As hate speech on social media becomes an ever-increasing problem, policymakers may look to more authoritarian measures for policing content. Several countries have already, at some stage, banned networks such as Facebook and Twitter (Liebelson, 2017). The government of Sri Lanka recently enacted a similar measure: a complete shutdown of Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber and Instagram on the basis that Facebook was used to spread messages of racial violence. However, analysis reveals these blocks to be ineffective (Wijeratne, 2018). Based on discussions with Facebook, this brief presents the more technically challenging approach of detecting and legally limiting hate speech as a more effective approach. While this is based on Sri Lankan context, we extract lessons for countries across the global south to propose a role that governments can fill to more effectively curb the spread of hate speech.
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Exploring AI’s transformative potential: LIRNEasia launches ‘AI for Social Good’ workshop series
LIRNEasia concluded its first workshop (30 March, 24’), its first and part of a larger series of initiatives on ‘Artificial Intelligence for Social Good’; intended to raise interest and awareness on the potential of AI to benefit society at large. The event featured a keynote speech by Dr.
Use of online job portal data in research and in practice: A review
Last year we conducted research to explore the possibility of leveraging online job portal data for economic analysis in 13 Asia Pacific countries, as a part of a project for the Asian Development Bank. We examined the types of information available on major portals across the region, to discern the nature and format of available data.
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