms has looked like? And perhaps draw upon a recent policy brief that you wrote for Shabaka and specifically tell us about YouTube's violation of Palestinian rights and how it's violating its own guidelines when it comes to dealing with Palestinian channels.
00:02:29
Speaker
So, if I will start with your first question, actually, Ereva, about the increased suppression of Palestinian digital rights. This has to be understood and looked at with the vast and massive Israeli technological advancement in surveillance technologies and cybersecurity.
Surveillance and Censorship: Israeli Technologies
00:02:44
Speaker
Israel manufactures and exports a massive amount of military and cybersecurity technologies, which makes Israel one of the top five countries in the world in its military and cybersecurity technologies besides the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
00:03:01
Speaker
Adding to that, Israel has around 27 surveillance companies. And I'm citing here a report that was out in 2016 by Privacy International, which will make Israel with the 27 surveillance companies the highest number per capita of any country in the world. So we can imagine the high level of surveillance that we are under.
00:03:23
Speaker
In 2014 as well, Israel's word exports of cybersecurity and surveillance technologies such as phones, cameras that we're seeing on the Israeli checkpoints, internet monitoring exceeded its military equipment exports in 2014, which is very worrying and terrifying as well.
00:03:43
Speaker
So that's why the efficiency in between brackets of monitoring Palestinians' account and digital data is becoming bigger and bigger. Therefore, we are witnessing more suppression, of course. Another important point as well is the clear and obvious collaboration in between Israel and different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Platform Bias and Palestinian Rights Violations
00:04:06
Speaker
In 2019, Subasocial, and it's a Palestinian digital rights organization, documented as many as 1,000 violations and 1,020 digital violations, I mean, in 2020. And these type of violations, digital violations, they are like the removal of public pages, removal of
00:04:29
Speaker
personal accounts, organization accounts, posts, publications, and sometimes restrictions of access. And when we look at this documented increase in Palestinian digital violations, this has also to do with the illegally running an operation of what the office of the attorney general of Israel called the cyber units.
00:04:52
Speaker
So this illegal cyber unit, which came out in 2015, is designed and programmed to censor Palestinian content and to monitor Palestinian social media accounts. As I said, what's so-called the cyber unit, and I'm quoting here a press release by Adal at the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel,
00:05:14
Speaker
This cyber unit, as I said, has started working and operating in 2015. It is mainly responsible for, and this is the code, dealing with cyberspace enforcement challenges via censorship of social media posts. So basically, what this unit does, by the help of its biased and discriminatory algorithms, this is the way how it's designed,
00:05:38
Speaker
is to build profiles of what Israel views as likely Palestinian attackers or terrorists. The cyber unit that I'm talking about monitors tens of thousands of Palestinians' Facebook accounts and the way it works that it looks for particular words such as Shaheed,
00:05:59
Speaker
Zionist state, Al-Aqsa, Jerusalem, Antifada, the Palestinian resistance. And once the system or the cyber units tracks any of these words, then the person and the user who posted this will be under high level of monitoring and surveillance.
00:06:19
Speaker
And not only the words I should mention, but also the visuals, because the system also monitors videos and photos posted by Palestinians. Or if there's photo or video posted about Palestinians recently killed, for example, or jailed by Israel. So what is purely illegal in Hiryara is that the censoring system
00:06:44
Speaker
identifies suspects, not real suspects, based on a prediction of violence. It's only predictions that the person who posted such posts or video or
00:06:57
Speaker
or an analysis of something online might does in the future any type of attacks. And what is illegal that this cyber unit and the whole monitoring system of Israel is illegally monitoring our online data and based on some suspicious analysis of this unit, some Palestinians will get arrested.
00:07:20
Speaker
And what makes it also even worse is that any Facebook profile, which is marked as suspicious by the system and these units is a potential, definitely, as I said, target for a direct arrest.
Predictive Monitoring and Arrests of Palestinians
00:07:33
Speaker
Actually, the low, the illegal low, actually, of this cyber unit
00:07:37
Speaker
allows the harassment to happen within 24 hours. And Israel's main accusation will be that these Facebook accounts posed in visual material are incitement of violence, of course. So based on what I have just discussed regarding how this Israeli policing system actually of cybersecurity works and operates, the recent numbers of Israeli and Palestinian
00:08:07
Speaker
forces, harassment was around 800. So 800 Palestinians were arrested from the Israeli and Palestinian Authority security forces based on their posts on social media, in particular Facebook, because Facebook is the most popular social media platform.
00:08:26
Speaker
Plus, I can add to that that Israeli security units play, let's say, some dirty games actually inside this cyberspace. It has been documented that Israeli security units set up fake Facebook accounts under Arabic names and
00:08:41
Speaker
cover photos and cover profiles of Palestinian flag or any symbol of a Palestinian picture and visuals like Palestinian visuals to trap some Palestinian or to gain access to different Palestinian Facebook profiles in order to gain private information and sometimes target particular people or have
00:09:04
Speaker
particular Facebook account. This private information yada could be sexual orientation, medical or mental conditions, financial status to exploit these Palestinians and blackmail them actually.
00:09:19
Speaker
So this is in regard of the first question that you posed. The other part about the Palestinian brief that I wrote with Shabaka, it was about YouTube's violation of Palestinian rights and how it is violating its own guidelines when it comes to dealing with Palestinian channels.
YouTube's Inconsistent Censorship Practices
00:09:37
Speaker
There's a lot of points that have been discussed in the brief, but maybe now I would just like to briefly highlight two main findings that I found out in this research after I conducted in-depth interviews with
00:09:49
Speaker
Palestinian journalists, human rights defenders, activists and some international human rights organizations such as witness and article 19. We can say like finding number one is that YouTube violates its own community guidelines where it is not held accountable for the clarity and equity of its guidelines.
00:10:12
Speaker
And the YouTube maneuver between different community guidelines interchangeably to justify content renewal. So some of us know that YouTube has four main guidelines and policies for content monitoring.
00:10:31
Speaker
So the spam and deceptive practices, sensitive topic, violent or dangerous content and regulated goods. However, what I found out of the interviews of the discussion with the different Palestinian journalists, as I said, an activist, that many users have indicated that their content on YouTube, like the videos they have posted, have been removed without falling under any of these categories. For example, if the video does not match the violence,
00:10:59
Speaker
a community guideline then YouTube will say so it violates another community guideline like sensitive topics for example so there's kind of ambiguity and misleading use from YouTube
00:11:12
Speaker
to remove particularly the Palestinian content. So as I said, for example, if your video hasn't been deleted under violent or graphic content, it could be deleted under harmful or dangerous content without clearly explaining what is the difference between the two. So at the end of the day, you will find yourself as a YouTuber or Palestinian activist or journalist active on YouTube that they are lost in between the terms.
00:11:39
Speaker
You don't know the difference in between violent, offensive, abusive content or hate speech. So YouTube community guidelines are not clear and YouTube itself is using them interchangeably just to erase actually and remove the Palestinian content at the end of the day.
00:11:56
Speaker
The second findings also and was interesting finding to find out is about YouTube's algorithmic bias. So YouTube's artificial intelligence technology is designed with a bias in favor of the Israeli content. This is what we have found regardless of its promotion of violence to other
00:12:16
Speaker
For example, YouTube has allowed Arwen Julie and she's an Israeli gun model to upload content and she got multiple videos on YouTube which clearly promotes firearms and how to use the weapon and how to kill despite the clear violation of YouTube's firearms content policy. So YouTube does have firearms
00:12:43
Speaker
content policy, but YouTube is totally fine with our individually videos celebrating and promoting weapons and guns. But on the other level, after I did an interview with a Palestinian journalist Bilal Tamimi,
00:13:00
Speaker
who's also active on YouTube and where he recorded many videos about demonstrations in Nabi Saleh. YouTube violated his right to post a video showing an Israeli soldier abusing a 12-year-old boy
00:13:16
Speaker
in episode 1 of the demonstrations. And YouTube excuse was that this video does have a content, a violent content. So you can see the double standard in here. Another example I can give you is when I conducted an interview with the chef editor of Al-Quds News, the Adderifai, he explained to me how YouTube defines violence in multiple different ways.
00:13:41
Speaker
So for him YouTube has a problem with publishing a video of a Palestinian toddler killed by the Israeli army and this has happened with him when he tried to post this video. But YouTube is totally fine with promoting Israeli militarization as I said and videos of Israeli kids trained to shoot guns and how to carry a weapon.
00:14:03
Speaker
along other Israeli YouTube challenge celebrating Israeli militarized violence. And if we go to YouTube now, we can see these videos, how to train your Israeli kids to use the guns. So I just tried to give these examples to see how YouTube are treating the Palestinian content and censoring the Palestinian content and promoting the Israeli digital content of YouTube.
00:14:29
Speaker
although it does clearly have violence within its videos. The findings also show how Palestinian human rights and the defenders that I interviewed have experienced what we call the language and locative discrimination against the contents of their videos on YouTube. So I would just like to make it simple in here. So YouTube does use artificial intelligence algorithms to ease
00:14:55
Speaker
what contains violence and what does not. But what we found that YouTube artificial intelligence and algorithms are trained to act in a biased way. And the biases are that the system, the AI, the artificial intelligence system of YouTube will target the Arabic language videos
00:15:17
Speaker
disproportionately in comparison to other languages. So a video that does have an Arabic subtitle or speaks in Arabic, for example, it will be under higher level of monitoring, plus what I call the locative discrimination that YouTube's artificial intelligence mechanisms are also flagging out the content that come out the West Bank and Gaza more than other particular location in the world.
00:15:46
Speaker
Plus, the more views Palestinian content receives, like if you are a YouTuber and you become more viewed from the Palestinian community, the more likely it will be surveilled, blocked, demonetized, like they will stop the, we call it the monetization, that you will get money out of your video and the likely also to be remote.
00:16:11
Speaker
If you're enjoying this podcast, please visit our website www.al-shabaka.org where you will find more Palestinian policy analysis and where you can join our mailing list and donate to support our work.
00:16:25
Speaker
Thanks, Amal, for that. It was very extensive and clear that these are quite sophisticated and severe mechanisms which are used to surveil and restrict Palestinians on social media and really are so far reaching and affecting so many Palestinians wherever they might be. And it's also incredibly nasty, particularly the different types of blackmail that you mentioned.
00:16:49
Speaker
Now, Amal, you talked about international companies and the Israeli regime cracking down on Palestinian digital rights, but the Palestinian Authority is also guilty of similar repression. In June 2017, President Mahmoud Abbas passed a cybercrime law which was supposed to address a whole host of crimes, including blackmail, hacking, impersonation, etc.
Palestinian Authority and Cyber Laws: Security vs. Suppression
00:17:14
Speaker
But what we've seen, and I think it's of no surprise considering the increase in authoritarian trends within the PA, is that instead of protecting citizens' digital security, the law has become a tool for quashing internal opposition online. We saw journalists arrested for criticising the president, and of course the security coordination which sees the sharing of information, including from social media with the Israeli regime.
00:17:41
Speaker
Can you talk to us a bit more about this? Right. So when I just like to think about this particular violation done by Mahmoud Abbas or his whole political agenda of security coordination with Israel and the occupation and the occupation management implied in the West Bank. But first, I think we have to think and reflect about the structured violence within the PA and in particular within Palestinian security forces.
00:18:11
Speaker
I would just go back to one of my PhD results where I looked at the different dynamics and mechanisms of politically motivated social movements in Palestine in between 2012 and 2015. So it was the period exactly after the Arab Spring. For example, one of the findings out of my PhD revealed that
00:18:32
Speaker
There was like tremendous efforts taken by the Palestinian security forces to challenge activists' intentions, dimension their political credibility, tarnish their reputation, and question their moral integrity. Activists recounted what they had heard as being said about them by Palestinian security forces, including opinions voiced in the public domain that they are
00:18:55
Speaker
immoral girls and guys. They are funded by international foreign NGOs and whatsoever. And they're not pure Palestinians and they have foreign political agendas and whatsoever. The findings also reveal that the Palestinian security forces riot police intelligence units and different plainclothes actually police officers will physically violate the activists as well.
00:19:23
Speaker
and all of that was happening in the offline space but still the online space was also a part of the suppression and surveillance where some activists have got arrested and threatened as well only because they were active online and here i'm quoting
00:19:40
Speaker
one of my interviews caught while we were discussing this after his harassment by the Palestinian security forces. So the interview was saying we were witnessing a new revolutionary youth spirit in our oppressed Arab world. On TVs we were watching Tunisian and Egyptian youths demonstrating and asking for their own rights. It was moving and inspiring.
00:20:06
Speaker
We started by mobilizing our closed networks and then created a Facebook page to announce the demonstration. On that evening, I was threatened over the phone from the Palestinian police to delete the event because it was obvious that I was the admin. Any quick search on the internet can show up my name.
00:20:27
Speaker
What I'm trying to say here that the suppression of Palestinian digital rights have been there since 2012. So although the running of the operation of the new cybercrime law is started in 2015, but
00:20:42
Speaker
The suppression and the oppression and the surveillance of the Palestinian digital rights and their online content and participation, online political participation has been under the Palestinian Authority monitoring since then. And with the
00:20:59
Speaker
Passing, as you said, over the cyber crime law in 2017, I personally think that this is just a pretext and a legal cover to legitimize or de-legitimize online political activism based on the PA, the Palestinian Authority political agenda, which is definitely against any opposition voices.
00:21:24
Speaker
in the occupied Palestinian territories, which if we look at it, will add also another layer of violence and oppression to the Palestinian human rights. Because when we think also about the human rights, digital human rights, sorry, it's a part of the whole matrix. So digital human rights is a part of the whole human rights matrix, and it is important as other human rights.
00:21:49
Speaker
So I think this new cybercranble is just a pretext and a cover for the Palestinian Authority to legitimize and delegitimize the online political activism and any other online behavior according to what they see as suitable or not suitable, which is also worrying as well.
00:22:10
Speaker
Yeah, it is worrying. It paints quite a stark picture for Palestinian digital rights that this kind of oppression is really coming from all sides. And thank you Amel in particular for sharing that personal experience of yours. Now, we all know that social media has become critical in activism globally, as demonstrated by the revolutions in the Middle East that you mentioned.
00:22:33
Speaker
Do you think going forward Palestinians and other politicized communities fighting injustice for that matter should rely on social media?
Can Social Media Resist the Status Quo?
00:22:43
Speaker
In other words, is it an effective site of resistance against injustice? Or will social media always be antithetical to fighting the status quo, considering that these are essentially multi-million dollar companies?
00:22:57
Speaker
Right, I think this is a really interesting question actually. And if I will think about it, I will just have to think about the network that we're using. And is it suitable for political activism or not? Personally, I stand with and believe in the critical viewpoint actually of the role of social media in political resistance and political activism in general. Yes, as you said, social media has become critical in activism globally and
00:23:22
Speaker
social media platforms recently have been questioned whether they are empowering us to better resist online or whether they weaken our political activism. I believe that social media does weaken our political resistance and activism online.
00:23:41
Speaker
But the question here is why? What is wrong about social media in that sense? And in here I would just like to try to highlight some viewpoints that I touched upon on one of my research and in an article that I wish I would publish soon.
00:23:58
Speaker
First, I think we have to keep reminding ourselves that Facebook at the end of the day, as we said, is a capitalist company which is aiming every day to maximize its own profits and the dividends of its shareholders. Facebook is not a charity, Facebook is not a global movement. 70.7 billion is the total revenue of Facebook in 2019.
00:24:22
Speaker
where it was 55.8 billion in the year before that, which is 2018. So we can see that big jump of total revenue that Facebook makes each and every year. But the question is how come? It's not because there's around
00:24:37
Speaker
1.7 billion users of Facebook, but it's because Facebook and different social media platforms as well do sell our own data, pictures, online behaviours to other companies, other countries and other intelligence services and units.
00:24:55
Speaker
There's a really nice quote which I think makes perfect sense why we're talking about this. It says, when you are not paying for the product, you are the product. I think this is the case with Facebook and other social media platforms and all these candles of Facebook particularly in violating our own digital rights and selling our data. So because Facebook is a network designed to maximize its profits,
00:25:22
Speaker
Just imagine how political activism would look like within this network. Political activism within this network definitely would be weak if it's not impossible. But the question again, why? Why we can be politically active within a network which is designed to maximize its own profits and just market to make us buy more and also use us and our data and pictures and online behavior, as I said, as product.
00:25:50
Speaker
As someone Yoda could argue and say that Facebook makes the money, I do have my own page, friends and tools and the network itself, and I'm free to write any post I want and to mobilize and to start an event and whatsoever. Surprisingly, I think that no, you can't. Even the thing sometimes that you are, Facebook at the end of the day is a network.
00:26:14
Speaker
like any other networks, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. These networks are designed by programs and business entrepreneurs to create additional space crowded with weak, much strong coherent network ties. And when I say a tie, it's just the online relationship that we have. So
00:26:36
Speaker
Me and you on Facebook, we have a tie that we know each other. It's separate than the offline tie that we have. So the argument here that Facebook and the social media network, they are built on the philosophy of weak ties, not strong ties. So if we want to analyze the way Facebook has been engineered and designed,
00:26:56
Speaker
we will find that it is based on a theory of what we call the strength of weak ties, which has been discussed by the sociologist of networks, Mark Granoveiter. The theory of the strength of weak ties tells us that despite the fact that weak ties are an expression of social relations characterized by infrequent connectivity, poor emotional proximity and trust, weak ties are more powerful in disseminating information, for example.
00:27:24
Speaker
and finding job opportunities for individuals and market the products more and make people aware of some issues more than strong ties that they are embedded in our relationship in between close friends, family, for example.
00:27:41
Speaker
Therefore, social media networks feeding grow on being designed and creating a weak social fabric that is the weakly interconnected, rapidly spreading and consumable as well ties, if that makes sense. This is a core reason why a solid and serious political activism couldn't take place. And I think all of us are witnessing and feeling this, that we have
00:28:10
Speaker
many network online. We have many people that we know online and I say we know in between brackets but how much we know about them and what about the trust level and what about the emotional engagement. So if we just like think about the this network and the Facebook and how come I have 1500 friends it's just like
00:28:32
Speaker
The network itself is designed to spread my ties, to be weak ties. I know little about these. I know very little about these people. There are many, yes. But there are not strong ties where I can build with them a solid, serious political resistance and activism. And this is, I think, really important point to just look at and reflect upon
00:29:00
Speaker
when we are politically engaging online.
Slacktivism: The Illusion of Online Activism
00:29:04
Speaker
So weak ties as well and the ease of acting online. You know like nowadays it's very easy to put going for a demonstration, to write a post, to share a video, to say a saying about a political viewpoint whatsoever. This led to an online behavior we call the slacktivism.
00:29:23
Speaker
So selectivism, which all of us, by the way, are involved in different means. So selectivism is the practice of supporting a political or a social cause by means such as social media, as I said, posting something, writing a post, post a video, sign an online competition, join a demonstration online and all of these online political acts.
00:29:49
Speaker
But selectivism is a term that reflects that, yes, we're doing these online political behavior and acts, but they are very little in their effort or commitment. There is little commitment, low cost, and very low risk in the political activism. So yes, we do them, but we are pretty aware that they involve
00:30:15
Speaker
low level of risk and low level of cause and very little commitment and someone would argue like why you want me to go for high political activism and we will be saying like if everyone on this web is doing low risk political activism, little commitment and low cost then how we will do the political the serious political activism like
00:30:41
Speaker
Who's left to do it? Another saying also by Malcolm Gladwell. He's an activist and writer and public speaker, actually. While he was criticizing the other what he called Facebook activism, he said, Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice, but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice.
00:31:11
Speaker
And I think it's a very simple and true code about Facebook and other social media platforms that they do provide us with tools to think that we are doing something, something real.
00:31:26
Speaker
I really like that term, selectivism. It's not something that I've heard before. And we all do it, perhaps even more so since the pandemic. And you're right, there is little commitment and cost. And so whilst it's not necessarily always bad, you know, I think there can be real political work done online. It can't replace the real life work done on the ground.
00:31:49
Speaker
And you also raised some important questions and food for thought with regards to trust and networks online. Can we really develop serious political relationships online? And I like that quote that you mentioned at the beginning, when you are not paying for the project, you are the project. And I think that's really important to dwell on.
00:32:08
Speaker
Now, with the increase of social media as a tool for activists and social movements, we have simultaneously seen the increase in ethnographic research of its use and the people who use it as such.
Ethical Concerns in Social Media Research
00:32:20
Speaker
And I know, Aman, that you have written about this topic and have warned against the potential of causing harm when drawing attention to certain interactions on social media by researchers. Can you talk a little bit more about this and perhaps point us towards a more responsible approach to ethnographic research of social media?
00:32:39
Speaker
Yeah, the article, which I co-authored actually along other three authors at University of Exeter and Bath University, entitled, Ethical Concentrations and Challenges for Using Digital Ethnography to Research Undergore Populations, where we seek to clarify different methodological concentrations addressing the role of the researcher, online data representation, and the ethical concentrations necessary to research vulnerable populations.
00:33:09
Speaker
So generally we know that there are general ethical considerations that each and every ethnographic researcher or qualitative researcher, let's say, has to pay attention to.
00:33:21
Speaker
such as anonymity, presentation of data, the role of the researcher not to go completely native with the community he or she is studying. But within the online spaces and while you are researching and studying different online behavior as a digital ethnographer, there are particular specific ethical concentrations that you have to be aware of.
00:33:45
Speaker
So, for example, we know that the web affords high degree of visibility, which might facilitate the tracking of the participant's online identity, relationship, and networks.
00:33:58
Speaker
Everything online will stay online. Anything you post online will stay there. So the tracking and the monitoring is super simple. In Palestine, which is a country under Israeli colonization or occupation, plus the continuous monitoring as well of the PA, as we said, and security units, the consequences of revealing the participants' identities, locations,
00:34:20
Speaker
political opinions might be very severe. So therefore the protection of the participant's identity and I said their network's location, what they have posted, must be given highest priority because any governmental level or security forces can simply track back any online posts because it will never got deleted. Another important point as well is the presentation of
00:34:48
Speaker
the online data. So if I started searching one topic online about, let's say, how the Palestinian youth are politically participating online, what do they think about this particular political case and whatsoever,
00:35:05
Speaker
And I collected all of the data from Facebook users, comments, posts, and WhatsApp. Shall I present all of this online data in my research, although I anonymize the name of the user? No, we can't. An online ethnographer or digital ethnographer has to think and reflect upon the data representation. So first of all, a digital ethnographer should evaluate what is considered meaningful data, what is to be excluded,
00:35:35
Speaker
how the data can be filtered into appropriate categories for interpretation and analysis and what we call in the research in the article I meant critical reflection upon online data. So you have the choice as a digital ethnographer
00:35:53
Speaker
to exclude some data to protect the participants. And because you do believe that this or these pieces of online data could be easily traced. Another way that some scholars also advocate in literature is data fabrication, online data fabrication, to protect participants' identity, privacy, and anonymity.
00:36:21
Speaker
So it's literally that data fabrication is to fabricate the data and presenting the data in different ways. In that sense, researchers may need to create what we call the composite dialogue through, for example, paraphrasing the participants quotations, paying careful attention to changing some small details, locations,
00:36:43
Speaker
maybe changing the social media platform. For example, if I collected this piece of data, online data from Twitter, I will say from Facebook. They're just like small tricks to assure participants confidentiality, privacy to protect them at the end of the day from surveillance repression and impersonal threats.
00:37:04
Speaker
I mean this has really been brilliant and I don't want it to end but unfortunately we have to but perhaps before you can give us a few words on what Palestinians can do to push back against these violations of their rights on social media platforms.
Data Privacy Awareness and Manipulation
00:37:21
Speaker
Right so if I'll make it quick I'll just like break it into this question into two levels the macro and and the macro. So on the macro level which is our level as individuals and users rule number one we have to keep
00:37:34
Speaker
reminding ourselves that these are capitalist companies, they want to maximize their profit, they are indeed selling our data, and we have to be aware. And they're manipulating us as well by their biased artificial intelligence systems. I'm not saying here that we have to leave all of the social media platforms, no, they ease our life in a way or another, they connect us with people, but we should be aware of what we are dealing with.
00:37:59
Speaker
Rule number two or point number two, we have to spend less time on social media, Palestinians in particular. A recent report shows that one out of every three Palestinians does use social media and in general we spend around 5.5 hours every day on social media and this number is higher than the word average which is two and a half hours. So yes, we have to spend less time and maybe do some actual offline work on the ground.
00:38:28
Speaker
Also, we have to be very aware of the high level of surveillance and monitoring that is happening online, in particular in our case as Palestinians, from the Israeli security units, from the continuous monitoring of the Palestinian security systems as well as units.
00:38:46
Speaker
And also be aware of some, as I mentioned before, some dirty games actually implemented by the Israeli security. It's not on the fake accounts or hacking personal accounts, but there are some new type of trapping Palestinians, let's say, which has been documented as the honey traps. And it's a traditional way of trapping or spying on someone. But what's happening online,
00:39:14
Speaker
romantic and sexual content was sent to some particular Facebook accounts so they can start conversation with these Palestinians and then hack their accounts and then get the sensitive information and then blackmail them. So definitely we have to be aware of and this has to do with the
00:39:33
Speaker
civil society organizations are bringing more awareness. On the macro level, I think, as we mentioned before, the Palestinian Authority have to revoke its electronic crimes law. But as we said, to avoid any digital rights violation, the PA should consult
00:39:49
Speaker
with Palestinian civil society organizations and other relevant stakeholders to make sure that we are protecting the Palestinians' political rights at the same time while we are not violating their rights. Yeah, I think these are some of the general tips and rules we can say where we can push back, as you said, the violations that we are facing from different social media platforms and authorities. Ahmed, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much, Yara. Thank you.
00:40:20
Speaker
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