Social media firms fuelling ‘toxic sludge’: Nobel winner

Accepting her Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, Philippine journalist Maria Ressa launched a vitriolic attack against US tech giants, accusing them of fuelling a flood of “toxic sludge” on social media.Ressa, the co-founder of news website Rappler, accepted this year’s prize at a ceremony at Oslo’s City Hall together with her co-laureate Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, one of the rare independent newspapers in a Russian media landscape largely under state control.Speaking to a scaled-down crowd due to the pandemic, 58-year-old Ressa attacked “American Internet companies” such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without mentioning them by name.“With its power”, their technology “has allowed a virus of lies to infect each of us, pitting us against each other, bringing out our fears, anger and hate, and setting the stage for the rise of authoritarians and dictators around the world,” she said.“Our greatest need today is to transform that hate and violence, the toxic sludge that’s coursing through our information ecosystem, prioritised by American internet companies that make more money by spreading that hate and triggering the worst in us,” she said.Ressa stressed the importance of reliable facts at a time when the world is battling the Covid-19 pandemic or facing upcoming elections in countries like France, the US, the Philippines and Hungary.These companies “are biased against facts, biased against journalists. They are — by design — dividing us and radicalising us,” she said.A vocal critic of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and his deadly drug war, Ressa is herself facing seven criminal lawsuits in her country, which she said could see her sent to prison for 100 years.Currently on bail pending an appeal against a conviction last year in a cyber libel case, she had to apply to four courts for permission to travel to Norway for yesterday’s ceremony.