UNESCO Global Conference “Internet for Trust”
Towards Guidelines for Regulating Digital Platforms for Information as a Public Good
The internet and social media have empowered societies with enormous opportunities for people to communicate, engage and learn. However, digital platforms have also been used as vectors for disinformation, hate speech, conspiracy theories and other content potentially harmful to democracy and human rights. Current regulatory systems have yet to catch up with these challenges.
Taking forward the Windhoek+30 Declaration on Information as a Public Good, UNESCO will host a global conference gathering ministers, regulators, judicial actors, the private sector, the UN family, civil society, academia, intergovernmental organizations and the technical community from around the world to shape digital platform regulation. The leadup to the conference and the event itself will offer a forum for multistakeholder consultations to discuss guidelines for regulating digital platforms for actors seeking to regulate, co-regulate and self-regulate digital platforms, with the aim of supporting freedom of expression and the availability of accurate and reliable information in the public sphere.