Artificial intelligence
APC welcomes this consultation, as it is timely and integral to our work. The pandemic poses challenges for content moderation, and while we recognise that these are extraordinary times, human rights laws and principles should be the default standards guiding companies’ policies and procedures.
7amleh has released a new research report about YouTube’s violations of Palestinian digital rights, as part of a series that focuses on violations of Palestinian digital rights and digital discrimination against Palestinians by international technology companies.
AI is receiving unprecedented global attention, but what are its human rights and social justice implications? APC collaborated with Indonesian illustrator Ellena Ekarahendy to produce a set of visual representations of outstanding metaphors in 2019 GISWatch report on AI and human rights.
APC joined dozens of other organisations and researchers to call on social media companies to enable future research and analysis about the “infodemic” side of COVID-19 by preserving information about what their systems are automatically blocking and taking down.
The open letter, signed by APC and other civil society organisations, emphasises the fundamental importance of ensuring transparency and adequately assessing the human rights impact of any public-private partnerships that the UN may enter into, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The context of how artificial intelligence affects our rights as digital natives is worth unpacking, especially during political and public health crises, where online communication is a lifeline for many, and citizens are possibly being subjected to government surveillance and manipulation.
Many countries today are turning to digital technologies to provide information as well as for monitoring and controlling people infected with the virus, which alerts us to the potential impact of these technologies on people’s fundamental rights.
APC’s priorities at this HRC session include gender and privacy online, freedom of religion or belief, and the criminalisation of human rights defenders, journalists and digital security and tech expertise, as well as highlighting violations of internet rights in countries like India and Myanmar.
APC outlines positions on some of the areas covered in the digital strategies presented by the European Commission that will undoubtedly set a key precedent for global discussions on issues such as regulating platforms, data governance and artificial intelligence.
In response to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) call for expressions of interest to join its Independent Advisory Committee (IAC), APC and other NGOs expressed their concerns about the IAC specifically, and the growing role of GIFCT more broadly in regulating content online.

Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2022
Unless otherwise stated, content on the APC website is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
