As we look at 2021 in the rearview mirror, two trends stand out. The first — attacks on democracy as the best form of governance humans have yet invented — accelerated around the world. For the last 70 years liberal democracy was *mostly* undisputed as the best way to deliver social and economic development to large numbers of people.
The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and NELEŽ have partnered to support each other’s efforts to defund online sources of disinformation. Both non-profit organisations seek to identify the most egregious digital publishers of disinformation and disrupt their advertising-funded business models by encouraging brands, suppliers and ad tech vendors to blocklist them.
Marketplaces for fake vaccine cards have appeared across the social web. But one platform, Telegram, is arguably under-discussed in relation to this problem: the chat app harbors communities of tens of thousands of people exchanging fake vaccine cards for money, targeting at least a dozen countries all over the world.
Why do we need to stop arguing about content moderation?