Page 113 - The Ethics of ASEAN

Ethics of Freedom in ASEAN

Mai University. She has written in various publications on the
topics of global politics, political movements, and the role of
digital technologies. She is also a YouTube content creator at
Pretty Politics.
Dr Hammerli’s particular interest in politics focuses on the
role of digital technologies and social media in the 21st century.
During its early emergence in the early 2000s the hope was
that such platforms promoted freedom of speech and liberal
society. Now, social media has penetrated deeply into daily
social life and revealed significant downsides. These platforms
are not only channels for misinformation but also are perfect
echo chambers, strengthening the cohesion of like-minded
groups while excluding opposing opinions. This has important
implications because the lines between what should or should
not be permissible has become blurred. What counts as “hate
speech” depends on your perspective. For Dr Hammerli a
practical ethical line can be drawn: freedom ends where it
starts to infringe on the freedom of others.
A large impact that social media like Facebook does to
the spread of information and misinformation is its speed.
Hammerli provided an anecdote about someone working on
the US Election, tracking misinformation, and reporting it to
partnered social media platforms. She noted that the average
time from reporting to removal is approximately 6-8 hours, a
sufficient amount of time for that information to be spread and
digested to millions of people. Beyond swinging an election,
the effects can be quite deadly, as Hammerli notes how
Facebook’s role in disseminating hate speech has facilitated the
violence against Rohingya people in Myanmar. Additionally, she
discussed how the current landscape, even in a fully democratic
society, makes it difficult to regulate media companies, with
its transnational reach making legal obligations complicated
and making ambiguous the extent to which governments,
social-media companies, or third parties should be involved in
regulation.
Dr Hammerli gives examples where misinformation can
successfully be dealt with. Taiwan has established a “fake news
centre” where people can report political and non-political
misinformation. Their system of processing is judged as a
solid model. This contrasts with Thailand’s “Anti-Fake News
Centre” which ostensibly looks at issues of mental health and
information during natural disasters. In practice it became more
politically oriented especially after the dissolution of the Future
Forward Party. These two examples show how institutional

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