The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> LARRY MAGID: Oh, hello, can you guys hear me? It says I can speak, but I'm not hearing anything. Can somebody send me a message just indicating you want me to actually give my talk because I'm hearing nothing on my end.
>> REMOTE MODERATOR: Yeah, we can hear you. We're still waiting for people coming into the room.
>> LARRY MAGID: Okay. Good. It said I can speak now. I didn't know if that meant they wanted me to start my talk. Am I on screen?
Will I be able to hear the panel? Great.
Okay. I see you can hear me now, right?
[Beep.]
[Silence.]
>> HANS MARTENS: Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me properly? So good morning, everyone. My name is Hans Martens, coordinator, and on behalf of ‑‑ I would like to welcome you for this one hour workshop session titled beyond the tipping point, safety in the Global South. And I would like to specifically we have been in the fortunate position to coordinate this workshop with our colleagues from CDI Brazil and safe net Brazil in particular. You will hear more about the important work that they do in this area of work later on in this session.
I would quickly say something about the structure and the format of this panel. So it basically consists of two parts. In the first part it will be us, the people, sitting in front talking. And we have a couple of speakers, and one of them is also joining remotely. So we have Larry Magid of connectsafety.org and founders of safekids.com will bring a U.S. perspective.
And sitting with us is Rodrigo Nejm of SaferNet Brazil, and he will bring in a local Brazilian perspective.
In keeping up with the multistakeholder approach, we try to follow at the Internet Governance Forum, we've invited a couple of other types of representatives. So Marco Pancini from Google from the Brussels office will probably be joining us, as well. But as you may note, he is quite busy across panel, so we hope he's still able to join us. And apart from that, we've also tried to have some youth representational involvement although the definition of youth is quite broad. And they are what you would typically expect. We have two different pro fills in our sessions. On the one hand we have Marial from Mexico who is 25 years old, I think. And I think she's more in a position where she's looking at what she could do around some of these areas of work for more professional point of view. And at the same time we have marina who is a bit younger and a bit newer to the discussions. And she will also bring in her perspective partly based upon her participation in the youth programme which has been organized also in collaboration with SaferNet Brazil.
Finally we have Peckau from ISOC. So again she can bring in a bit more of an international civil society link to ISOC perspective.
So, before we start, I will give a quick introduction about who we are, what safe Internet day is and why we are doing this workshop.
I could speak for a very long, long time if my slides, slider could work. Can you go to the next slide? So InSafe is a safe Internet centre which has been initiated by the UB commission more than 10 years ago now. And each safe Internet centre consists of different components. We have focus on the implementation of educational programmes and awareness raising campaigns with a focus on online safety issues. We also provide a range of help line, counseling services. And we also collaborate very closely with youth representatives to bring in a younger voice to make sure that the connectivity and the campaigns we are delivering are in with the knowledge and understanding they have a safe and responsible use of online technology. And at the same time, in trying to implement the European Commission's better Internet for kids agenda, we closely collaborate with Inhope, the international association of Internet hotlines, and they have a focus on eradicating illegal content from the Internet. So we had need safer Internet centre has the hotline component and together we have across Europe a range of safe Internet centers who try to promote a safer and a better Internet.
We have been doing this for quite a while now. If you want to learn more about the work we do, because as I said we could talk there for quite a while now. Take a look at the website which you see on the screen behind me. We have launched a better Internet for kids portal at better Internet for kids.eu. And here you will find a variety of resources, information, services, guidelines, as provided by the safe Internet centers we have as a network across Europe.
I think it's important to note that a lot of the activities we do are initially initiated within a European context, but the Internet has no European boundaries because a lot of the tools and the services we use are actually not coming from a European environment even if obviously the European Commission would very much want that we are a strong player in this area, as well.
And we have one particular successful campaign Safer Internet Day which we launched a while ago and which has been going beyond what we are doing within Europe.
So therefore in 2009 we have actually initiated the concept of Safer Internet Day committees and they basically compliment what we are doing within Europe so they participate in our annual campaign, something we do every year in February. And they help us to reach out beyond Europe and to help implementing some of the better safer Internet messages which we have in place.
I think it's important to note that a lot of this actually links to some of the more general discussions which we've been having here at the Internet Governance Forum. So there is a lot of talk about connecting the next billion. Recently there have been a couple of papers which have been published, just to give one example. There has been a 1 in 3 paper which has been produced by Sonya Livingstone from UNICEF and new kids online and ‑‑ who you have probably heard on a couple forums on the Internet Governance Forum. A lot of Internet users are of an age lower than 8 years old. But they also point to the fact that if you look at the future of the Internet and these connected users, that a lot of them are actually not within the northern part of the world but a lot of this is happening in the Global South.
I think we as a network of European centers, we have a willingness and an openness to help to externalise our agenda, our activities. But at the same time, we're also very modest and we are very ‑‑ we fully understand that it's a bit of a tricky issue that a lot of the awareness messages that we focus on, that they may have a different type of meaning and context. So that's why we also have set up the workshop as we have done. We're not going to talk that much about European activities but, rather, we have tried to involve some speakers who can bring in a more global perspective. You could actually say that both the U.S. case and also the Brazilian case, that it's good examples of exporting the product but also giving it a bit of a different meaning at different invitation and also very much closely working with people on the ground locally because again we realise to make this a success, we need to have a thorough understanding of what is really happening at the local level. And I think the best people to do that is working with civil society but also different partners on the ground across the world.
So I will give the world to first Larry who will be connecting remotely. And then to Rio who will talk a bit more about safe Internet day, the future plans within Brazil. And then afterwards we will give the word to some other people and we will gradually go into more of a workshop approach.
And actually want to emphasize that this is not just a starting point but also not an end. So if initiated this line of work a while ago. So we had two weeks ago safe Internet Forum in Europe where we brought together European stakeholders and we started campaigning for a safe Internet. And now we're actually picking up this work and you may have seen that we have been quite active at our insafe/inhope information stance with a Polaroid campaign during the campaign. Again the whole idea is to look at who's active in this area of world around the work and instead of safe Internet day committee set up partnerships and in a way you could say safe Internet day is a way to open the debates and see how this can be used in a positive way to further the discussion in other countries.
But I'll give the word to Larry. So Larry is, as I've mentioned before, CEO Connect safely.org and they have done some very successful things in the past and gradually we move to the south.
And Larry didn't send a PowerPoint presentation, but he gave us a slide. And I'll leave it actually up to Larry to tell a bit more why he has given us this particular picture and he can also talk a bit more about the origins of safe Internet day in U.S. perspective. So, Larry, I hope you have heard us. And then perhaps we can now give the word to you?
>> LARRY MAGID: Hans, thank you very much. I want to say hi to my friends. I know Dave it Wright from the safer Internet UK is there. This is the first Internet Governance Forum that I have not been able to attend in person in the last few years and I'm glad I'm at least able to attend remotely. I want to apologize for having the telephone in my hand. I had this very expensive microphone issued to me which is America's largest radio network. But for some reason it's not working, which is typical of technology. It often isn't quite there when you want it. But also, like technology, there are work‑arounds. So that old phone system that's been here for nearly 100 years has come to the rescue today.
Safer Internet Day, as many of you know, I'm sure most of you know, was begun Europe about 12 or 13 years ago, Hans can probably give you the exact date. And the European Commission is very much involved. And it's a big deal in Europe.
It was not such a big deal in the United States. There was a small NGO in the U.S. that was running it. But apparently they hadn't done much. So about two years ago, now maybe getting close to three, we got a call from Janice Richardson who I think preceded Hans in the position that he is in now in terms of running Safer Internet Day and asked if we, and by we I mean Connectsafely.org would be interested in coordinating it in the U.S. And just a bit of background.
Connectsafety.org is a 10‑year‑old NGO that we started back in around 2005 during the period when my space, you remember MySpace was first emerging as a major social networking platform. And there was a great deal of consternation, of concern in the U.S. and around the world about children being endangered by social media. And, in fact, the attorneys general for most of the states in the United States, the top law enforcement officials of many of our states, were on television almost daily worrying about predators online and children being sexually abused. And it just went on and on and on. And we realise that social media was here to stay. We knew that it had a positive potential. And we also knew that even though children were being ‑‑ there were some cases where children had been harmed and endangered, for the most part that just simply wasn't true. That the vast majority of children, back then and of course today, were not in serious harm or danger as a result of their social media participation.
So we created the first Internet safety organisation aimed at the social media generation, aimed at the Web 2.0 world, because all of the other Internet safety organizations really got their starts, at least at that point, back in the Web 1.0 world where children were simply consumers of content and now, of course, children are creators. That's how we began. And we began as a fact research‑based organisation.
So if you go to connectsafely.org and you click on tips and advice or parent and educator guides, you'll see a lot of tips and a lot of articles and a lot of advice. And in almost every case they are based on actual research.
For example, I'm glad you mentioned the paper that Sonya Livingston, Jasmine Burne and John Carr wrote about children's rights.
And that's an example where we took that paper, and if you go toconnectsafely.org you'll see on the front page we not only described that paper but took it a step further. Because part of what we're about is not simply child protection but also empowering children. And we really mean that.
Sometimes when people talk about empowering children and they point to the UN Convention on the rights of the child, they say that, but then they talk about protecting children, monitoring children, controlling children, limiting children, filtering children.
We believe that by empowering children, especially teenagers, older children, that means giving them a voice. That means allowing them to use social media. It also means allowing them to use social media in public spaces.
So, for example, in our interpretation of the paper that Hans mentioned, we get specific and talk about how children under the UN Convention on the rights of the child and under certainly the constitution of the United States and many other countries have the right of free speech. And that includes the right to use social media.
So we're very specific and feel very strongly that children should be given rights and have a right to demand full participation not only in Forums like the Internet Governance Forum but through social media that they can organise on their own behalf and espouse their own beliefs.
Anyway, getting back to Safer Internet Day, when Janice asked us if we would take over in the U.S., we were of course honored and thrilled to be working with such a great international consortium of organizations. It's unusual here in the U.S. for us to pick up on something that was started in Europe. But when the Europeans do something that's exceptionally excellent, as this was, we were very, very happy to do our part here in this country.
So we held an event on the 1's the of our safer Internet days, which was 2014 in Washington, D.C. And we had some great panels. We had young people, a panel of young people moderated by an adult journalist that talked about children's involvement and children's rights and teens, talked a lot about cyber bullying and talked about how many teens were really on top of this and were exerting leadership as peers to help their peers understand and deal with and really limit and then recover from some of the negative things that were happening in the Internet.
And then we had another panel of industry leaders. And this panel was moderated by a teenager. By a 17‑year‑old high school student. And so we really wanted to make it a cross‑generational project. We were very honored that year to have our keynote speaker being Senator Chuck Schumer of New York who was a very important Senator in the United States. I think at the time he was the second highest ranked Senator in the United States. Very famous. Very important. And it was great to have him his participation.
The following year we held Safer Internet Day clear across the country from Washington, D.C. This was February 10, 2014. So I guess the first one was 2013. Now we're in 2014. And we had Facebook and wed again some great panels. It was very, very youth‑dominated. We actually brought in more than 200 young people from schools in California. We bussed them in. And some of them came from schools as far as 80 miles away. That would be about 150 kilometers for the rest of you. Others came from the area. And by area, if you've ever been to Facebook, if you ever had the opportunity to visit Facebook, you will notice they are in an area called east park. And even though the U.S. is a wealthy nation, their location is a very, very poor community. So we had ethnic and socioeconomic population. Not just the America that's affluent but the America that's struggling. And as you know, there are Americans who do struggle.
So we had a great event there. And our two keynote speakers were caramel an Harris who was the Attorney General of the state of California and is also running for the U.S. Senate in California and Cheryl Sandberg who is the chief operating officer of Facebook. And Cheryl is also the author of "lean in" and had taken a very strong leadership role globally in terms of empowering women and girls. So she gave a great presentation. While caramel an Harris gave a great presentation on revenge porn. She had just pros cud a case where a person had profited by allowing others to upload pictures mostly of their ex girlfriends in sexually compromising situations. And this person is now spending 18 years in jail as a result of his crimes. And caramel an Harris talked about her office's role in prosecuting that horrible crime.
We also, again, in 2014 had some great panels. And, again had a number of young people on stage. It was very much a youth dominated or youth‑oriented event. And it was a great time.
So, fast forward to 2015 where we are now. And we are at the early stages of working on our campaign or our programme for this year. I'm not 100 percent sure because I can't see the slide. But I think you have a slide of the globe theater. If globe theater is an auditorium at university studios Hollywood. I'm sure many of you heard of Universal Pictures. It's a major movie studio. I'm not sure that's the slide. But I'll just ‑‑ anyway, universal studios is a very important venue in southern California, in Los Angeles. It's kind of like Disneyland. Oh I see that's why. There's us and Cheryl and caramel an Harris up there right now. I can see that slide. Anyway, universal studios is a great place. I think we just saw it a second ago and it went away. It's a very important I guess I call it amusement park, theme park in Los Angeles where thousands of people come every day to enjoy rides and other activities. So it's a great place to invite young people. Young people love universal studios and that's going to be the venue this year. Now because we're having it in Hollywood and at universal studios, we are going for a more creativity/entertainment theme and we can't announce any speakers yet, we really have not got those secured, but we are going to have people from the entertainment industry, not simply movie stars because they're famous, but people who have things to say about what it's like to be creative, how you can make an impact. We're going to have people who have done some amazing things in YouTube and other media as well as probably somebody from the world of Hollywood. Maybe a famous actor, I'm not sure.
But the point being that this year we're focusing more on the creative side because we really believe that that's also important in Safer Internet Day to talk about how you can make a contribution, how you could put yourself out there, how you can safely be a public persona on the Internet.
There is this notion the only way to protect your privacy and safety and security is to hide, is to not be out there. But the reality is that many, many young people are doing incredible things online and making a huge contribution and being public citizens, being spokes people for their causes, whether it's a political message or a social message, whether it's combating racism or combating poverty or improving the climate or fighting cyber bullying, there are thousands if not millions of people who are taking an active role online. Many are using creative tools like YouTube to get their messages across. We want to celebrate that and of course talk about how it can be done safely. But we strongly believe that having a strong public presence is actually not only empowering but creates a sense of safety because it allows you to control your message.
If I have no presence on Google, for example, and you put something nasty about me, that's what's going to come up if somebody searches on me. If I have a big public presence, then maybe your nastiness can be way below all the positive things I've posted that I've done.
So we want to emphasize that.
We're very pleased to have a number of great corporate partners including Google and Facebook and Twitter and linked in and ask FM and Yahoo and several others. And we're equally pleased to have a number of NGOs who we work with including the family online safety institute, the national parent teachers association, and a number of other important national organizations, common sense media, Internet education foundation, I keep safe. So this is very much of a coalition. Our role is to put together but we are really convenors of what we consider to be a very important day. And I think as everybody knows and you'll probably talk about later, it is simply one day.
The reality is that every day needs to be Safer Internet Day. We need to constantly be talking about how we're going to use this empowering technology in ways that are rewarding and enhancing and make people feel better with themselves and each other.
So with that, I will shut up and leave it for Hans to take over the programme.
>> HANS MARTENS: Thank you very much, Larry. I think that's very helpful in making it more concrete from the audience point of view of the kind of activities we try to do.
We look forward to seeing you again and keeping in touch and I'll give the word now to Rodrigo who can give a Brazilian perspective from a different point of view.
Rodrigo. As a Brazilian. I want to invite everyone. The last day. But it's a really good pleasure to have you here in Brazil. And for Brazil, I'm talking from SaferNet perspective, but also I send a message from Chair of my colleague from the border of CGI Brazilian Steering Committee of Internet.
And just to share a little bit about our experiences here ‑‑ and we are really happy to hear from Larry about the big problem thinking about protecting children but nothing to do exactly with eliminating and limiting child rights and SaferNet Brazil just a short presentation. It's NGO, Brazilian NGO that works with Human Rights online. We are supposed to start working with the Brazilian hotline. And the main issues were at the beginning at the Orkut, because you know MySpace wasn't an issue in Brazil but Orkut was the first very strong social network in Brazil. And at the time it was child online sexual exploitation the main issues. But since the beginning, we have 10 years now, this year we are looking at Human Rights online and not only child online sexual exploitation. And for us it's a big pleasure to run Brazilian safer Internet committee.
It starts in 2008 when with Janice at the time from safe network invited SaferNet Brazil to start to organise the safer Internet Brazil committee to run these activities in Brazil. And it was exactly what we were doing in Brazil. So it was a clear connection. And TGI Brazilian tearing committee for Internet which you must know very well now. And also the federal prosecutors. And at the time also the federal police was engaged at the repression level but the safer Internet point was a nice connection because we were already trying to engage law enforcement at the educational issues also. So in Brazil, since the first addition of safer Internet in 2009 we start as a multistakeholder group. So we had the Brazilian student committee of Internet, SaferNet as NGO and law enforcement with the federal prosecutors and also some companies, as Google and other companies in Brazil that support the Brazilian Safer Internet Day.
So I think it's a good case because we start as a multistakeholder group. And as well we keep this idea, keep working in these issues. And as I said just to inform that SaferNet Brazil is kind of different from the safer Internet centers in Europe because we are just one organisation, one in the Brazilian hotline for online Human Rights cyber crimes but educational note promoting a lot of different campaigns at national level and trying to support these issues. And so we have different kinds of approach, not only child rights but especially to child rights. We are doing this work. And also we are running the Brazilian help line since 2012. So we are kind of a safe Internet centre in just one organisation. And we are also trying to draw some data from our experience. Even with the hotline report but also the help line reports and also some surveys. Before we have in Brazil the you kids online survey. We had in SaferNet. Small service to know more about what children and adults were doing online.
So I'm happy to hear from Larry because we are since the beginning we were inspired by the principles of Internet Governance use made by CGI before our Internet rights included at the view you heard these last days.
So our starting point was the principles made by CGI and the child rights law that we have in Brazil following the convention of child rights.
So it's really important to go beyond the moral panics that in every country that I suppose we have this kind of panic about child online protection. And we are trying to promote these activities as a media literacy activity and trying to engage different stakeholders. And in Brazil especially we are a big country. We are doing a lot of decentralising activities. And this is a good point because safe network has ‑‑ we are always really open to new activities, to new strategies and safe Internet day just like a starting point to develop different activities.
And we are very pleased to have different activities in Brazil in this perspective. So we have policy officers doing some awareness seminars. We have prosecutors going to schools. We have a federal police operation, called educational operation that they went to schools and to the airport, the cyber coffees in Brazil was a big issues of the they went just to talk with children, to talk with the owners of the house, and to educate of the it was really pretty nice to have this engagement from the law enforcement perspective.
But also schools. And we tried to decentralise these kind of activities, building materials to everyone who want to do something could do something. Even if they are not expert of child online protection, they can do something with the videos, the materials and all the materials that we have developing safer Internet Brazil but also we also have to have openings from insafe network to use the European material. They have both the educational material for teenagers but also for educators. And we are using also this material made from insafe network. And we are really glad to try to localise and be inspired by this kind of material, even we viewed some many games to use these materials.
And on other issues I think it's really nice for those who want to really start dog Safer Internet Day, I see many known faces in the room. I know much of you are doing already a lot of things before. But everywhere we have stressed the importance. So we tried to engage the press. And we have really good in Brazil and making some important documents and some insertions, really interesting at the press. It's a big one.
This year we had a session with CGI. It's really interesting because we had the Brazilian Minister of Human Rights participating at this meeting. This room that you can see at the bottom left, it was at CGI São Paulo and we were with the Google representatives, Twitter representatives. We were at the Minister of Human Rights and also some other partners. And with online hub with the ICANN connection because we had a lot of CGI board members at the ICANN meeting. And they were online discussing that and it was a really nice repercussion of that. We had, as I said, a really strong multistakeholder group. And we are trying to engage also universities and schools but also other NGOs. And I suppose it's really interesting because in such big country, we need a lot of partners. And I want to enforce that we have a lot of young and adolescents doing the Safer Internet Day in their own community. And we are trying to engage much more youth and adults not only as public of the activity but as the major actor of the activity. They are doing ‑‑ yesterday I was with some youth groups here in Paraíba and they are doing themselves their own workshops and trying to include child online protection and child rights on the normal activity.
So just to see the main partners for Brazilian safe Internet committee. We have, as I said, CGI and safer Internet. But also prosecutors. UNICEF are joining us. The human Rights ministry. Google and GVT is now a telefonica company, telephone company that are also supporting these activities.
So just to finish, I really want to share that it's a big challenge. The date itself, it's always kind of one week before or just one week after the carnival. And so to engage people at the Brazilian carnival, I assure you that it's not easy. And even the schools are at the vacations. The federal prosecutors and law enforcement have a recession period. So it's really hard work. But we still use the more than 100 countries at the same time use the data but we also develop the month of safer Internet as an important point, especially for the press. I think the press love it when they said that there are a lot of activities on the road. But also we are developing some data from our organisation to launch at the Safer Internet Day as our main discussion.
So I just want to come back with this kind of concern that I have even in this IGF when we are still, in some cases, focused on protection and focused on exploitation and violence. It's really important. But I reinforce that for us in these 10 years, it's not a lot, but we are convinced that media literacy is the issue.
We have to include child online protection on the media literacy in general and not only trying to protect from the danger but empowering and also learning the child rights perspective in broad sense.
We are not talking about anymore protecting them from strangers, but how to talk to strangers. How can I enjoy a strange conversation in online game or even anywhere? So how to have the tools but also the principles. And I come back to the principles that are included in our Marcos review. And we have a new article in the Marcos review. The new state to educate for a safer educating cyber citizenship perspective. And I think it's a big issue that we really have to do that in Brazil.
So we are really happy to have the new portal of Safer Internet Day, much better clean and help us to organise these activities.
And, well, feel free if you need or want any material from SaferNet.
Just to finish before passing to the youth groups, I remember the Safer Internet Day I don't remember exactly it was in 2011 that the theme was "connecting generations."
And we did really good sessions at the federal prosecutors' offices. And just we have different generations. You know, the grandmother and the mother and the sons and a guy with nine years old that have a blog. They were writing in her blog. And the discussions were really inspiring. And I think that this theme is a continuous theme. How we can connect generations in creating new activities to talk about safer Internet. Thank you very much.
>> HANS MARTENS: Okay. Thank you very much. So we've now heard a couple of more concrete examples of how we try to implement Safer Internet Day globally. I think carnival is an excellent metaphor for the challenges we sometimes face as a global network because you initiate something at one place and then you encounter challenges, difficulties which you didn't necessarily expect in advance. But I think that's also the beauty of how the campaign is set up. In a sense we try to coordinate, initiate streamline but then it really goes beyond our control. And a lot of different things are happening. And we try to be as exclusive ‑‑ inclusive as possible.
And in line with this, this is something we will do in the final part and I know we're running a bit short on time. We really tried to involve as many different people as possible.
And that's what we'd now like to do very quickly before having a bit of a final discussion, opportunity. Listen at some of the different stakeholders, different voices. So maybe we can start with Marcos to give a very brief contribution from Google just saying what Safer Internet Day is for you. And then maybe we can go to Internet Society and then to end with the most important people, the young people because obviously that's the target group. But Marco, very, very briefly.
>> Marcos: Thank you, Hans. For Europe the experience last year is try to bring on board as much we could all the industry players and all the civil society groups on some very clear messages.
I think we focused a lot in a very successful way on the media literacy because we understood that we identified these as a concrete area where could work together with the other stakeholders in order to provide some meaningful content.
We provided very good materials, in my opinion. One example for all is the digital skills manual that we prepared together with the European school network was developed and given on the school, the Web. It's called the Web we want is available online. I strongly encourage all of you to have a look at that. That was an attempt to not just create awareness around safety but really make sure that these guidelines are entered into the school and starting to be part of the curricula of students.
We are still working a lot on the Safer Internet Day. I think there are a lot of room for improvement from this point of view, especially for what Brazas for activities that you do in the countries on real people. Sometimes in Brazas we have disconnection between the real world and the policy world. So it's a little bit more complicated. But I think we are really making the ‑‑ the progress that we are making there is to make sure that the different initiatives in the Member States are also put in the context of the debating process with the policymakers.
I think especially for next year there will be similarly relevant because there will be some specific discussion happening in the commission and in the parliament around what's next in terms of what rules of the Internet for kids and for kids safety and family safety. So I think next year is going to be even more relevant from this point of view.
>> HANS MARTENS: Thank you. And maybe to go from then industry and more the European focus to a more global focus. I can immediately say for us, one of the big successes of being here at the Internet Governance Forum with our information booth is to have the opportunity to reach out to chapters and people who are locally active in regions where we don't necessarily have a big representation. So maybe from your perspective, what do you think you could contribute or continue to contribute to Safer Internet Day?
>> Thanks, Hans. So as Hans was saying I'm here more to exchange with you. For those that don't know Internet Society, it is also an NGO with worldwide reach. We do have over 100 chapters spread around the world which are local community members, Internet issues, Internet Governance and evolutions.
Internet Society was created as the umbrella for the IETF, which is the Internet Engineering Task Force, where the protocols and the standards for the Internet are created. But it evolved over time from this technical role to now a more discussion and, well, I'm not avoiding society to with the intersection of technology, development and policy.
So, with this in mind, just to give some key messages of what I'm hearing from this experience of the Safer Internet Day. First of all, on the technical perspective, most of the reactions on child safety are based on filtering, technical filtering. And this brings a lot of risks from the ‑‑ of the Internet, creating kind of networks that are not the Internet that we want and that it was created. So the key messages. Don't take this Internet for granted. It was built under an open architecture, distributed, and resilient that we need to keep as a core principle, a core technical principle. And that sometimes is into the discussions. And it needs to be remembered. Don't take the Internet for granted. Keep the core principles. Keep the core Internet principles to keep it open and resilient and to keep evolving.
Also, the final goal here of the child and Internet and keeping the safety, stream power, I think I agree with all these speakers, to come from this point of protective ‑‑ protection and going forward to empower and make sure they can achieve and benefit from the full potential of the Internet, right? The Internet of opportunities.
And for that, I would highlight two paths that we can also work on. But the first one is also having them access to the Internet. Especially from developing countries, we have the issues of availability and affordability that needs to be also considered. It's not only having them safe but also getting them and how they get there and which are the devices, the opportunities that are available when they come in.
It seems to be also like a parallel question but it's really important. And the second one is trust. I know safe is under the umbrella of trust. It could be a building block on the trust issue. But what I want to highlight on tackling the children itself is, first, when we talk about raising awareness on the trust issues, it's not only on the children but also on their environment. And their environment ‑‑ by their environment, I mean the actors that are educating, so educators, teachers, also the parents and guardians. They are the ones who will build this environment of trust. And they also need to have the trust to move on and be a player and mobilizing children online and avoiding the risk of misbehavior inappropriate use of the Internet.
Also, on the legislation issues, I think it was mentioned a little bit. Just to give this message that to avoid the overregulation. When we think ‑‑ where there is a crime, of course, there are some undiscussed crimes that we need to take. But when we think about this protection mindset that we need to regulate, we need to the behavior and the use of the Internet, we need to be really careful exactly to avoid that we are overregulating, overblocking and censoring. And keep in mind also the youth that they are doing the freedom that they need to go over.
So I hope ‑‑ I could change a little bit my presentation based on what I was hearing. But I hope I can give this key messages and bring new issues that you could use on the discussions. The technical core principles and the access interest issues. Thank you.
>> HANS MARTENS: Thank you very much. So then to conclude the first half, which is almost close to the end of the session, so we have two young girls voices, I wouldn't say young voices. But maybe we start with marina and Julia a quick question like who are you, what are you doing here and you've heard a lot of things about Safer Internet Day.
>> Hi, Hans, thank you, I'm marina. I'm from Brazil. I study computer science. And I want to say that some people have no idea about the risks of posting some kind of pictures and sharing privacy information. They love posting about their life. And that's why we need to educate people in some way. But that don't mean that we must lose our core principles like universal access, freedom, diversity, net neutrality and privacy.
And by the way, these principles are from declaration of youth from ‑‑
And we can do that, anyway. We need to empower young people to do that 'cuz it's easier for young people to talk with young people. We need to create an equality environment because we talk the same language. We use Internet to the same issues. And we also post pictures online and talk about how ‑‑ and stuff.
And also we have grown up using Internet. So we live like this. It's our whole life is doing that.
And also people think that Internet is on Facebook, Twitter and these apps. We can use Internet, too, to get information, to bring up our education.
And we need to engage them to know how alternatives and how better we can build. Thank you.
>> HANS MARTENS: Thank you very much. And then maybe Marina ‑‑ I'm going to ask Mariel, sorry, I'm going to ask you a very specific question also based on some of the conversations we've had before.
Like I would rather characterize you as a young professional who is also looking for opportunities to do some active work in this field. If you would have to come up with a recommendation of how you would organise a Safer Internet Day activity what focus would you give to that? Could you perhaps give some ideas in that regard?
>> 40 seconds for context, 40 seconds for three specific points to answer that. I was 10 when the computer arrived in my home. I think since then 15 years have passed. If I have spent two months in total without Internet access, that's probably a lot. So I grew up with unrestricted screen time. I grew up with unrestricted Internet access, like I have no adult surveillance. My mother didn't know what it was. And I saw the worse very worst of the Internet and somehow I survived. But I also saw the best. I want other people not to face the same that I did, which was free use, which I really enjoyed, but zero guidance on the most important technology that was shaping their growth in privacy and healthy relationships and much more important things than technology.
And that is why I'm sitting here, also thanks to youth at IGF programme. If it weren't for that programme, I wouldn't be here. But I would still be doing a Safer Internet Day activity next year in Mexico.
And the answer to the question, I needed that context because I am close enough to remember what it was like growing up and interested in these issues but not speak the language of the IGF. And now that I'm more on the professional side, I can understand why there is value in having an event format like this.
But I can say if your target audience is youth, you need to have three considerations. The first one is you need to bet for interactive formats. I don't mean that you Delegation of Algeria presentation and then you do ‑‑ presentation and then you do a discussion. That doesn't work with youth. We need to find formats in which we can present information through interaction and interactive construction. I can point on OnConference models. I think OnConference models have really achieved ways to present information interactively.
Second this year communications materials with young people. Because sometimes we consider that something is clear in the pamphlet or in the call for applications or in the social media materials we use, but then a young person looks at it and it just doesn't resonate. So please do test your communications materials.
And, finally, make room for young people to do contributions but don't really expect them. Why do I say this? In youth at IGF, without the mentors necessarily working hard to make that happen, we saw an observatory arise, a declaration and the young people actually took leadership and that was amazing. But in some processes, that just doesn't happen and it doesn't mean that young people are lazy or stupid or something. It just varies among communities. So make the room. But if it doesn't happen, don't sweat it. I mean, it will happen eventually. But it's important to give room but also not have super high expectations when you are trying to introduce a topic or a type of reflection that might be new to their experience. And just give them time. And I promise at least 10 years, 15 years later it makes a difference.
>> HANS MARTENS: Okay. Thank you very much. We have one minute and 25 seconds left. And right after this session there is another session. So what I would like to do, actually, is perhaps invite David to quickly explain like this is sort of a starting point. So all our centers but also the SID committees they have different meetings where they have a debate. Perhaps David can you quickly summarize how you did that? And also we hope it's a model for those who want to become actively involved. And if you want to discuss further, just come to our information tent and you can ask any questions you may have.
>> David: Thank you. David Wright from the UK, safer Internet centre. We've clearly heard now why all of this is important. And I will just encourage everyone to think about the sorts of things they could do, so whether that's on an individual level if you publish articles on February 9th next year, if you work with groups of children, then running perhaps sessions with them if you're an NGO. If you work for a company then perhaps there's information you can get out to your customers if you like or to groups of children. Or if you represent a country, then doing all sorts of different things. There's all sorts of activities that can do to promote the aspects of Safer Internet Day which again is on February 9th as Hans said. More information is at the booth that we have and is also three questions that we can perhaps leave you with to think about. How you might get involved. What you might like to do. Safe Internet day February the ninth.
>> HANS MARTENS: Thank you very much. I think we're now running out of time. So we will close the session here. And again we will be outside if you have further questions just come here to ask so we have a couple of representatives from the centers but also from the SID committees but also some younger people who are involved in the activities we do. So that's it.
[Applause.]
[End of session.]