A/HRC/44/57 III. Examples of racial discrimination in the design and use of emerging digital technologies A. Explicit intolerance and prejudice-motivated conduct 24. Actors seeking to spread racist speech and incitement to discrimination and violence have relied on emerging digital technologies, with social media platforms playing a pivotal role. The Special Rapporteur has highlighted these trends in previous reports on neo-Nazi and other white supremacist groups that rely on social media platforms to recruit, raise funds and coordinate.47 Another prominent example of explicitly prejudice-motivated use of emerging digital technologies is the use of Facebook by radical nationalist Buddhist groups and military actors in Myanmar to exacerbate discrimination and violence against Muslims and the Rohingya ethnic minority in particular.48 In 2018, the Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, testified to the United States Senate that Facebook’s artificial intelligence systems were unable to detect hate speech in such contexts.49 These are not the only instances: a submission also highlighted the use of Facebook to amplify discriminatory and intolerant content, including content inciting violence against religious and linguistic minority groups in India.50 25. Social media bots – automated accounts – have been used to shift political discourse and misrepresent public opinion. Out of a sample of 70 countries, bots were used in 50 countries for social media manipulation campaigns in 2019. 51 For groups that rely on emerging digital technologies as a strategy for promoting racial, ethnic and religious discord and intolerance, bots are central to their capacity to spread racist speech or disinformation online. Examples suggest that the coordinated use of bots has been especially prevalent before elections. For example, leading up to the Swedish election in 2018, researchers identified 6 per cent of Twitter accounts discussing national politics as bots, which posted about topics related to immigration and Islam more than genuine accounts.52 Similarly, in the period before the 2018 election in the United States, 28 per cent of Twitter accounts posting antisemitic tweets were bots, which posted 43 per cent of all antisemitic tweets.53 Emerging digital technologies in the Russian Federation have been used to promote ethnic and racial divisions on social media, 54 through hundreds of falsified online personas and pages on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. Although some posts were directed towards ethnic minority groups and called for racial equality, many denounced such groups in an effort to promote racial tensions. Some personas supported white nationalist groups, prompting discrimination and violence against racial minorities.55 B. Direct or indirect discriminatory design/use of emerging digital technology 26. The design and use of emerging digital technologies can directly and indirectly discriminate along racial or ethnic lines in access to a range of human rights. 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 8 See A/73/312 and A/HRC/41/55. A/HRC/42/50, paras. 71–75. See www.commerce.senate.gov/2018/4/facebook-social-media-privacy-and-the-use-and-abuse-ofdata. Submission by Avaaz. See https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/93/2019/09/CyberTroop-Report19.pdf. See www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Political-Bots-and-the-Swedish-General-Election-FernquistKaati/2af3d1e16d5553dc489d8b44321ea543d571a4a9. See www.adl.org/resources/reports/computational-propaganda-jewish-americans-and-the-2018midterms-the-amplification. See https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3304223. Ibid., p. 180.