其他
Other fields

其他

Other fields

A further step to regulate digital platforms: public consultation on UNESCO’s global guidelines brief report

On June 27th of 2023, Social Equity and Participation Center, China (Participation Center) held a public consultation meeting on version 3.0 of Safeguarding freedom of expression and access to information: guidelines for a multistakeholder approach in the context of regulating digital platforms (the Guidelines). In total, 24 people from various Grass-root Social Organizations (NGOs) and communities were invited to participate in the consultation.

The Guidelines was an ongoing effort of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to create guidelines for regulating digital platforms by conducting multistakeholder consultations. It aims to support regulators, governments, legislatures and companies, dealing with content that potentially damages human rights and democracy, while protecting freedom of expression and the availability of accurate and reliable information. Therefore, Participation Center held the consultation to collect suggestions and ideas regarding the latest version of the Guidelines from the perspective of NGOs.

During the meeting, key contents of the Guidelines were delivered to the participants, followed by a discussion to seek their opinions and suggestions. All participants engaged in the discussion actively. As a result, three issues were highlighted as follows.

1. The protection of personal privacy.

All participants proposed that the most serious negative impact of the current development of digitalization is the violation of personal privacy, therefore, the protection of user’s privacy should be strengthened to resolutely prevent such problems from happening in the future.

2. The lack of transparency of digital platforms.

The lack of transparency was the second issue that received much attention. According to the participants, insufficient transparency could pose obstacles to public’s understanding of and communication with the authority.

3. The information gap between platforms

Despite various digital platforms being established to tackle social issues, citizens and organizations repeatedly put similar or the same information on different platforms, which caused a waste of manpower and money. Based on the suggestions proposed by the participants, this problem could be solved by allowing platforms to exchange information.

4. The intention behind the development of platforms

The aim of developing digital platforms should be empowering citizens or alleviating workloads of communities. More importantly, it should avoid the situation where the authority builds a platform to obtain data. Digital platforms could not receive a sustainable development unless residents or community workers find them useful and convenient.

In sum, the public consultation meeting collected valuable opinions and suggestions from the side of NGOs on the Guidelines. Further improvements will be made based on the consultation. Participation Center will continue engaging in the regulatory process of digital platforms with UNESCO in an open, transparent, multistakeholder, proportional, and evidence-based manner.

About us

Participation Center is an NGO based in Chengdu. It aims to promote citizen participation and social equality through participatory budgeting, digital democracy, community planning, education, etc. One of its major focuses lies in building promoting digital democracy on participatory budgeting and citizen deliberation.