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New research about regulatory framework for countering online harmful content in Colombia launched at the World Press Freedom Day Conference
Organized at Columbia University, the event brought together key Latin American and Colombian stakeholders in a conversation about the effectiveness and challenges of the existing regulatory and self-regulatory solutions for countering potential harmful content online in Colombia and, more broadly, Latin America.
The discussion was centered around the new report examining the legal framework governing harmful content in Colombia, in particular hate speech and disinformation and the upcoming report on the self-regulatory framework in the country. The research on the legal framework, launched at the event, was conducted by the under the UNESCO project. It was based on the analysis of international standards, national legal framework, and the constitutional case-law, among others.
Also contributing to the research were the consultations held with vulnerable communities in Colombia, as well as the insights gathered by from the monitoring of social media, notably Twitter, to analyze the circulation of potential harmful content prohibited by the platform concerning concrete events and communities. The research on the self-regulatory aspects was conducted by , who made a preliminary presentation of the research’s findings.
The event was opened by Adeline Hulin, coordinator of the project at the UNESCO Brussels Office, who highlighted some of the findings from the same research that was already finalized in other target countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kenya, and Indonesia.
These countries have very diverse political, social, and cultural backgrounds, and yet, in each country, the impacts of harmful content are very tangible, they don’t just stay online.
In Colombia, the research showed that while the legal framework is generally in line with international standards, there are some regulatory gaps that need to be covered and challenges concerning the vagueness of specific provisions related to incitement, violence or lawless actions.
The labour of Constitutional Court in Colombia has resulted in a robust jurisprudence regarding harmful content and users’ rights online. But a specific judgement from 2019 - SU-419, was criticized for placing too much trust in the judgement of social media platforms that, after all, are not a judicial mechanism guaranteeing due process nor they have clear response times.
At the same time, Fundación Karisma revealed that its research found that although platforms have increased the transparency of their rules, they have not done so when it comes to the application of those rules, in particular in moments of high social relevance. “Platforms tend to have a more significant involvement in the local context in conflictive situations, such as protests or elections, mainly through their local partners, but they don’t provide specific reports on these particular events,” said Catalina Moreno from Fundación Karisma.
The effects of harmful content circulating online have particularly impacted vulnerable communities, like women journalists, indigenous people, and Afro communities, who reported that social media content has often served to promote and reinforce negative stereotypes against these groups. In this context, the research underlined that the existing solutions for the protection of communities overexposed to online violence are not sufficient and need to be improved.
As part of the event, the participants discussed the benefits of forming a local coalition on content moderation in Colombia. While there were different views about the purpose, the scope, and the foreseeable impact of such a coalition, there was consensus on the fact that was that such an initiative would likely contribute to improving some of the content moderation concerns in the country.
Pedro Vaca, Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights highlighted the relevance of projects like “Social Media 4 Peace” for bringing the local context into the global debates and decisions. “Investing resources on raising awareness, bringing stakeholders to provide local context, and forming a critical mass,” where points raised by the Special Rapporteur.
The research report is accessible online in and languages.
