Von Dreien, a fresh-faced 19-year-old, spoke to host Norbert Brakenwagen with great seriousness about emotions being stored in human hair, reincarnation and our individual missions “as human beings here on this planet.” 

“When we love ourselves unconditionally, that love will automatically heal us,” she said.

In recent years, Von Dreien has become a leading light of the Swiss New Age scene and a highly lucrative brand. The Swiss media frequently refer to her as an “esoteric star.” On her website, she describes herself as being “blessed with a multidimensional awareness and other paranormal abilities.” 

Von Dreien has made her career by sharing these self-proclaimed gifts with the world, via various social media channels, at speaking engagements and in writing. Looking at the comments on her website, it appears that her audience is mainly composed of middle-class, white women with an interest in spiritual growth and self-improvement.

Some of them may not know that Von Dreien is not her real name. In her pre-fame days, she was known as the somewhat less aristocratic-sounding Christina Meier. Her professional alias is actually a reference to Weiler Dreien, the small village in the mountainous, German-speaking eastern part of Switzerland, where she grew up. 

It is not unusual for entertainers and influencers to operate under assumed names and, with all her talk of inner harmony, love and peace, Von Drein often sounds like any one of countless similar figures around the world. The difference is her reach — in a country of just eight million people, her YouTube videos frequently attract hundreds of thousands of views — and that she bolsters this following by expressing questionable views on a variety of serious matters. 

In a March newsletter, Von Dreien shared her thoughts on Covid-19. “I don’t think the coronavirus is as dangerous as it’s being made out to be right now,” she wrote. “In my view, it is an attempt to put people into a state of panic. She went on to add that “people who pull the strings have brought this virus into the world to further their plans.”

Von Dreien has strong views on the deployment of 5G networks around the world. In April 2019, she wrote that “5G can manipulate the thoughts, emotions, behavior and bodily functions of people and animals.” Again, she attributed the technology’s rollout to powerful individuals working behind the scenes, in service of their own ends.

She has also made problematic — if rather nebulous — pronouncements on matters of racial identity. At a February seminar, held in a small Bavarian town, she spoke of what she believes to be fundamental differences between the collective consciousness of people from different parts of the world. After describing the “earthly energy” of people from South America, she went on to state that those from “Mitteleuropa” are more in tune with “higher levels” and a true “beacon for the world.” 

Her words resonate with a growing global mistrust of academia and science. A recent article in Science magazine reported that only 50% of Americans plan to be immunized against Covid-19 when a vaccine becomes available. Meanwhile, anti-5G sentiment attributing the effects of the coronavirus to the technology is growing, from the United States to Russia. 

A family business

Three books feature prominently on Von Dreien’s website. The most recent, titled “Christina: Consciousness Creates Peace,” is by Von Dreien herself. 

Bernadette Meier, a former Swiss marathon champion and Von Drein’s mother, is the author of the other two. “Christina: Twins Born as Light," was published in 2017 and documents her daughter’s “extraordinary birth, childhood and youth,” as well as her “remarkable insight into today’s world affairs.” The second, “Christina: The Vision of the Good,” came a year later. Both occupied the top 10 non-fiction bestseller list in Switzerland, Austria and Germany for months and are available in German, French, Italian and English-language versions.

Von Dreien’s affairs are managed by a company named Christina von Dreien LLC, in which Meier plays a prominent role. One of the main jobs carried out by Von Dreien’s team is coordinating her schedule of public appearances. Her next tour, billed as “Create Peace Consciously,” will take place in Bern, Switzerland; Salzburg, Austria; and Friedrichshafen in Germany. 

According to the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Von Dreien’s seminars usually sell out weeks in advance. Her last event, held in the Swiss city of Wil, was attended by 500 people, each paying nearly $220 — a total of more than $120,000 in one day.

Nicola Good narrated the audio version of Von Dreien’s book. According to the Swiss daily Tagblatt, she is also working with Meier and  Von Dreien to establish a school inspired by Von Dreien’s teachings. She is quick to dismiss any suggestion that Von Dreien spreads conspiracy theories and disinformation for personal gain. 

“I don’t know what this word disinformation is supposed to mean. There is only different information,” she told me, via email. “The mainstream media no longer fulfills its function as the fourth estate, but rather reflects the wants of the government.” 

Representatives of Von Dreien’s company declined requests to comment for this article.

Open minds 

Cornelia Gatz, a Munich-based feng shui consultant, is a keen follower of Von Dreien. Recalling one seminar she attended, she told me that she had “rarely seen a room with hundreds of people that seemed so harmonious and peaceful. Christina was calm itself, inspiring people with her love.” 

After reading Von Dreien and Meier’s books, she felt the need to connect with people who found them similarly valuable.

Gatz founded a Facebook group dedicated to Von Dreien’s work. More than 2,500 members spend hours every day discussing such topics as auras, energy fields and levels of perception. 

“I founded the group, in order to put Christina’s teaching in practice with people that are interested in working on themselves in this way,” Gatz explained. 

Many of the group’s members see themselves as spiritually hypersensitive individuals and seek to deepen their connection to a wellspring of healing power that they refer to as “the source.”

“Can I connect to the source to protect myself against radiation?” one member asked in a recent group discussion. 

Still, Gatz refutes the idea that Von Dreien is peddling conspiracies and pseudoscience. 

“I think it is important to understand what Christina’s actual intentions are when she writes about issues like 5G or Covid-19,” she said. “She’s primarily interested in the self-determination of people, which I completely support.” 

For Von Dreien, the pursuit of self-determination appears to entail an absolute distrust of government, established expertise and what she, in a May newsletter, termed “our so-called democracy, which is only interested in control and surveillance.”

Instead, she actively promotes “alternative” sources of information, such as Transinformation.net, which she frequently links to on her website. Founded in 2014, this German-run site serves its readers a cocktail of esotericism, pseudoscience and conspiracy theory.

On protests against coronavirus measures that took place in Berlin in late August, it stated that “Germany is an extremely important energetic node on the planet, which the cabal has always tried to suppress and manipulate.” 

Transinformation’s authors go on to state that over the past two years, the consciousness of the German people has expanded and that “with the protests, maybe we are now seeing the physical manifestation of this.” 

These words, like Von Dreien’s own, go far beyond ideas of rainbow-hued spirituality, alternative healing practices and pseudoscience — all of which are worrying enough at a time when the world is still battling a virus for which there is no known cure. Instead, they speak to ideas of secretive groups, clandestine plots and the inherent superiority of ethnic Europeans. Now, more than ever, this kind of thinking is a dangerous thing to open people’s minds to.

Illustration by Gogi Kamushadze

The post Switzerland’s teenage pseudoscience queen appeared first on Coda Story.

However, first impressions on social media can be deceiving. Kleine, 28, is an important influencer on Germany’s far-right scene and a member of the anti-immigrant Identitarian movement. Along with his colleague Phillip Thaler, he produces a YouTube channel titled Laut Gedacht (“Thinking out loud”).

Clearly aimed at a millennial and younger audience, Laut Gedacht’s weekly-posted videos regularly attract up to 200,000 views. In one, Thaler and Kleine openly mock the speech of the environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who lives with Asperger’s syndrome. In another, more recent posting, the two men criticize German media outlets for their “insincere” coverage of Hungary’s right-wing populist prime minister Viktor Orban.

At first glance, Laut Gedacht might appear to be like any one of the dozens of far-right YouTube channels now operating in Germany. A closer look at its sponsor list, however, reveals links to a well-resourced and carefully organized information operation. 

Klein and Thaler receive financial support from a group named Ein Prozent (One Percent), the aim of which is to spread nationalist narratives among young Germans.

The group was founded in 2015 by Götz Kubitschek — a former reserve officer in the German army, who reportedly served in Bosnia, but was later dismissed from the military for his involvement in “right-wing extremist” politics. According to its website, Ein Prozent was formed in 2015 as a reaction to the German government's decision to take in large numbers of refugees from Africa and the Middle East.

The organization is primarily funded by small donations from a large network of like-minded individuals. According to the group’s website, almost 50,000 people gave an average sum of $22 to Ein Prozent in 2018, allowing it to spend $425,000 on “patriotic projects” that year.   

Since its founding, the group has backed more than 80 right-wing cultural initiatives across Germany. They range from youth magazines to music projects and social media channels, such as Laut Gedacht. Ein Prozent propagates support by deploying slick online marketing techniques to build and nurture networks of young influencers already well established in German-language far-right social media circles.

Although Ein Prozent is not officially affiliated with any political party, it has strong links to Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Kubitschek, for instance, is a regular speaker at AfD events, while AfD politician Hans Thomas Tillschneider is on the group’s board of directors.

Founded in 2013, AfD has quickly risen to political prominence. In Germany’s last parliamentary elections, held in 2017, it won 12.6% of the vote and 94 parliamentary seats. The party’s growing popularity can be largely attributed to its hardline positions on immigration and Islam. AfD co-chairman Alexander Gauland has openly and frequently spoken of fighting an "invasion of foreigners."

Culture war

Stefan Laurer, is the editor of Belltower News, a Berlin-based publication that specializes in coverage of extremist organizations. According to him, Ein Prozent is “basically implementing a policy based on the ideology of the New Right.” 

Laurer refers to the metapolitical strategies of the Nouvelle Droite movement. Established in late-1960s France and borrowing heavily from radical left-wing theory, its proponents believe that, in order for the far-right to be successful, reactionary ideology must be gradually and comprehensively filtered into society, via non-political channels such as music, literature and art.

“The assumption is that in order to get more people in Germany to vote for the far-right AfD party, the whole culture needs to change first. People need to feel like it is a completely normal thing to do,” he explained. “The idea is that a real, long-lasting change in politics needs to be preceded by a cultural change.” 

Back when these ideas were first established, attempts to radically alter the cultural landscape of any nation would have been faced with almost insurmountable obstacles, given that the monopoly on cultural output was held by the legacy media. But, in the age of social media, the ability of previously marginal voices to create content and reach large audiences has greatly expanded. 

While the global far right has proved adept at exploiting the potential of 21st-century technology to deliver its political message, Ein Prozent is notable as an organization dedicated to achieving this wider cultural shift. 

To help spread its ideas to German youth, Ein Prozent actively backs right-wing German musicians. According to Belltower News, in 2016 the group promoted a track called “Europa” produced by a 27-year-old rapper known as Komplott (German for “conspiracy”).

According to Patrick Stegemann, who has recently published a book about Germany’s far-right online networks,  the group considers “Europa” to be the “unofficial anthem” of young, indigenous Germans.

Another notable example of Ein Prozent’s incursion into the German music business is the 28-year-old rapper Chris Ares, whose nationalist-themed album “2014-2018” briefly topped both the German iTunes and Amazon Music charts. 

It includes tracks such as “Narrativ,” which features the  lyrics, “They call you Nazi, if you are not left-wing and don’t sound cosmopolitan and intelligent. If you don’t want women to be raped — Nazi! If you want to grow happily in this country — Nazi!” 

The album was produced by the label Arcadi Musik, an offshoot of the far-right lifestyle magazine Arcadi, which receives financial support from Ein Prozent. The group also contributes funding to the alternative media site Redpilled.de, which aggregates short films on topics such as violent crimes committed in Germany by immigrants, a number of which are made by Ein Prozent’s own in-house media operation.

International links

Ein Prozent also produces several podcasts featuring well-known German far-right personalities. The strategy of collaboration is not limited to Germany alone. Kubtischek also organizes annual summer “academies” at his home, in a small village in the east German state of Saxony-Anhalt, to which he invites influential figures from the international far right.

Visitors have included Jack Donovan — an alt-right anti-feminist writer and men’s rights activist from the U.S., with more than 30,000 followers on Instagram — and the Austrian Martin Sellner, a key figure in the Identitarian movement.

Sellner has been permanently banned from the U.K. and denied a travel permit to the U.S. In 2019, he was investigated by Austrian police after it emerged that he had received a donation of $1,500 from Brenton Tarrant, the Australian-born gunman who murdered 51 worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Together with Kubitschek, Sellner founded the German branch of the Identitarian movement. 

Kubitschek also runs a publishing house named Verlag Antaios, which prints books by notable far-right figures, including Sellner, Donovan and Alain de Benoist, the French political philosopher widely considered the founder of the Nouvelle Droite.

In 2019, Ein Prozent was banned from Facebook and Instagram for its links to the Identitarian movement. Now, the group’s main platforms are its own website and YouTube channel, which at the time of writing had just over 11,000 subscribers. It also communicates with an audience of 7,000 via Telegram, an encrypted messaging platform popular with far-right and other extremist groups.  

While these numbers are relatively small, experts believe that the group’s real influence lies in the projects and organizations it supports — many of which have a far wider reach and affect public discourse in a deeper way than a single, fringe political organization could hope to. For example, a chart-topping rap album is likely to connect not only with those already dedicated to the far-right cause, but also potential new converts. It also helps to normalize and entrench reactionary themes within popular culture. And that is precisely what Ein Prozent is all about. 

“They work as a PR company. That’s how they understand politics,” Stegemann told me. “It’s much more powerful to finance somebody else to tell your truth than to do it yourself.”

The post German far-right group uses YouTube, podcasts and rap to convert Gen Z appeared first on Coda Story.

Suddenly, the detector starts to emit a squealing sound. “Is your phone not on flight mode?” he asks. 

Before we can continue with the interview, I quickly adjust the settings on my cell phone.

In an increasingly networked world, Ganjavi is one of a growing number of people who consider themselves acutely sensitive to the technology used to provide wireless and cellular internet connections. The condition is sometimes called “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” or EHS. 

“High-frequency electromagnetic fields have been shown through thousands of studies to cause biological damage,” he explains.

Accordingly, Ganjavi takes great pains to ensure that his home is completely free of pollution from electromagnetic fields.

Ganjavi is not willing to share information about his age or nationality. He uses only wired internet at home and says that his everyday life has been restricted. 

“I still go to the city, I have to,” he says. “But I completely avoid riding the train and I prefer not to fly, as some airlines have WiFi, and people use Bluetooth.” Ganjavi continued: “I used to go to the middle of Zurich to play guitar, or just hang out. I avoid doing that now. If I go to downtown Zurich, it’s so polluted, [my radiation detector] goes through the roof. And I feel it. I get disoriented and I get headaches.”

And Ganjavi’s problems are set to get worse. At present, countries around the world are preparing to launch new 5G data networks. With speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second, they will be 10 times faster than existing 4G ones. 

Telecoms companies claim that this technological leap will revolutionize our lives. But Ganjavi takes a starkly opposing view. He says that 5G will have a disastrous effect on his health and the health of everyone who is exposed to it. 

In order to halt its global rollout, Ganjavi manages two Facebook groups—Stop5G International and Stop5G Switzerland. While there are similar groups around the world, from New Zealand to the UK, Stop5G International is the only truly global one. 

Created in 2017, Stop5G International now has nearly 25,000 members, and it gathers somewhere in the region of a hundred more each week. According to Ganjavi, who has been an activist in this field since 2016, the group is made up of people who are “genuinely worried and concerned about being microwaved around the clock, about our cities turning into microwave ovens.”

“The main problem is that 5G has not been tested for safety,” he says. “It’s also completely unnecessary. The industry is trying to convince people that they need faster download or the internet of things. They don’t.” 

Stop 5G International was originally founded in the Netherlands by a man named John Kuhles. Kuhles has been responsible for several “alternative news” websites and YouTube channels, including Whynotnews and ExomatrixTV, which have posted text and video on crisis actors, chemtrails and a number of other widely debunked conspiracy theories. 

As Stop 5G’s membership grew, Kuhles started looking for someone to help him deal with the increasing workload.

“I met John when I joined the group. We became friends and gained each others' trust. We respected each others' level of engagement and vision, so he took me as a co-administrator, says Ganjavi. 

The group’s purpose is to raise awareness among its members of the reported side effects of wireless technology on human health and inform them of the varying status of 5G deployment around the globe. Ordinarily, such a project would present few causes for concern. The problem is that many of the articles posted in the Stop 5G International group come from highly dubious sources.

Fringe media and sensationalism

According to Nika Aleksejeva, a lead researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, the topic of 5G has provoked animated online discussion for some time. 

In early October, Aleksejeva and her team at the Disinformation Lab in Latvia used a content marketing research tool named BuzzSumo to find out which stories about 5G drew the most engagement on social media over the past 12 months.

According to the study’s findings, the five most popular articles each month opposed the new technology. The topics included cities instituting bans, experts and even reports of animals dying after exposure to 5G.

The most common sources of anti-5G coverage in English were YouTube and websites Collective Evolution and Waking Times, both of which have been labeled as conspiracy-pseudoscience media outlets by The Media Bias/Fact Check project.

“We found out that sensational stories, often based on misrepresented facts, against 5G drive more engagement on social media than stories that are either pro-5G or simply neutral,” says Aleksejeva. “Both Collective Evolution and Waking Times are well known for spreading sensationalist stories with little scientific basis.”

Another similar outlet, Health Nut News, published a story about hundreds of birds dying during 5G testing in the Netherlands. The fact-checking website Snopes later shed more light on the origins of that story. 

Although hundreds of starlings did die in mysterious circumstances in The Hague in October 2018, the only nearby 5G test took place in June 2019. According to researchers at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam and Wageningen University, the birds died after hitting objects like tree branches while in flight. 

An analysis by Coda Story of Stop5G International’s Facebook postings from October 3 to November 23 mirrors Aleksejeva’s findings. Of the last 1,500 posts in the group, 596 featured a media link. Out of those, by far the most common source was YouTube (linked in 278 posts), followed by Waking Times (13), the Daily Mail (12), Scientific American (9), Oasisana, an Italian health news site founded by one of the leaders of Italy’s anti-5G movement Maurizio Martucci, (8) and Collective Evolution (6).

Ganjavi says that he cares more about the information itself rather than the source.

“I judge entities by what they say. There are many parties out there that want to suppress the anti-5G movement,” he explains. He cites a partnership between The New York Times and the telecommunications giant Verizon to expand mobile digital access into schools as a way of educating new readers. “We are talking entities like the New York Times—they are in bed with the industry; just look at the collaboration between the NYT and [the U.S. telecoms company] Verizon.”

Science studies and health concerns

Does the fact that the online 5G debate has been heavily infiltrated by fringe media outlets mean that there is no scientific basis for related health concerns? 

Professor Lennart Hardell, a retired oncologist and former professor at Orebro University Hospital in Sweden, has been studying the effects of electromagnetic fields on human health for over 20 years. He is convinced of the detrimental effects of wireless radiation.

“There are now more than 1,000 studies that show some harmful effects of wireless radiation on human health,” he says.

Hardell has authored more than 350 scientific articles and has been cited more than 12,000 times in academic papers. The studies of his scientific group have consistently shown statistically significant risks of brain tumor development associated with wireless phone use.

“It was only natural for us to look into 5G as well,” says Hardell. “We started asking ourselves basic questions. Is there something fundamentally different about the technology? Could the risks be different?”

Hardell says that since 5G networks will need more base stations located in close proximity to residential buildings in order to operate properly, people’s exposure to electromagnetic fields will be higher than they have previously.

“We already know that this type of exposure is a possible human carcinogen. Why on earth would we want to increase that exposure,” says Hardell.

Hardell felt so strongly about the issue that, in 2017, he teamed up with the Finnish professor Rainer Nyberg to author a document titled 5g Appeal.eu. The appeal calls on the European Union to stop the rollout of 5G, owing to serious potential public health risks. To date, it has been signed by 268 scientists and medical doctors. 

The appeal was submitted to the European Commission in September 2017, urging the institution to “halt the 5G expansion until independent scientists can assure that the technology will not be harmful for EU-citizens.” 

Hardell is not alone in his efforts. In 2015, a similar appeal was submitted to the World Health Organization and United Nations Environment Program. Titled the International EMF Scientist Appeal, it has been signed by 252 scientists who have published peer-reviewed papers on the biological and health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields.

The current safety guidelines for exposure to wireless radiation have been set at 100 MHz to 300 GHz by the Munich-based International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). Existing 4G networks operate at frequencies up to 2500 mhz; 5G networks are projected to operate at frequencies up to 52 GHz. Hardell and hundreds of other scientists believe these limits to be too high to adequately safeguard human health.

The chairman of the ICNIRP, Dr. Eric van Rongen, refutes such claims, saying that the organization’s calculations provide sufficient protection.

“The primary effects on which the guidelines are based are heating of the body and tissue. With the guidelines, we aim to prevent overheating,” he says. “There is a large degree of conservatism that goes into the guidelines; even if the limits are exceeded to a minor extent, it won’t immediately lead to a health effect as a result of overheating.”

However, in 5g Appeal.eu, the document which calls on the EU to halt the rollout of the new network, Hardell says that “there are numerous recent scientific publications that have shown that electromagnetic fields affect living organisms at levels well below the limits of most international guidelines.”

The largest studies looking into the carcinogenic potential of long-term exposure to wireless radiation of recent years have been those carried out by the U.S. National Toxicology Program and the Italian cancer prevention research body the Ramazzini Institute, both published in 2018.

In the studies, researchers in the U.S. and Italy exposed more than 2,500 rats to the kind of electromagnetic radiation emitted by cellular networks over a two-year time period. Both studies showed a statistically significant increase in the incidence of brain and heart cancer at levels of exposure below the guidelines formulated by the ICNIRP.

Van Rongen says that his team reviewed both studies and concluded that there is no need to change the current limits. The ICNIRP’s full statement can be read here. 

The fact that no opposition to 5G currently exists on a governmental level means that little stands in the way of technology’s rollout. It also leaves the task of arguing against the global deployment of 5G in the hands of a few activists and committed scientists. 

Ganjavi, for one, is determined not to stand idle while the new networks are launched in Switzerland. 

“I will fight it with all my might,” he says.

The post Waging a global campaign to halt 5G appeared first on Coda Story.

Organized by Austria’s Erste Foundation, which encourages citizens to become active members of society, the conference — “How the EU can take the lead in governing technology globally” — addressed the growing need for the regulation of large technology companies, such as Facebook or Google. 

“Trust is lost. Stakes are very high. We need to pull this all into public accountability,” said the keynote speaker, Marietje Schaake, former member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands. Schaake was speaking to the media at the sidelines of the conference. 

Silicon Valley’s giants stand accused of a plethora of far-reaching systemic flaws ranging from discriminatory race and gender practices in algorithmic decision making to enabling the use of micro-targeting to spread political propaganda. In the EU, the big tech platforms have come under increasing scrutiny with the bloc’s ground-breaking data protection regulation (GDPR) coming into effect last year. 

Europe is already home to the world’s strictest data privacy laws and Schaake is one of the most prominent voices arguing the EU can do much more. Having served as a Member of the European Parliament for a decade, the Dutch politician was behind some of Europe’s key digital initiatives, such as the Digital Agenda for Europe, which was originally conceived in 2010 to speed up the roll-out of high-speed internet in Europe. In 2017, she was singled out by Politico as one of the 28 most influential Europeans. After she resigned at the end of her parliamentary term this year, she was appointed the international policy director of Cyber Policy Center at Stanford University. 

Schaake’s argument contends that since companies like Facebook, Twitter or Google have effectively become the guardians of how information flows, people around the world have lost trust in information sources of any kind. She blames the advertising model whereby “paying instead of convincing” determines one’s position in the marketplace of ideas.  

“Governing for profit optimization allows blatant conspiracy to rise above news stories in search results,” Schaake said in Vienna. “Companies like Facebook allow their clients to advertise against categories such as ‘Jew Hater’, or ‘Hitler did nothing wrong’.” 

In an effort to counter micro-targeted disinformation campaigns, the European Commission proposed a new Digital Services Act earlier this year. These are mostly connected to Russian online influence operations in Europe. For example, the UK-based impact agency 89up reported that Russia spent up to $5.18 million on attempts to influence British voters to vote Leave in 2016’s UK’s EU membership referendum. 

The act is due to be presented at the end of 2020 and is widely expected to contain updated transparency rules on political advertising which would require big tech platforms to subject their algorithms to more stringent forms of regulation. 

More recently, the European Commission’s incoming president Ursula Von der Leyen pledged to create “a Europe fit for the digital age” by enhancing the Digital Services Act with proposals including ethical regulations for AI and new taxes for tech companies.

Algorithms and accountability 

Many experts in Europe today agree on two areas of regulation that could help alleviate the problem of manipulation on social media and micro-targeting for political goals: Content moderation and holding social media algorithms accountable.

The first would make social media companies liable for the content of their platforms. Algorithmic accountability would then force big tech companies to reveal the formulas they use to collect data and match them with advertisers. 

“The debate about intermediary liability is really at the heart of this question. Should companies like YouTube or Twitter be liable for what happens on their platforms?” Schaake asked journalists at the conference. 

Katarzyna Szymielewicz from the Polish NGO Fundacja Panoptykon, which has been engaged in legal battles pushing for the implementation of the right to explanation of automated decisions in Poland, sees a clear link between liability and algorithmic accountability.

“Liability doesn’t concern only content. It’s more about the way tech platforms moderate the discussion. The users might create the content, but the companies create the algorithm. They should have certain transparency obligations,” she said. 

A host of advocacy groups in Europe, but also increasingly more in the United States, who call for algorithmic accountability of big tech companies demand the introduction of legislation that would make the inner workings of the algorithms used by companies like Facebook or Google transparent. 

“It’s not like we want them to reveal all their codes as part of the solution,” said Szymielewicz. “They use hundreds of these algorithms on a daily basis; that would be impossible… We just want them to share with the public the decisions behind building these algorithms, how do they optimize them.” 

Schaake says that she has observed a change in the way companies like Facebook engage with the legislators. 

She says that just three years ago, Facebook was still in denial that the information flows on the platform could have any impact on countries’ electoral processes, let alone assuming any responsibility for the content shared by its users. 

“I remember sitting on a panel on intermediary liability back in 2016. I asked Facebook representatives if they thought their platform could somehow influence the outcome of the upcoming American elections. They told me: ‘don’t watch too many movies’”. 

Since then, she says, especially after the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook is more aware about how the platform can manipulate users.  

“They [Facebook] now say they have a lot to learn. They say these things are very complicated, but that they are working on it,” Schaake added. “I think that they are really stressed out about all the pressure they are currently under, so they want to create an impression that they want to cooperate on this, but that’s very far from reality.” 

As the global debate about how digital technologies pose serious challenges to the integrity of democratic institutions gathers momentum, new hurdles have emerged. Facebook’s recent announcement that the company will not fact check political ads has led to calls for the voluntary suspension of online political advertising before next month’s UK election. The problems with digital campaigning has also cast a shadow on the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

The issue was given more prominence last week when the actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen gave a speech attacking Facebook and other social media platforms for enabling the spread of hate speech and misinformation. Speaking about Facebook’s decision to not fact check political ads, Baron Cohen said that under its own rules, the company would have allowed Adolf Hitler to run propaganda on its platform.

Facebook’s Asia-Pacific Policy Communications Director Clare Wareing said that the company has been working with experts and legislators across Europe on four areas where the company thinks regulation could help. 

“We are committed to working with experts and policymakers to shape the rules of the internet and have outlined four areas where we think regulation could help — harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability,” she said in an email. 

Since Facebook, like other big tech companies, considers its algorithms a trade secret, algorithmic accountability is not among the four areas cited. 

However, there have been initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic to release the codes from the so called “black boxes”. Earlier this year, a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives Yvette Clarke introduced the Algorithmic Accountability Act, which would require large tech companies to audit their algorithms for potential abuses of human rights. 

Some version of the right to explanation is already enshrined in the EU’s GDPR, which mandates that users are able to ask for the data behind the algorithmic decisions made for them, including advertising programs, and social networks. 

Thomas Lohninger, the director of Vienna-based digital rights NGO Epicenter.works and a former policy advisor for European Digital Rights, says that the EU should be much more confident in going beyond the existing regulation.  

“Sadly, our politicians often feel like they are powerless when it comes to Google or Facebook,” he said. “But we have seen that the past two legislative terms in the EU have woken up to these issues.” 

After the wave of misinformation campaigns during the last EU elections, there is an appetite in Brussels to go beyond the existing regulation. The European Commission is currently carrying out an in-depth analysis into algorithmic transparency. The Commission will engage with experts, academics, industry, civil society and policy-makers throughout the project.  

“Two studies are currently under evaluation, focusing in particular on governance consideration, oversight and algorithmic auditing technologies,” the EU’s Digital Single Market spokesperson Inga Höglund said in an email. The results of the study are expected to be used in policy-making decisions about algorithms

“Preliminary work on the project has already informed several policy steps taken by the Commission, such as regulation on ‘platform-to-business’ trading practices, which establishes an obligation on online platforms and search engines to be transparent about the general parameters which determine online ranking, she added. 

Implementation requires architecture

Joanna Goodey who heads the Freedom and Justice department at the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights says that, whenever the forthcoming Digital Services Act is eventually enacted, the key thing will be its implementation. 

“You can have the best law drafted in the world, but the reality is the implementation,” she said during a panel discussion at the conference. “Do we have an architecture strong enough in the EU? One can argue that the data protection authorities have been grossly under-resources to deal with the GDPR.” 

Schaake says that so far it has been the tech companies who have shown more initiative in setting rules and standards.

“As soon as anti-trust investigations were announced in Europe and the U.S., we’ve seen tech companies hiring more lobbyists for their campaigns,” she said. “They are also funding a lot of civil society organizations, as well as many academic programs, that are working on tech policy.” 

She continued: “The question is then not whether we will see rules and regulation, but who is in charge of it and based on which principles and desired outcome.”

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Taking center stage alongside Marine Le Pen from France and Geert Wilders from the Netherlands was one of the more unlikely rising stars within the anti-European Union, nationalistic movements taking root in Europe: a Tokyo-born Czech businessman whose savvy use of information warfare has built his four-year-old party into a new political juggernaut.

Born to a Czech mother and a Japanese father, Okamura says he was bullied as a child both in Japan and his adopted European home because he looked different. Yet after building a successful business built on globalization, he now brands himself the posterboy for discontented Czech voters who subscribe to his message centered on illiberalism and xenophobia.

“Europeans are literally fighting for survival,” Tomio Okamura told journalists after the rally. “There is not just the threat of migration from Muslim countries but also the growing pressure from the EU to de-nationalize Europe and to create a single, multi-cultural superstate.”

Okamura’s Freedom and Direct Democracy party, the fourth-largest bloc in the Czech legislature, it vying to win its first seat in the European Union Parliament elections later in May, a victory that would underscore the swift rise of populism in the Czech Republic and similar movements across the continent that share a goal of tearing the EU apart.

Critics say Okamura and his party’s success over a few short years has been supercharged by a carefully crafted media strategy of marginalizing the country’s mainstream media in favor of his own social media channels that amplify fake news, including a strong anti-Brussels message.

Okumura’s team did not respond to requests for comment or an interview. Confronted with the obvious paradox that a foreign-born politician is pushing Czech nationalism, Okamura has been quick to bat the contradiction aside. “My mother is from Moravia! In no sense of the word am I a foreigner,” Okamura said during an online debate in 2017.

Jan Cizek, FDD’s deputy chairman in the Czech capital of Prague, denies that his party’s popularity is based on fear-mongering. He says Okamura’s strength comes from his willingness to speak the truth that people are feeling. “People all over Europe are longing for political parties that will speak the truth and defend their interests. That’s the main issue,” he said.

What’s clear is that Okamura’s undeniable charisma and media savvy has helped him capitalize on Czech social and economic divisions to build a political juggernaut.

Okamura spent much of his childhood in Czech Republic before returning to Japan after high school. There he worked various odd jobs, such as a trash collector and popcorn vendor. When he returned to the Czech Republic in 1994 Okamura opened a tourism company focusing on Japanese clientele.

He became a go-to person for Czech media about anything Japan related. Taking advantage of his new found popularity, he began to churn out books lauding his entrepreneurial skills with titles such as “The Czech Dream”, “The Art of Living”, “The Art of Ruling” or “The Art of Direct Democracy.” He became a regular on the Czech version of The Apprentice where he sat among the investors evaluating the businesses pitches.

In 2013 Okamura founded his first political party, Dawn – National Coalition, a populist Eurosceptic movement. In the Czech parliamentary election of 2013, the party received nearly 7% of votes, but the movement fell apart after two years amid inter-party disputes. Okamura was accused of funneling party money to his own companies. He denied the accusations and blamed other party members for missing funds. The police didn’t find enough evidence to pursue the case.

He then founded FDD in May 2015. With the onset of the European migrant crisis, it quickly positioned itself as the Czech Republic’s main defender against what it described as a barbaric invasion — and Okamura jumped into the disinformation business, where he fed Czech citizens a diet of hyped threats, according to media analysts.

Okamura’s talking points were simple but misleading. In a video posted to his Facebook page in December 2017 Okamura claimed that the security situation in the Czech Republic was deteriorating and the risk of terrorism was growing. Lubomir Metnar, the Czech interior minister at the time, told the Czech press that Okamura’s statement was full of false claims. He said that the Czech Republic is one of the safest countries in the world.

In 2018 another video posted by Okamura whipped up fear that a non-existent illness could sweep the country. The clip got tens of thousands of views despite medical professionals saying it was nonsense. Inspired by the events of Brexit, the FDD started advocating for “leaving the EU, the British way.”

Jonas Syrovatka, a program manager at Prague Security Studies Institute, says Okamura was a master at alarmist and misleading news.“He was making these videos where he was constantly encouraging people to leave their comments. He was doing this for three of for years, a video every week,” Syrovatka said.

The FDD’s embrace of views shared by European far-right leaders earned it the endorsement of France’s Le Pen ahead Czech national election in 2017. The FDD won 22 seats in the country’s parliament, making it the fourth-biggest bloc.

The political success added fuel to Okamura’s media machine. Okamura’s personal Facebook page has approximately 260,000 followers, while the main Facebook page of FDD has only about 33,000 followers.

Although Okamura used the mainstream media earlier in the decade to tout his business acumen and books, the party soon set a rule that members should boycott establishment news outlets, according to Kamil Papezik, the former FDD’s deputy chairman for the Czech city of Brno. “That’s one of your duties as a FDD member. You can only ask journalists to send questions via email, then you just don’t respond,” Papezik said.

Instead the party’s Facebook administrators share media articles conforming with the party’s agenda. One of the most popular news sites shared by the FDD is from Parlamentni listy, “Parliamentary Letters,” a Breitbart-esque site regularly posts sensational articles and interviews with mostly anti-establishment politicians.

Papezik says that the party works with “alternative” media outlets because they reflect the views of most FDD supporters. “They want their traditions and customs to remain the same. They don’t want to live in a Muslim Europe,” he said, adding that the alternative media are “able to talk openly about things that the mainstream media intentionally ignore because they are aligned with the leadership of the European Union.”

It was the goal of ending the European Union project that Okamura and his colleagues at the Prague rally, spent most of their time discussing. “I want the Czech Republic to leave the European Union. It is flawed beyond repair. It has to end,” Okamura said.

The post Meet the Czech-Japanese businessman turned anti-EU rightwing political star appeared first on Coda Story.

Over long hours pouring drinks and listening to customers criticize the political system, Gersl’s ambitions soon took a radical turn. He started a website for news junkies like himself and now presides over one of the most popular and controversial alternative news empires in the country.

“Today’s media has the tendency to conceal important facts from the public … We bring the answers,” reads the Facebook “about” section of AC24, the crown jewel of Gersl’s news business.

“Today’s media has the tendency to conceal important facts from the public … We bring the answers,” reads the Facebook “about” section of AC24, the crown jewel of Gersl’s news business.

Ondřej says his successful foray into the media world is a result of good business sense, a dedication to keeping costs low by repackaging news stories reported elsewhere and focusing on sensational topics. In January 2019, AC24 logged more than 1 million visits, an impressive result in a country of 10 million. On Facebook, AC24 boasts more than 100,000 followers. For the last two years, Gersl has also posted growing profits.

His detractors, however, have a more sinister view. They see AC24’s popularity as a cautionary tale in today’s chaotic and segmented media environment that illustrates how a once-fringe website promoting alternative political opinions could evolve into an aggressive disinformation outlet.

The Czech non-governmental think tank European Values evaluated AC24 in an April 2016 study as a website that “employs several manipulative techniques, ranging from intentional misinformation to presenting conspiracy theories as serious news.” Kospiratori.sk, a public database of Czech and Slovak websites that traffic in disinformation calls AC24 a Kremlin mouthpiece. On Feb. 13, 3 of 10 articles published on the site were attributed to the Czech-language version of the Russian-owned Sputnik news agency.

AC24 could play an influential role in upcoming EU elections as the last Czech presidential election was decided by a margin of just over 150,000 votes.

With European Union elections coming up this spring, AC24 could play an influential role in a country where the last presidential elections were decided by a margin of just over 150,000 votes. Populist incumbent President Milos Zeman has called for referendums on the Czech Republic’s membership in the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, two institutions that AC24 news articles spend much time criticizing.

Gersl presents himself as a man with a mission to shake up society, all while making money along the way. In a Skype interview, he said that he is not linked to any political movement or party. He also doesn’t espouse a particular ideology. He says he is capitalizing on a market for sensational and diverse news that Czechs are eager to consume.

He also concedes that he doesn’t fact check the articles posted on AC24.

“Look, our website is not the most truthful one or the most trustworthy,” Gersl said. “We do not want our readers to be dependent on just one source of information. They should be able to compare information from more sources.”

“Look, our website is not the most truthful one or the most trustworthy,” Gersl said. “We do not want our readers to be dependent on just one source of information. They should be able to compare information from more sources.”

Gersl got his start as a modern media mogul around 2011, when Czech and other Europeans were consumed with revolutions in the Arab world and the grassroots movement Occupy Wall Street.

He built a website to discuss these and other social movements he thought were underreported by the mainstream media. This early version of AC24 attracted “hard-core political junkies,” he said, and not many more viewers.

Gersl then hired two other people and launched a magazine called “Consciousness,” a platform he intended for long form essays and journalism. The magazine’s motto was to “wake people up.”

Jan Cemper, the editor-in-chief of a Czech fact-checking website Manipulatori.cz, has followed AC24 since its inception. He met Gersl at an Occupy rally, and watched closely as the website underwent a radical transformation.

“They were providing information about the demands of the protestors,” Cemper, said.“They were giving voices to all those student movements that were trying to improve the system.”

Content on AC24 started changing in 2014, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Articles on the site portrayed the conflict as a result of growing fascism in Ukraine, echoing a common talking-point of Kremlin officials.

Cemper, said the tone of articles on the site shifted to outright hostility towards Western government institutions and values. “They began to attack the fundamental principles of Western democracy,” he said.

AC24 became a go-to site for articles critical of foreign-funded NGOs, and Czech Republic’s membership in the EU and NATO. AC24 also adopted publishing trends common in America and other markets. He shortened stories, focusing on easily-packaged breaking-news stories often accompanied by a video.

Gersl said his online business became much more profitable than his magazine. He published the last issue of “Consciousness” in May 2016.

“We used to have more long reads, but no one is interested in this kind of stuff anymore. I decided to invest my money into something else,” Gersl said, adding. “Something that would have more added value in business terms.”

These days, typical AC24 news stories seldom exceed five paragraphs, and have a notable focus on topics that right wing politicians around Europe view as critical threats, from immigration to the alleged dangers of Islam.

Sensational, red-inked headlines, such as “USA is falling apart, but no one is paying attention”, or “Bill Gates and the global elite do not vaccinate their kids. For good reason,” appear on the website side by side with countless ad banners.

Meanwhile, Gersl says his profits are growing. In 2015, AC24 posted 100,000 Czech Crowns ($4,000 USD) in profits. In 2017, that increased to 1,100,000 Czech Crowns ($44,000 USD).

Gersl dismisses his critics like Cemper who decry his role in spreading fake news. He says he’s continue running AC24 as long as its profitable to do so. “It’s just about adjusting to the changes in the media industry,” he said. “There are people that want this kind of information, so we give it to them.”

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