Curtailing Free Expression, Opinion and Information Online in Southeast Asia These developments are part of a global trend. In 2019, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression highlighted a “global phenomenon” of increasing interference by States with free expression, opinion and information online.22 In 2019, a report by data and risk analytics company Verisk Maplecroft highlighted a “rising tendency for governments to adopt more extreme measures to protect their own interests” with respect to matters such as data privacy, mass surveillance and attacks against journalists and activists, and classified approximately 45 percent of the global population as living in 58 countries where the rights to freedom of expression, information and privacy were at ‘extreme risk’.23 The crucial role of social media platforms and the accompanying struggle between governments and private ICT sector companies for control of information on these platforms is also a key factor that will inform this paper’s analysis. States are increasingly co-opting social media platforms. In 2019, a report by the Oxford Internet Institute found that manipulation of social media towards political purposes had been employed in 70 countries, a jump from 48 countries in 2018 and 28 countries in 2017 – with Facebook often being the targeted medium for manipulation.24 It also found that, in 26 countries, social media had been manipulated to “suppress fundamental human rights, discredit political opponents, and drown out dissenting opinions”.25 Meanwhile, States are also attempting to regulate and control dissemination of information on social media platforms. In October 2019, the European Court of Justice delivered a verdict enabling European Union member states to force Facebook to take down content deemed illegal under domestic law – such as defamatory content – not only domestically but also globally across its platform – raising concerns about the impact of this judgment on free speech online.26 22 23 24 25 26 See footnote 19; In a report released in November 2019, Freedom House noted that 33 of 65 assessed countries had observed a decline in internet freedoms since June 2018, See Adrian Shahbaz, Allie Funk, ‘Freedom on the Net 2019: The Crisis of Social Media’, Available at: https:// www.freedomonthenet.org/report/freedom-on-the-net/2019/the-crisis-of-social-media Sofia Nazalya, ‘‘Strongmen’ regimes lead charge against freedom of speech and privacy: Human Rights Outlook 2019’, 7 August 2019, Available at: https://www.maplecroft.com/insights/ analysis/strongmen-regimes-lead-charge-against-freedom-of-speech-and-privacy/ Bradshaw, S. and Howard, P.N., ‘The Global Disinformation Order 2019 Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation’, Oxford Internet Institute, Computational Propaganda Research Project, 2019 (‘Bradshaw and Howard, 2019’) p. 2. The report noted, in its Introduction, “Around the world, government actors are using social media to manufacture consensus, automate suppression, and undermine trust in the liberal international order. … The use of computational propaganda to shape public attitudes via social media has become mainstream, extending far beyond the actions of a few bad actors. In an information environment characterized by high volumes of information and limited levels of user attention and trust, the tools and techniques of computational propaganda are becoming a common – and arguably essential – part of digital campaigning and public diplomacy.” Bradshaw and Howard, 2019, p.5. These countries included Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. Adam Satariano, ‘Facebook Can Be Forced to Delete Content Worldwide, E.U.’s Top Court Rules’, 13