Month: May 2024

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — Research into online abuse and hate speech reveals most women in Ethiopia face gender-targeted attacks across Facebook, Telegram and X.

The abuse and hate speech are prompting many Ethiopian women to withdraw from public life, online and off, according to the recent research.

The Center for Information Resilience, a U.K.-based nonprofit organization, spearheaded the study. The CIR report, released Wednesday, says that women in Ethiopia are on the receiving end of abuse and hate speech across all three social media platforms, with Facebook cited as the worst.

Over 2,000 inflammatory keywords were found in the research, which looked at three Ethiopian languages — Amharic, Afan Oromo and Tigrigna — as well as English. The list is the most comprehensive inflammatory word lexicon in Ethiopia, according to the researchers.

Over 78% of the women interviewed reported feelings of fear or anxiety after experiencing online abuse.

It is highly likely similar problems exist in areas of society that have not been analyzed yet, said Felicity Mulford, editor and researcher at CIR.

“This data can be used by human rights advocates, women’s rights advocates, in their advocacy,” she said. “We believe that it’s incredibly impactful, because even though we’ve only got four languages, it shows some of the [trends] that exist across Ethiopia.”

Online abuse is so widespread in Ethiopia that it has been “normalized to the point of invisibility,” the report’s authors said.

Betelehem Akalework, co-founder of Setaset Power, an Afro-feminist movement in Ethiopia, said her work has opened doors to more-serious, targeted attacks.

“We [were] mentally prepared for it to some extent,” she said. “We [weren’t] surprised that the backlash was that heavy, but then we did not anticipate the gravity of that backlash. So, we took media training, and we took digital security trainings.”

The Ethiopian Human Rights Defenders Center, established three years ago, offers protection for human rights defenders and social media activists in the country.

The center’s program coordinator, Kalkidan Tesfaye, said there must be more initiative from the government in education and policymaking to help women protect themselves from online abuse.

“In our recommendation earlier, we were talking about how the Ministry of Education can incorporate digital safety training … a very essential element to learning about computers or acquiring digital skills,” Tesfaye said.

The researchers also investigated other protected characteristics under Ethiopian law, including ethnicity, religion and race. The findings showed that women face compounded attacks, as they are also often targeted for their ethnicity and religion.
…

SYDNEY — An Australian study claims that China’s monitoring of global internet users’ online habits — a practice that has made TikTok controversial in the United States — extends far beyond the popular social media app to numerous other platforms and even online games.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a research organization that receives funding from the Australian government and others overseas, said in a May 2 report that Beijing’s propaganda chiefs are forging ties with Chinese tech companies to gather personal data from a wide range of social media apps or platforms and popular online games.

They include ride-sharing app DiDi, the action game Genshin Impact, and Temu, the popular online marketplace.

The Australian study claims that China’s ambition is to harvest “strategically valuable” data from media, gaming, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

It states that China is “working to extend its influence abroad to reshape the global information ecosystem … to strengthen its grip on power, legitimize its activities and bolster China’s cultural, technological, economic and military influence.”

There has been no response, so far, from Chinese authorities. Beijing has previously accused the Australian government of “anti-China hysteria” over various geopolitical and trade disputes.

Samantha Hoffman, the lead author of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute report, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation this week that data obtained from apps, platforms and games could be valuable to China.

“That could be data on the way that users make decisions. [With] Temu, it could be preferences that indicate the likes and dislikes of particular demographics,” she said. “If China is trying to shape the way that the world perceives and understands truth and reality, then this data will help to make those efforts more successful over time.”

The report urged policymakers to “develop robust defenses and countermeasures to safeguard against future information campaigns orchestrated by Beijing.”

It also asserts that much attention has been given to the Chinese-owned platform TikTok because of concerns that the user data it collects could be shared with Chinese authorities. It cautions, however, the problem “runs much deeper than just TikTok.”

TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, has said it will mount a court challenge in the United States to what it called an “unconstitutional” law making its way through Congress that could require the platform to be sold or banned in that country.

ByteDance has denied collusion with the Chinese government.

Marina Zhang, an associate professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, told VOA she thinks the Strategic Policy Institute report is exaggerated.

“[The] Chinese propaganda machine is huge, but to link all social media apps [to] this propaganda machine is a bit of overstretching,” she said.

Zhang said she believes technological collaboration, and not confrontation, is in China’s best interests.

“If segregation is going to happen and if reports like this [are] going to happen, China will be isolated from the rest of the world,” Zhang said. “So, we do not want to see a total technological decoupling between China and the West in terms of not just applications but also eventually in technological infrastructure. That is not going to be good for anybody.”

Last year, Australia said it would ban TikTok on government devices, including cell phones, because of security and surveillance fears.
…

WASHINGTON AND SAN FRANCISCO — U.S. President Joe Biden is set to announce new tariffs on China as soon as next week, targeting strategic sectors, including electric vehicles, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

The full announcement, which could take place as soon as Tuesday, is expected to largely maintain existing levies, according to one of the people. An announcement could also be pushed back, the person said. 

The tariffs were also set to include semiconductors and solar equipment, according to one of the people. 

Details on the precise value or categories of tariffs that would be imposed were sketchy, but the administration was said to have zeroed in on areas of interest within strategic competitive and national security areas, one of the people said. 

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office made its recommendations to the White House weeks ago, but a final announcement was delayed as the package was debated internally, according to one of the sources and an additional person familiar with the matter. 

Biden, a Democrat seeking reelection in November, is looking to contrast his approach with that of Republican candidate Donald Trump, who has proposed across-the-board tariffs that White House officials see as too blunt and prone to spark inflation. 

The White House and the office of the U.S. Trade Representative declined to comment. Bloomberg News first reported the story. 

The measures could invite retaliation from China at a time of heightened tensions between the world’s two biggest economies. Trump’s broader imposition of tariffs during his presidency prompted China to retaliate with its own levies. 

Biden has said he does not want a trade war with China even as he has said the countries have entered a new paradigm of competition. 

Both 2024 presidential candidates have sharply departed from the free-trade consensus that once reigned in Washington, a period capped by China’s joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. 

In 2022, Biden launched a review of the Trump-era policy under Section 301 of the U.S. trade law. Last month, he called for sharply higher U.S. tariffs on Chinese metal products, but the targeted products were narrow in range, estimated at more than $1 billion of steel and aluminum products, a U.S. official said. 

Biden also announced launching an investigation into Chinese trade practices across the shipbuilding, maritime and logistics sectors, a process that could lead to more tariffs. 

The Biden administration has also been pressuring neighboring Mexico to prohibit China from selling its metal products to the United States indirectly from there. 

China has said the tariff measures are counterproductive and inflict harm on the U.S. and global economy. 
…

New York — TikTok will begin labeling content created using artificial intelligence when it’s uploaded from certain platforms.

TikTok says its efforts are an attempt to combat misinformation from being spread on its social media platform.

The announcement came on ABCs “Good Morning America” on Thursday.

“Our users and our creators are so excited about AI and what it can do for their creativity and their ability to connect with audiences.” Adam Presser, TikTok’s Head of Operations & Trust and Safety told ABC News. “And at the same time, we want to make sure that people have that ability to understand what fact is and what is fiction.”

TikTok’s policy in the past has been to encourage users to label content that has been generated or significantly edited by AI. It also requires users to label all AI-generated content where it contains realistic images, audio, and video.
…