<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>The President of the Government met this Wednesday by videoconference with the presidents of Chile, Gabriel Boric; Brazil, Lula da Silva; and Colombia, Gustavo Petro; as well as with the president-elect of Uruguay, Yamandú Orsi, with whom he signed a statement in favor of strengthening democracy and to whom he presented his proposals to effectively confront disinformation on social networks.</strong></h4> The videoconference was held this Wednesday within the framework of the initiative 'In Defense of Democracy', which was launched during the United Nations High Level Week last September. The objective of the meeting, according to Moncloa, was to follow up on the commitments agreed upon during the launch of the initiative and to address the threats faced by democracies. The leaders participating in the meeting signed a statement in which they reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening democracy and its institutions. They also addressed “inequality and the malicious use” of social media and other digital technologies, “which fuel extremism and the polarization of societies.” In addition, President Sánchez presented the three measures that the Government of Spain has been advocating to effectively deal with disinformation on social media, the same ones that he himself made public on January 22 during the World Economic Forum in Davos to curb the growing influence of the owners of social media, who “are no longer satisfied with having economic power” and also “want to have political power by undermining our democracies.” Firstly, the president stressed the importance of establishing a system of pseudo-anonymity “so that anonymity is not an instrument for impunity and disinformation.” In this sense, he defended the need to guarantee the privacy of people and their right to act under a pseudonym to guarantee their democratic participation, while advocating for eliminating “the millions of fake profiles that exert influence on public conversation.” Secondly, he stressed the importance of promoting transparency in algorithms and said that authorities must be able to examine the functioning of social networks without restrictions in order to ensure content moderation and fact-checking as legal and moral requirements. Thirdly, he argued that the leaders of the major social networks should be held personally accountable for any breaches of laws and regulations that occur within their platforms.
