One of the winners of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize slammed social media corporations “for the toxic sludge that’s coursing through our information ecosystem” in an address where highlighted the “disastrous consequences” the tech giants have had in the Philippines, Myanmar, India and Sri Lanka.
Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, who cofounded the news site Rappler, said that “social media is a deadly game for power and money”.
“Our personal experiences sucked into a database, organized by AI, then sold to the highest bidder,” she continued.
“Highly profitable micro-targeting operations are engineered to structurally undermine human will. I’ve repeatedly called it a behavior modification system in which we are all Pavlov’s dogs, experimented on in real time with disastrous consequences in countries like mine, Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka, and so many more. These destructive corporations have siphoned money away from news organizations and now they pose a foundational threat to markets and elections.”
The journalist went on to state that “We need to help independent journalism survive, first by giving greater protection to journalists and standing up against states which target journalists”.
“I didn’t know if I was going to be here today,” she concluded. “Every day, I live with the real threat of spending the rest of my life in jail because I’m a journalist. When I go home, I have no idea what the future holds, but it’s worth the risk.”
“The destruction has happened. Now it’s time to build – to create the world we want.”
Ressa shared the prize with Dmitry Muratov, editor of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, who held a minute's silence for journalists killed in the course of their work.
See the full text of Ressa’s speech here.
